Sue McDonnell, PhD, Research Assistant Professor in Medicine and Reproduction, is the large animal behaviorist at New Bolton Center. Her work includes watching horses behave and misbehave. Among her study subjects at the moment are approximately 50 ponies pastured on some 32 acres at New Bolton Center. McDonnell has studied equids in the wild, and loves to do that whenever opportunities arise. But studies of wild horse populations are limited by environmental constraints such as wide range of herd movement through difficult terrain.
Human presence can disturb ongoing natural behavior of wild populations.
Semi-feral means that they are domestic stock, but have been turned out to organize and fend mostly on their own. They are provided preventive and emergency health care, and additional forage in winter. Interference by humans is deliberately kept to a minimum. Because they are domestic stock and are acclimated to people, they seem to be little disturbed by daily year-round observation and necessary handling. In the course of domesticating animals, the art of animal husbandry and selective breeding created a whole set of rules that are often quite different from nature.