Weaning Time is always emotional and noisy

We separated our mares and babies two and a half weeks ago, and as expected, the poor babies didn't understand, the older mares do understand, and our newest mother, Dancer, was quite distraught. We separate them into adjoining paddocks separated by a lane so that they can see each other and nicker pleas and reassurances back and forth. Within a few days, things quiet down. We prefer to wean them in this fashion so that moms can see that the babies are fine and the babies can see that moms are quietly grazing and don't seem to be worried about the new arrangement. We bring buckets of grain to the weanlings for the first week. The second week we lead them into individual stalls in the barn for daily grain and minerals, thus enabling us to monitor intake, groom them, and lead them back out past their mothers into their paddock. It has all gone very smoothly and our efforts over the summer of handling them, working with them in the stalls, and leading them in and out with halters and lead ropes with their mothers are paying huge dividends now. All are very quiet, very well behaved, and a joy to experience. They especially love our second cut hay which tested out at 16.8% protein. We have resumed working with our two year olds for the past two weeks after a few weeks layoff to get ready for winter. They have been reintroduced to our obstacle course and desensitizing, reviewing groundwork, and this past week, working under saddle again, all in our Coverall barn because of the snow and ice. They are all adapting well. We continue to work Joker and Teddy, our three year old geldings, also indoors, introducing them to new stimuli, and asking for more exacting groundwork and both are doing very well. After the holidays we plan to start introducing the weanlings to the indoor barn, desensitizing, obstacles, and trailer loading. Working with all of these horses will keep us busy right through the winter. Weather will of course influence the frequency and length of our training sessions. We do have to be able to get to and from the barns and paddocks safely given the snow and ice we get and we draw the line when it gets below zero! I have included some photos taken this week of Teddy (chocolate), Joker (black) and the weanlings.