Much ado about nothing!
Sep 09 2009
I’ve had a very busy couple of days, and have only checked e-mail for emergencies and found it cluttered with an unbelievable amount of drama about “Cloud’s Herd,” a band of mustangs in the process of being herded up for adoption like, you know, happens to mustangs all the time.
Based upon the amount of hysteria coming through, I thought something far worse was taking place. Were they being lit on fire? Rounded up and discreetly sent to slaughter by a greedy and corrupt government official? Chased to their death off a cliff?
No.
They were just being penned up and offered for adoption, like always.
The amount of hysteria over this situation is remarkable. I am not sure if everybody involved is suffering a simultaneous chemical imbalance or what, but the e-mails I’m receiving could be used by a 10th grade English teacher as an example of poor and overly dramatic persuasive writing.
“In this land of wide open spaces, lush forests and mystic canyonlands… war has begun.”
No, the war is in Iraq and comparing a mustang round-up to a war would offend the hell out of me if I had someone I loved over there.
“Where once peace and serenity were our inspiration to appreciate the sacred gifts who live in these lands… a battle of destruction has intruded, a merciless aircraft has caused a panic mode and havoc to set in, the peace is shattered, the strength of family bonds destroyed.”
Let’s talk about mustangs and their “families.” Well, first of all, any male children will get their ass beat and driven out of the herd by daddy the second they hit puberty. He won’t care if he kills them. It’s like the Chris Brown definition of love. Second of all, these are horses we’re talking about. Every breeder I know “destroys family bonds” every spring. It’s called weaning.
“An operation has begun, under the false facade and guise of a propaganda called management. A merciless hunt that reflects the greed of a corrupt government is at work again.”
Things DIE in a hunt. Nobody is trying to kill anything here!
“This calls any freedom-loving American to duty now.”
If you’re a freedom-loving American, support the troops. If you are a horseperson, by definition you are not a fan of freedom for horses because you have a fence around yours. I am not a fan of freedom for horses. They live much better lives in captivity.
“The very freedom of our legacy, the American Mustang, is stolen as I type this. The symbol of Freedom is hunted under aircraft, pushed off their homes, separated from their bands, forced down the mountain range for 12 miles to exhaustion”
12 miles? You’re kidding, right? The average mustang travels much further than that in search of food and water on a regular basis. 12 miles is not the Bataan Death March to a mustang.
“to the point of no return, where a Judas horse, symbolically called this for betrayal, is sent out by BLM to lead the confused, exhausted and terrified mustangs into their dead end corrals… the trap.”
How is it a dead end when slaughter is not the outcome? They’re being rounded up so that they can be adopted out. Some of them, within three months, will be eating peppermint cookies and having massages.
Believe me, I wouldn’t fault the drama level of this e-mail a bit if they were going to slaughter. And I think everybody who is on this e-mail loop by choice (no idea how I got on it) should definitely step up and adopt one and make sure they have a happy and productive future.
“The sound of despair fills the air.”
WTF does despair sound like?
“The clouds of dust from panicked horses settles, yet the spirit does not. The mustangs desperately whinny for their band, their families, their security, their instinct to protect them from harm…. the aircraft is still hovering, the noisy darkness has overshadowed the victims of the hunt…. trapped by an agency who deceives not only the public with false statements, lies and misleading information… but the very ones they were ordered to protect many years ago. The wild mustangs.”
Getting them off a range full of mountain lions, natural hazards, and a food supply that is going to go away within the next few months as the season changes, and into homes where food shows up daily and no mountain lions reside sounds like protecting them to me.
P.S. As my friend observed “I doubt the aircraft are hovering. Gasoline is expensive.”
“The BLM is not the agency body to protect the West anymore. They have risen above their own law to destruct what is rightfully ours, what is rightfully the horses’…. our future generations might never see a wild horse again as the master plan of BLM is to wipe them out. “
Oh, hell, I can show them 20 wild horses at any Enumclaw Auction, at least ’til we start hunting backyard breeders!
Not sure why anybody NEEDS to see one running out on the range or why the lack of any out there would be some kind of grievous loss.
“The spirit of America is stolen, caged up and sold off at auction.”
