Today Wednesday, from 10:40 p.m., you can see in Cuatro a new installment of the second season of Volando voy , in which the adventurer from León Jesús Calleja traveled to Doñana with the aim of helping the conservation of the marsh horse, an endangered species . On this occasion, the mission of the television program consisted of choosing the best marsh horse, an experience in which he participated VERY INTERESTING . Waiting for you to see Calleja’s report tonight, here is the article we published in our magazine:
“Once you are immersed in the maelstrom of hundreds of horses running through the streets of El Rocío, feeling the gallop of the hooves of the animals to the rhythm of your heart, all this translates into something that is inevitably tattooed on your soul forever ”In this graphic way, our photographer, Álex Martín Ros, summed up his experience after attending the Saca de las Yeguas, an equine tradition that is celebrated every June in Almonte (Huelva) on the occasion of the festivities of San Juan and San Pedro : MUY’s mission was twofold: to contemplate this cultural and nature phenomenon in situ and, in collaboration with the adventurer from León Jesús Calleja and his team from the Volando voy program, to choose the best example of a marsh horse.
But before that, a bit of history to understand this livestock event. Sacking was regulated, back in 1504, by an ordinance of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, but in reality it is a millenary tradition , as the historian Domingo Muñoz Bort, author of the book La ganadería caballar en la villa de Almonte and member from a research team from the University of Huelva: “It is as old as the existence of these animals here, in the marshes.” In fact, he explains that, in a 10th-century text by the Andalusian historian Áhmad al-Razi, it is narrated that newly calved mares and their young were taken from the marshes and taken to Medina Azahara (Córdoba), where the emir and his military chose the best colts.
Because the marsh horse, although it has traditionally been used for work in the fields, such as threshing, has also been used for military use. Especially because the Muslim leader Almanzor (939-1002) happened to cross this mare, which was very resistant, although weak in attack, with the Berber stallion, small but very nervous . “What he obtained was an animal with resistance to make great marches, capable of going to combat wherever the battle was and characterized by its verve in battle”, Muñoz Bort emphasizes.
This same robustness was the one that Christopher Columbus perceived a few centuries later, who, aware that the horse was fundamental in the conquest of the new discovered lands, “took marsh reproductive females to America,” adds Muñoz Bort. Thus, the genes of this free-range Iberian breed are also found overseas . Today, DNA tests have confirmed that marsh blood runs through the veins of feral horses from Canada, the United States, Central America and South America.
A breed of sweet and brave character
But what is the marsh horse like? Rafael Ramos, a resident of Almonte and one of the three specialized judges who helped MUY and the program Volando I am going to choose the best marsh specimen in the last Saca de las Yeguas, provides us with the morphological description of the breed: it has a rather large head , short neck, deep trunk, voluminous belly and medium and thin extremities . This equine profile is complemented by the one offered by the book Around the Andalusian horse (1953), by the Portuguese Ruy de Andrade and which Muñoz Bort tells us: “A lot of life and ardor, sweet character and, in danger, brave and suffering; very resistant and rustic, it needs little care; easy to feed, only with grass, and in the manger, only straw and barley live well ”.
These were the ones we contemplated on June 26. The day was dawning on the horizon when the yegüerizos gathered near the village of El Rocío, who one or two days before, armed and with saddlebags loaded, had entered the national park to collect the marsh mares and foals. that graze freely and throughout the year in this natural environment. Among them, there are also stallions, “although much less”, Ramos clarifies. And he adds: “We calculate that every twenty-five mares, there is one stallion. And there may be even less ”.
In fact, it is a breed in danger of extinction, and therefore the National Association of Marismeño Cattle Breeders, based in Almonte, and under the tutelage of the breed geneticist Juan Vicente Delgado Bermejo, from the University of Córdoba, They have devised a program to improve these animals based on their conservation. Sergio Nogales, veterinarian and researcher at the University of Córdoba involved in this project, explains to MUY that “the creation of a germplasm bank – in this case, frozen semen – of the most representative horses of the breed has been started” . Although, as he adds, the program has encountered two difficulties: the extraction of semen with an artificial vagina, since the horses are semi-wild and a minimum of dressage should be previously carried out for their handling, and the economic cost involved in this process. In any case, they plan to make the first inclusions in the bank later this year.
Traces of a tradition
From what we could see, the task of the hundreds of mares in the bag is arduous: this year they grouped almost 1,400 feral specimens into troops. The ground of the roads vibrated at the trot of an ancestral gallop that follows in the footsteps of a tradition that today has lost its economic character to become something eminently cultural and that passes from generation to generation : it is curious to observe how, in the same way as the Foals – the youngest, barely a month and a half, since they were born in April or May – kept watch not to lose sight of their mothers, there were also youngsters who made their debut as mares and carefully followed the instructions of their elders.
The first destination of the troops and their guides was the village of El Rocío, where, in front of the hermitage, the parish priest blessed the animals. Commendable the respect that those gathered there – according to estimates by the Almonte City Council, about three hundred thousand people – showed the horses: despite the desire to applaud, they did not do so to prevent the animals from being scared. A few kilometers from Almonte, the mares stopped to nap in the hours when the heat was hottest, a break for the animals to cool off in the troughs and regain energy. In fact, the mares are already pregnant, since immediately after giving birth, they look for the stallions – they are eleven months pregnant .
At seven in the afternoon, the first troops entered the town of Huelva. Impressive picture of the animals touring the urban nucleus. The thunder of hooves against the ground encouraged us to once again keep a respectful silence in the face of the force of nature. The end of the journey was in the municipal corrals of the Huerta de la Cañada, where during the following days the ranchers were going to proceed to the gopher – the cutting of the manes and the tails -, the deworming and cleaning, as well as the hardware of the foals for sale at the livestock fair. And what happened to the copies that did not sell? That just a few days later they were returned to the marshes, waiting for this cultural tradition that is the Saca de las Yeguas to take place next year.
As for the specimen chosen by Volando voy and VERY INTERESTING, you can see it posing in the image above. His name is Junco, and, according to Rafael Ramos, one of the three qualifying judges, he is very representative of the racial pattern that determines the particularities of the marsh horse. To choose it, veterinarians from Aznalcóllar Hospital Equino contributed a new technology to radiograph the animals. By the way, in this video you can see a sample of the good understanding that existed between Jesús Calleja and our photographer, Álex Martín Ros:
Photos: Álex Martín Ros
