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I'll go with the Emir. Stallions here are certainly more muscled and would definitely need more food to continue in that condition. It's true that castration is a no no in this part of the world. Guys make jokes all the time about not taking a nap in my garden because I'm known to castrate all the horses and dogs that come into the farm.

I don't know about the mares being bigger weenies than the stallions. I have my personal favourite mare, Dory, who has helped me out of canals and who I know would defend me if I needed it. I can't see a mere wound stopping her if she needed to get somewhere. She snapped a sesamoid with a buck in deep sand and proceeded to win a race against a much larger horse...much to my dismay. Nah, the girls have got it.


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/

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 2:03 PM, rides2far@xxxxxxxx <rides2far@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

OK, Maryanne sent me a private comment on mares vs stallions, which I thought came through RC so I typed this whole page...only to see it was a private post...however, if I'm gonna type this much I'm going to send it to the list. :-)


from the book:

"What the stallion desires most is combat and racing. He is also to be preferred in war because he is swifter and hardier than the mare, and because he participates in the sentiments of love or hate of his rider.
"Not so with the mare. If a stallion and a mare are mortally wounded, the stallion will continue as long as he can to carry his rider far from the battlefield; but the mare, on the contrary will immediately fall on the spot without being able to hold out. There is no doubt about it. It is a fact proved by the Arabs; I have seen such thing on various occasions in battle and I myself have undergone such experience.

>snip<

My comment: they use "hardy" differently than we I think because the later quotes about mares make them sound hardier in my opinion:

>snip<
(I'm skipping around leaving things out so this isn't 100% copy of the book)

According to the Emir Abd-el-Kader: "It is true that the Arabs prefer mares to stallions, but only for the follwing three reasons: The first one is that they take into account what the mare can produce, which is one of the weightiest. "The fountainhead of all wealth is a mare who foals a filly" Riding a mare is more agreeable and easier"  It is even supposed that because of the smoothness of her paces she can eventually cause her rider to become flabby and out of condition.

The second reason is that mares do not whinny in combat. They are less sensitive than the stallion to hunger, thirst, or heat; and there fore they render more services to a people whose wealthy consists principally of herds of camesl and flocks of sheep. The mare is like the snake. Her strength increases in ties of heat and torrid localities This is contrary to the stallion who does not endure heat as well as the mare-whose energy undoubtedly due to her constitution, redoubles the hotter it becomes.

The third reason is the very little care that a mare requires; she can be fed on very little, and her owner can send her out to graze with the sheep and camels without having to keep constant watch over her. The stallion however must be better fed and his master cannot send him out to pasture without a groom for if he saw a mare he would follow her.

from "Horses of the Sahara"



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