Where at least some of them will get good homes, as opposed to the 100% likelihood that they will die a bad death from starvation or injury on the range. How do you think mustangs die? They don’t just go to sleep peacefully one night. They get old and skinny and arthritic. They become prey. How would you like to know that was your future? You’ll get old and then something else will see that you are weak, tear out your throat and eat you. Awesome. Or you’ll just starve to death. Starving to death feels the same on the range as it does in a hoarder’s backyard. Ask any vet.
“Wild mustangs… dispatched into unknown futures, ripped away from their homes and families, stolen off the range that is legally theirs”
Horses do not legally own property.
The e-mail goes on and on and on and concludes with:
“What can be worse than freedom lost?”
Dying a terrible death, starvation, etc. as just noted. I think that’s worse.
And of course there are more e-mails with horrors such as someone poking a weanling to make it go forward. OMG they didn’t POKE it! Please, I have already had two big dudes from the auction come out and pick up a weanling and put its furry little struggling, terrified, exhausted butt into a stock trailer because its momma just went to kill. Guess what, not only was it not traumatized but it’s in a happy home today. Sometimes you do have to scare them in the short term or even hurt them a little to save their life and allow their future to happen. Those rounded up weanlings will be just fine.
So I have several points here:
1. Many wild caught mustangs live extremely nice lives in captivity. If you have one whose life is now full of horse cookies, different blankets for different kinds of weather, wither scritches, etc. please post the direct link to his picture I will make it show up when I get back to the computer. Feel free to add details about the condition he/she came to you in and the condition he/she is in now.
2. How valuable is freedom really when it involves no protection from suffering? The American Mustang who lives on the range is the equivalent of the homeless human being. The homeless guy doesn’t have to go to work. He doesn’t have to take crap from anybody. But his life SUCKS. He has no protection from danger, no health care, no assurance of his next meal showing up. Having a home and some security is worth the loss of freedom to everybody reading this, or you’d all quit your jobs and go live on the street. Why do we assume an animal would choose differently?
I’m genuinely interested in the answers here. I don’t understand the need to preserve wild bands of horses when it seems obvious to me that most horses in captivity live a better and more suffering-free life. Isn’t the desire to see wild horses run on the range more about what the humans want and some kind of romanticized claptrap about what the horses’ lives are really like than what is best for the horses?
161 comments to “Much ado about nothing!”
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Oh why oh why do I get involved in these things?
I am on the middle ground. I do believe that some of the herds should be managed, but, like every other freaking feral animal, nature should handle the majority of it. I don’t care if the horses DO receive better care in captivity. So do all other wild/feral animals, but we’re not advocating to have all of THEM locked up. All of this bullshit about them being “feral” and not “wild”. Oh PLEASE. They’ve been here for over 400 years; I don’t care how they got here. They’ve been “feral” for 400 YEARS!!! Get over it.
As for the helicopters not causing harm, the roundups DO cause a lot of injuries and deaths! Watch some of the home videos of roundups. It’s disgusting. Yes, I know it’s inevitable that a horse will get injured in a round up. But don’t get on here and imply that the process is harmless and easy when many of those animals get severely injured or killed.
I’m not one of those people who romanticizes the thought of wild horses galloping freely through the windswept plains. I am a realist. The horses have been wild for hundreds of years through what-the-hell-ever process brought them here. Yes, they will be skinny in the winter. The herd will be culled for the best survivalists through nature’s work. If there’s not enough food for them to eat, they’ll die off of starvation and the herd will go to a manageable size or even smaller. Then the food will be abundant and they’ll reproduce, reach the holding point again, and die off. It’s life. It’s nature. It’s NATURAL.
WAY OT,
But if you have large dogs, look up bloat! My dog is now recovering from emergency surgery for bloat.
The symptoms were not that severe when I got home from work, but I took him in to the vet anyways. I could have just as easily blown it off, thinking he ate some grass or something. When the x-rays were back, the initial estimates were so high, we thought we were going to have to put him down. The worst case was truly cost prohibitive for a dog his age (9, but a large breed).
Luckily, his stomach had not twisted yet, so the cost was much lower than the worst case (although still a million dollars on the trusty credit card).
But if I had not taken him in, he would have died before the night was out.
