The name “Samar” means “battlefield commander” in ancient Sanskrit and also has meaning in ancient Arabic roughly translating to “fruit of paradise.”

Samar’s mother Sevim and his father Samir are both from our Hart Mountain Herd. Samar’s maternal grandparents Freedom and Jilla also reside at our sanctuary. Our precious Samar already has loads of personality and is an especially precocious little foal. This sweet little “battlefield commander” is incredibly curious about his surroundings, but certainly feels safest when he’s at his mama Sevim’s side.

He enjoys running in the hills which means Sevim must do a lot of chasing after her young one! Samar is incredibly playful and has had no problem making friends with the other horses at the sanctuary. He spends his days running around until he crashes hard (he’s quite the deep sleeper), then he’s up and at it again the next morning!

At RTF’s American Wild Horse Sanctuary, we use the fertility control vaccine PZP to maintain our population of horses. There are other management techniques we could use to keep our population from growing (geld all studs or keep mares and stallions separate). Because we wish to offer educational opportunities with regard to natural herd behavior and social interactions, maintain natural family bands as well as model minimally intrusive in-the-wild management that can and is being implemented on the range as an alternative to capture and removals, proven safe and humane contraception was selected to achieve this goal at the sanctuary.

The immunocontraceptive vaccine we have used for over 20 years, is highly effective, but not 100% effective. This is due to the normal variations present in physiological responses to vaccines, and it means that every once in a while, we do get a “breakthrough” birth — like Samar! Foals truly revitalize the herd and everyone in the herd participates in their socialization!

There are very few opportunities for the public and even professional horsemen and women to actually observe a stallion raising his offspring!