Equine Re-construction:  The Beginning

Today, the girls and I began a year-long project of rearticulating a horse skeleton.  We'd like to share our adventure with you!  

You might be wondering, "Where did we get the horse bones to begin with?"  A few years ago I had the opportunity to receive a horse which had just made the inevitable passage to "greener pastures."  I had always wanted to rearticulate a horse skeleton and this looked like the perfect opportunity to protect the bones while they were drying-out to prevent the smallest bones from getting lost.  This set of horse bones has resided at the rear of our Quonset building bleaching in the sun for about six years.

Then, about two years our own horse made his unexpected passage and again, we were able to protect his bones to minimize loss.  Because this horse was much "fresher" than the first, we opted to move his remains out to a pasture north of the house to get "dried-out."  We now had two sets of bones for our project.

This year, the girls in their home school science course began a study of mammals and we felt this was the perfect time to gather up the bones and learn some basic large animal anatomy in a very hands-on way!  Creating a complete skeleton which would be useful for others would be our goal.

We headed to pasture north of the house in my little pickup to gather the set of bones from our horse first.  Our plan was to get both sets of bones into one location and then I'd do an assessment to see what we had and didn't have.

Here we are heading out.

It took a little hunting to find him, but eventually we found him hidden beneath a red cedar which was recently placed there while the pasture was being cleared.  Because prairie rattlesnakes are common inhabitants in this pasture, so we were cautious as we made our initial approach.

While coyotes had moved them about, we were pleased to find many of the bones.

Margaret developed a tap-stick method for locating bones hidden beneath the grass.  Watch her here in action.

There were also some very nice cow bones a little further down the hill, so we stopped and got those.  The cow bones are neat to have on hand in order to make comparisons between the two species.

We then headed back up the hill to the pickup, took one more photo and headed to the house.

  

Next job:  unloadng and sorting.