I had never heard of bloat, so PLEASE look it up so you can recognize the symptoms.
brownhorsedq said, “i am of the camp that livestock is livestock, and if the BLM can help maintain feral populations by feeding some french, i’m ok with that”
Oh, nice crowd you have gathered tonight Fugly. While I’m quite aware folks can manage to hold several very divergent beliefs in their heads, I just gotta wonder . . . how many of your responders who are raving about your choice of topic tonight would stand in line with brownhorsedq’s lovely sentiment – mustang overpopulation? Lets just ship ‘em to slaughter. Too many unwanted domestic horses? Hey, there’s good money to be had in Mexico. I find this blog very disappointing tonight. And discouraging. Those who are voicing another perspective, thanks for taking the time. Mustangs need their advocates. Horses need their advocates. Thought Fugly was an equine advocate, guess that only applies to some equines, in some situations.
I adopted my first BLM mustang (young filly from Oregon) this March. She is quite a handful but it has been a great experience so far. She is very tough, extremely smart, and athletic. She cleared a 5ft high fence at 10mos old with very little trouble. I’m gonna try to post pics of her.
From my experience the BLM does seem to care about getting the adoptable animals to the right homes. I do know that when they do round ups they sort through and euthanize the injured or unhealthy animals. They release back a calculated ratio of stallions to mares and cross herds to help prevent inbreeding issues. They do utilize contraceptive injections on mares. They also do great adoption promotions – Mustang Makeover, National Adoption drives, and right now they are offering a rebate of several hundred dollars when an adopter chooses an older horse (over 5yrs I think). *The rebate program is a pilot in my region only (TX/OK) but I think it will keep some of those older mustangs from slaughter.
Here is my girl Ember on day one and now…
Okay, let me tell you the story of Ella, our 2 year old (3 come May 15th) mustang.
Her mother was rounded up off the range and auctioned off (pregnant or not I’m not sure), she went to a BYB. She was left in a pasture filled with discarded wire fencing, metal scraps, the whole nine yards, with another mare named Diva. Both mares had foals (Ella being one), all four were not looked after and abused (leaving Diva blind in one eye and completely terrified of anyone touching her head, feet, neck, brushing her, lead ropes, etc.). Diva’s foal ended up dying (not surprising, Diva was near 30 when she had the foal) and the corpse was left in the pasture with the other three to rot. Diva ended up stealing Ella from her dam to mother in place of her own dead foal. Someone finally intervened and the horses were siezed. Hope for Horses took them in and the woman I work for later adopted Diva and Ella. That was over a year and a half ago.
To date Ella has grown into a wonderful young horse (a complete screwball at times but hey, what horse isnt? ) who is very eager to please and a quick, if sometimes stubborn, learner. She’s the most laid back horse I’ve ever seen. I’m almost tempted to utter the infamous last words of ‘spook-free’, but I’ll refrain because I’m sensing some Titanic-esque disaster if I do.
I know this is different than the mustangs they round up straight off the range but my point is, her life is much better now than it was, than it would have been if she had stayed where she was. And yes, it is filled with cookies (not peppermint because she despises the taste) and rubdowns, sprinkler baths in the summer and a nice heavy blanket in the winter when her shaggy little self isn’t doing the trick.
Sorry I’m getting mushy and what not but she’s my little mustang and I’m very glad she came into my life, even if she can be a pill.
Pictures: (Unfortunately all of my personal photos are on the other computer, so these are ones from the HFH website, they still give a good before and after reference though)
Diva & Ella first arriving at HFH’s :
http://www.hopeforhorses.net/HFH_Website/Rescue_Stories_files/shapeimage_1.png
Ella at 3 weeks:
http://www.hopeforhorses.net/HFH_Website/Diva-et_al_photos_files/Media/100_2054/100_2054.jpg?disposition=download
Covered in lice when she arrived:
http://www.hopeforhorses.net/HFH_Website/Diva-et_al_photos_files/Media/100_2070/100_2070.jpg?disposition=download
Ella today:
http://www.hopeforhorses.net/HFH_Website/Diva-et_al_photos_files/Media/100_0414_2/100_0414_2.jpg?disposition=download
In case some of you are wondering, Diva is still with us. Alive and kicking. :
http://www.hopeforhorses.net/HFH_Website/Diva-et_al_photos_files/Media/S6300527/S6300527.jpg?disposition=download
Oh, side note. The woman was never convicted of neglect and is free to own horses still.
