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Re: [RC] dressage camel - Maryanne GabbaniOne of the upsides of camels is that they can survive on virtually anything that is composed of cellulose of the worst possible quality, but they do appreciate good food as well. And if you think that mules have long memories of ill treatment the story is that a camel will wait for years to do in the guy who wronged them AND to eat his clothes. That may be just a story but I'm not sure I want to find out.
On the whole, horses can move faster than camels but camels can move farther with less baggage. I heard a story about a guy who wanted to do a concert in the desert in Morocco and arranged to have a baby grand carried into an oasis on poles supported on the backs of two camels. Not bad. I believe that they would be classified as a ruminid and as far as I can see the main cause of death for camels in Egypt is kofta and kebab. I was talking to a camel guy in Giza one evening when we went out riding with some clients and he was telling me that I could get a young camel for about $600. They can be trained for riding at about 3 years and when I asked how long they could work, he recommended about 5 years because after that they get too tough. "Too tough?" Yeah, you can get a good price for a well fed camel at the meat market, apparently, so they get traded in regularly. Sort of like riding and milking old Bessie for a while and then having a very LARGE quantity of meat loaf. Now, as someone who really appreciates her older horses because there is a lot of experience and intelligence stored in there, the idea of trading in a camel for slaughter didn't really appeal to me much. I know quite a few farmers who use camels to carry crops on them and I haven't seen much trading in, so maybe there are people who don't decide to eat them. Probably more than you ever wanted to know about camels. Oh, and horses are not instinctively afraid of them. Most of mine seem to think that they smell funny and they don't really love the way that they bend about three different ways as they get up and down and they think their voices are creepy...but all that being true, one of my grooms rode up to a guy on a camel in the desert yesterday and shook hands with him while on one of my mares who simply stood there with a look on her face as if to say "I can't believe I'm doing this!". Maryanne On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 9:12 PM, Melissa Margetts Ms. Kitty <margetts@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
-- Maryanne Stroud Gabbani msgabbani@xxxxxxxxx Egypt Face to Face www.alsorat.com Weblogs: Living In Egypt miloflamingo.blogspot.com Cairo/Giza Daily Photo cairogizadailyphoto.blogspot.com Turn Right At The Sarcophagus haramlik.blogspot.com Da Moose Is Loose (a blog for kids) mstroud.blogspot.com Photos of Egypt: http://www.flickr.com/photos/livinginegypt/
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