These are NOT “wild horses”.
They are feral horses living a pretty miserable life.
I used to make a bit of money when I was a kid, buying New Forest Pony foals at the drift (yearly roundup) and selling them on, halter trained and handled, two weeks later.
These ponies have been on the Forest (which is a misnomer, there is forest there but mostly it is heathland, like a prairie) since the 11th century, which is a tad more than flipping mustangs, and they are not “wild” they are feral!!
Mustangs are not native to America, if they were arguing Bison, I’d be on board but hey, they’ve all but been wiped out, in the name of progress.
I would not even mind too much if these horseswere being rounded up to be humanely destroyed…I’d baulk at them going off in a double decker to a yard, but if they were being quietly and sympathetically destroyed, after having been allowed to settle down, etc, and handled as little as possible ..yada, yada, yada, no, sorry, I’d have no problem with that.
Oh, and a word to the writer, “aircraft” do not hover.
Helicopters hover!!
Aircraft tend to fall out of the sky when they come to a halt.
Counter says there are 101 posts on this topic yet I’m only seeing three?
For the record, I agree with regalperformance 100%. The horses they’re rounding up look to be in very good condition, far better than many I see in backyard homes.
It’s completely absurd to compare wild horses with homeless people! These horses have evolved to live this way. We’re not talking about a herd of scrawny ponies that need human intervention here.
It has been my observation few mustangs get “good homes”. They often go to clueless newbies for $125 and then when that doesn’t work out (hello?) they’re loaded up for a one way trip to Mexico, often in far worse shape than they were on the range!
This whole thing is just more BS from the BLM. Cattle and sheep owners (or is it a mining company?) want the land and will pay for grazing rights. I can’t believe any knowledgeable person who loves horses would think any of this is A-OK.
Hey, Fugs. You have a very pernicious thing going on with your blogging software, where, as you must have noticed, it’s auto-generating links to various words and phrases in the text.
Some people like to add links in their text as an elegant way to “explain” certain things or concepts they’re referring to without upsetting the flow of the blog post and I heartily endorse this practice. However these links aren’t added by you but by some script in your blogging software, and they link not to other posts of yours or other useful links but to random “splogs” or marketing type blogs which have no function other than to annoy and distract and get extra hits for annoying SEO marketers.
I strongly suggest you find this option and turn it off!
I like wild horses. I like to watch them in the wild. I like to take pictures of them. I am fortunate to have a decent sized herd not too far away from me. I also like to remain very practical about them. I have seen them in corrals, I have seen them learning things, I have seen many become very successful mustangs become competition horses in endurance, competitive trail riding and even packing kids around a cross country course as well as ‘pleasure riding’. THANK YOU for this blog entry and the voice of reason.
so, Fugs are you saying this is a better version of NATURE in this country?
They paved paradise and put up a parkin’ lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swingin’ hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot
Hey farmer, farmer, put away your DDT
I don’t care about spots on my apples,
LEAVE me the birds and the bees please
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
Hey now, they paved paradise to put up a parking lot!
I agree with the poster who said ALL wild animals are better off in captivity, Sure! but do we just want them in captivity? Last time I checked I like hearing birds sing, bees buzz, and if I lived out in those regions, the sound of wild horses trotting by.
Yep,seems to be my kind of horses is the only kind of horse that needs to exist.. I’d been a lurker for some time and thought I’d found a kindred spirit.. As usual it turns out to be very clannish..Oh well..Have to admit Fugly does help a lot of abused animals,so I’m gonna cling to the good..
As for me,I admire the horse that does it’s job..If that job is being a kids best friend and he does that job the best he can,I couldn’t care less about the breeding..If that job is a police horse and his job is barging into stick/sign swinging crowds,and he’s not an OTT,so what! I don’t think a Warmlood could do a cowpony job.
I don’t think breeding genetic horrors is right,no matter the bloodling..Positive horses should be spayed/nutured.
And I don’t think BLM does a good job at all.They need to be watched by very hard nosed horse people..
I’ve upgraded 6 ponies/horses and 3 minis this past year, gotta tell ya people ARE IDIOTS AND WILL justify everything. At least the “wild horses” aren’t on dirt lots…oops yes many are. POPULATION control for both feral AND domestic horses is needed!
Oh and I’m not talkin slaughter, I’m talking mandatory gelding and birth control. Which will never happen cause it’s always the other breeders fault, the other owners fault. Gotta love America.
They’re upset because Cloud is COLORED!!! If they keep his herd around there will be plenty of cheap, adoptable COLORED baby mustangs of his at future offspring!! Pretty soon we’ll be left with just brown mustangs and ick, booooring.
I have to say this post dissapoints me.
Okay, so “they used to be native, but went to extinction thing’ CRACKS me up. Uh…they went extinct. Also many of those horses are not necessarily generations in….ranchers STILL throw out their culls…and thus ‘dirty up those pure bloodlines’. As for FUGS not being pro equine…spare me…..just b/c someone doesn’t agree with your every thought doesn’t make them bad or WRONG. Are you going to pay higher prices for food or let the beef export economy go to crap for your opinion?
But what you’re missing is that the 3 Strikes Ranch horses you saw were actually the “lucky” ones. There are thousands of Mustangs that are titled over to kill buyers/slaughter houses every year for as little as $10, sometimes even for free! Meanwhile, there a lot of herds that are being zeroed out with no given reason given. In Nevada there are over 500 horses that the BLM is in the process of completely moving. There’s over a million acres for these 500 horses, and no evidence of compromising the range.
Google the West Douglas herd – a judge ruled that the BLM was overstepping their bounds as outlined in the Wild Horse & Burro Act when they planned to completely remove them. There are thousands of horses that are being removed and sold to slaughter every year, when they could just as easily remove a few adoptable ones and give PZP to the mares. Your tax payer dollars are spending 28.5 million a year on removing and selling/adopting them, and 500,000 a year on workable solutions to keep them out on the range.
So I guess what I’m saying is yes, it would be horribly cruel to let wild horses starve. It is my humble opinion that Cloud’s herd needed to be rounded up for that reason – they don’t have that much land up there in the Pyrors (something like 200 acres/horse = risk of long-term damage). BUT, the BLM is wasting tax payer dollars rounding up entire herds like the West Douglas and the herd in eastern Nevada that have no risk of overgrazing the range for a decade or more. Millions of dollars could be saved letting those Mustangs remain out there and giving a PZP shot to the mares in herd areas of concern every 3-4 years. Instead we’re paying a ton of money to remove these horses, and then sending them to slaughter on the tax payers dime. That’s not right.
Anyone who’s anti-slaughter should really take a closer look at the numbers as far as what’s occurring with the Mustangs.
ok, so a very close friend of mine has a wildie, not a mustang, but he was a wild yearling indeed, and now, he is spoiled rotten, doing fabulous in shows, and has a different piece of tack or blankie for each mood, let alone weather, i think the best thing for these horses is to be adopted out to people who care enough to take them in and give them a secure safe life!!!
Helen, the links you’re complaining about are advertising links – if you don’t like them, don’t click on the underlined links. My own links that I put into posts are not underlined.
Someone read Flicka just a little too much.
Haven’t gone through all the comments yet, so I don’t know if this has been addressed, but Cloud was featured on a PBS documentary a few years back – not a bad documentary at all, and it made a point of showing that mustangs can be adopted out – the narrator adopted one of the mustangs and then rode him back to the range where the herd runs.
I don’t understand the hysteria, either. It’s not like the BLM doesn’t do this every year.
My opinion?
The best solution is to look at how the herds are managed and balanced. This means a combination of trapping and adoption, trapping and relocating to areas that have fewer horses and, yes, culling when needed. And frankly, as these horses have never had bute, etc, I have no problem with using bullet euthanasia and feeding them to something…probably not humans as they’re likely to be kinda tough…but greyhound kennels, hunt kennels and even dog/cat shelters and wildlife parks could use the meat.
But we also need to look at range management as a whole. Personally, I would like to see more ranchers (and this is something that is happening) moving to actually running bison. As native animals, bison are adapted thoroughly to the local forage. Because of this, bison produce more meat from the same acreage with less supplementary feeding. The meat, in case you haven’t had it, is similar to beef, the primary difference being that it is leaner and dryer and, thus, requires less cooking time.
I personally choose, 99% of the time, to purchase Black Angus beef that is raised on the east coast, over range cattle. I started doing that when fuel prices were high and the price of this *local* beef dipped below that of beef shipped from the plains and it became a reasonable option instead of a luxury. For those who don’t know, the Black Angus is a Scottish beef breed that is black, about half the size of a Hereford, and mountain bred…they don’t take up much room and thus can be raised in more crowded areas. They’re considered a gourmet beef breed, but hey, it’s affordable, and it’s not being shipped halfway across the country.
Newforest ponies are not ferral- they are owned by Commoners who have rights to gaze their livestock in the Newforest. Ponies grazed on the Newforest must be branced and registered, and their numbers are kept in check by only allowing quality stallions to remain intact (as well as the yearly roundups).
I’m in complete agreement with Fugly.
I’m amazed at the amount of emotional arguments and people worked up for nothing.
You realize the herd isn’t being destroyed? They’re rounding them up so they can do a cull and reduce the herd size so it’s sustainable. They’re not rounding them all up and selling them ALL off. They sell selective horses and release the rest back into the “Wild”.
From a lot of the comments here I don’t think people understand what “Carrying Capacity” is. Of course you wouldn’t, you have a nice supply of hay and grain and a pasture seeded to tame forage species, THAT is why you can cram as many horses as you can afford into that tiny little pasture. You have supplemented the carrying capacity of your field. In this case, you might only need an acre or two per horse or less if you completely supplement their food.
Carrying capacity determines how many acres of land it would take to sustain an animal for a year. And in a lot of places where these mustangs live, the carrying capacity is very low; meaning 1 animal will need A LOT of land to sustain it (ie 1 animal per 50++ acres). Back in the day when everything was wide open spaces and the human population/footprint was much smaller, the standards of animal health/welfare was worse and the population of natural predators was higher, it was ok. But nowadays it doesn’t work. There isn’t the predators to keep the population in check, people actually CARE that these animals are starving to death and there just isn’t as much room for them to graze as before so WE have to take responsibility and keep the population in check. And for god’s sake, at least they aren’t going to slaughter!!
Honestly, I’m not “anti-mustang” here, I just see the reality of it. I don’t ever want to see the mustangs completely disappear, THAT would be a shame. But that’s not what’s going on here.
Here’s another thought on the subject. What about the huge ranches that have bands of 100+ broodmares that are left to pasture breed and foal out and are rounded up every year come weaning time. What’s the difference??? I personally don’t think there IS one.
I never got to the computer yesterday so this is a day late.
I can understand the lure of the wild mustang on the range for some people; they don’t need to actually see them, just know they are out there. And it is hard on the wild horses to be rounded up and penned and adopted; and harder on the ones who do not get adopted. In an ideal world, the herds would be receiving birth control so that the ones wild now, could stay wild, but numbers would not increase at such a rate. Of course, in some herds, numbers are not increasing at a rapid rate since predators take much of the foal crop each year. (Let’s think about that–a mare becomes pregnant each year, goes thru labor, raises a foal and watches a mountain lion take it–year after year.) Back on track, this is not an ideal world and the herds do not have birth control so the only way to keep numbers down is to capture some. I don’t like it. I don’t like the adoption thing as too many idiots end up getting a mustang for the wrong reasons–”it’s cheap” or “it is an American Heritage”. And I do not think that “freedom” for the wild ones is a great deal. That freedom comes at a price–hunger & thirst, predators, minor injuries that become life-ending due to no care, the stallions having to fight (and sometimes foals get trampled in those fights), mares constantly pregnant, and so on.
It is a thorny problem with no easy answers. I am sure much of this is discussed in the comments which I have not had time to read yet and probably won’t until tomorrow.
Ok… here’s my opinion. I couldn’t care less if a horse was wild or not. I think the management round up is a good idea, but the world doesn’t need more untrained, wild horses. The market is way overcrowded with fugly, wild horses. Frankly, if they go to kill… well feeding the wolves or the people… not much difference.
I do agree that the horses could find a nice home where they would be extremely well cared for and, yes, they would be way better off in a home. But, wild things tend to maintain themselves naturally through selection and survival of the fittest. I am kind of on the fence with this… We don’t manage deer populations by rounding them up, we issue hunting permits and they don’t get a chance at a second life… but then deer aren’t usable in the ways horses are… so why waste perfectly good animals by hunting them off if we don’t need to kill them? I understand that some will go to the meat buyers, but they would likely die on the range from starvation, predators, cold, disease, etc. Some horses will make families very happy and they do make good horses once trained.
As for the horses getting injured or killed in the round up… well, some of this is bound to happen… we have domestic cattle and sometimes one gets hurt or dies from an accident, those aren’t preventable to that extent, heck WE sometimes get hurt ourselves… it’s a fact that a large group of animals moving in the same direction is garantied to cause problems (i.e.: the great wildebeest migration… how many of those get trampled to death!?? and nothing is chasing them!!!). Still on the fence after reading all of this, but I don’t think it is a matter of so much turmoil as in the e-mail… they are still free creatures… hey, I would like to romp around in a field all day doing nothing but eating, basking in the sun, rolling in the dirt, getting cookies and scritches and being told I’m so good and beautiful without having to lift a finger, occasionnaly working 2-3 times a week, not having to worry for food or water, getting my poop scooped and nice clean bedding and a warm stall at night… I think they live a pretty good life compared!
I is likely that the wild horses will go extinct since the ranges keep getting smaller with urbain development and squeezing the herds closer together, therefore limiting food supply. The management program does not take ALL of the horses, just a certain percentage to ensure that there is enough room and food for everyone… if you think this is not natural, well it’s the humans fault that it is that way, if we didn’t build all of those huge cities that keep reducing wildlife living spaces, we wouldn’t have to fix these problems now… if we are doing this now is to repair or at least lighten the impact of our actions.
Rant end!
Yeah, I don’t know about the idea that horses are better off kept than not. We can’t ask them, but I suppose it depends on the individual animal on preferences. I have two dogs, one who is content to be a couch potato and the other who would most certainly be a semi-feral tramp if he could. Same with the cats I’ve had over the course of a lifetime.
Are horses better off/happier kept in a high-end show barn, hardly ever seeing the light of day, as a lesson horse subjected to beginner hands and feet day in and out or as a pleasure mount with nothing more than a small paddock for turn out than they would be roaming and foraging, to die as nature intends from age/predators/starvation?
I don’t know. And neither do you.
Hey Jennifer R — what you said about Angus beef got my attention–my local grocery store sells only locally raised Angus beef, I just though it was a gourmet thing. They also sell vegetarian-fed cage-free chicken, it’s a little more expensive but the taste is far superior to most store-bought chicken. (They also got rid of plastic bags and recycle the cardboard boxes their stock ships in.) Much of the produce in summer is locally grown too. More stores should do that! Of course a Wal-mart opened down the street now so their business is hurting bad.
I have had bison and it’s really good. There are a two farms near me that switched from cattle to bison. They need stronger fencing, but if they can make so much more meat with less feed why aren’t we eating bison?
I’m in the middle of this one.
I like the idea of wild horses still roaming free, but I don’t think the BLM is as big a big bad meanie that they are accused of being. I think we need to manage the herds to prevent overpopulation. I think the contraceptive darts and adoption program to keep the herds to a manageable level need to be continued but I do not think there are easy solutions. If there were more reasonable arguments and some positive solutions to the issue offered instead of hysterical prose more suited to a harlequin romance novel, I think the mustang advocate groups would find their voices heard a lot more too!
Adoptions however are tricky. many of those who want to adopt a mustang are the last people who should be taking in a feral horse. Our rescue took in a group of mustangs that were seized in a neglect case a couple of years ago and 90% of adoption applicants didn’t have enough horse experience to own a 25 year old ex-lesson string pony, let alone a wild animal. My fav applicant was the lady who begged us via email not to geld the stallions in the group as she wanted to adopt one for her 10 year old son, who has dreamed of owning his very own mustang stallion since he was 8!
But there are many success stories about mustang adoptions. US border patrol along the Washington/BC border uses mustangs. The US marines have a parade color guard that exclusively ride palomino mustangs. Not to mention the fantastic results the prison inmate training programs receive.
And personally, we’re still a work in progress but here is my mustang “Ford” originally from Nevada but now enjoying the domestic joys of green peppermints in Alberta Canada.
I hadn’t gotten anything about this until today and I have gotten 3 emails….don’t know why. Anyway the last one included this romaniticized, overdone youtube link to “Clouds Release”…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5Z_esVVGFg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Frtfitch%2Ewordpress%2Ecom%2Fauthor%2Frtfitch%2F&feature=player_embedded
I was too impressed.
I have adopted two mustangs from a prison program and they have been the smartest, reliable horses I have known. Right now I have Rosie – a BLM mare that I found listed in the local paper. When I went to the place, it was a trailer house painted black (a police friend told me that that was a sign of a meth house? Anyway – she was in terrible shape, wormy, thin, hooves long…etc. I felt so badly for her I paid $400.00 and put her in the trailer. I had to crack up – on the way home I stopped to get gas and an old man looked inside the trailer and said, “She looks like she needs you a lot more than you need her.” She has a permanent halter(wire) scar on her nose and doesn’t like men much, but has turned out to be a solid, comfortable ride. She’s not pretty, but everyone seems to be very smitten when I take her on rides. I don’t plan on getting another or trying to save the mustangs, but I feel pretty luck about finding my Yellow Rose of Texas!
Given the number of domesticated horses we’ve seen starved on this site, I’d beg to differ that mustangs are better off adopted.
Besides, they are supposed to be part of our wild horse inheritance, and they do remarkably well not being trained for ribbons and jumps.
Perhaps the only good monkey is one trained to work for an organ grinder. The only good elephant should work for the circus. But I’d say we have the means to allow a few to still live out as nature has provided.
OK, here’s the deal; the Pryor Mountain herd is not just any herd of fugly mustangs. They are one of a few herds of Spanish mustangs in the U.S. The roundup may not be destroying the herd, but the number of horses the BLM is removing would place them below the numbers needed to keep the herd genetically viable. The BLM is planning on removing a number of older horses, who, if not adopted, go to auction. How likely do you thing a 14-hand, totally wild 15-year-old horse is to be purchased by a home? How about 0%?
The BLM has rounded up this herd because it’s one of the nicer herds. They are having a hard time finding homes for the 33,000 horses they already have in custody, but they have this “adoption event” coming up with a goal of adopting out 1,000 mustangs. So they are catching horses from this famous herd because they are more likely to be adopted. Leaving an equal number of horse that have already been captured to remain in BLM holding pens. Where they do NOT get hugs and kisses and peppermint treats, let me tell you. Where if they are over 10 years old or have been passed over 3 times, they go to auction. And where they face the prospect of euthanasia because the BLM ALREADY has more horses in custody than they have the money to feed! The Pryor Mountain range is in the best shape it’s been in in 10 years. The horses are fat and much healthier than most pasture pets in my neighborhood. And there are plenty of domestic horses who need homes, who couldn’t survive in the wild, and who will be passed over in equal numbers to wild horses that are adopted from BLM.
ALSO, the man whom the BLM hired to round up the horses has been indicted in federal court for ILLEGALLY rounding up wild horses and SELLING THEM FOR SLAUGHTER! Do you really think the BLM cares a whit about the final end of these animals?
Although it’s nice to read that we disagree on “somethingâ€, I do wish the disagreement was over white chocolate vs. dark. (dark for me, thankyouverymuch) FHOTD, you’re the last one I would have expected to say the round up was “much ado about nothing”. Say whaaat? There horses haven’t been effed up by breeders. It’s natural selection at it’s finest. They should be left alone. They are now happy, healthy, and fit. In fact, they are so perfect and un-effed up, I wish we could get these bands of horses an endangered species.
Call the species a Real Horse. I’m half kidding, and I’m half serious. They truly are remarkable and I think people tinkering where they shouldn’t (aka breeders) has done more than enough damage to horses. So let’s leave these guys (and girls) alone.
Angus is a gourmet thing that is becoming more mainstream as people realize that because of their small size, they are *ideal* for the person with very little land who just wants to raise a cow or two a year. Angus/Hereford crosses are also popular for this in some area, as they’re just that little bit bigger.
It’s simple economics…to get range raised beef here on the East Coast it has to be shipped a long way. As energy prices rise, it’s becoming cheaper and cheaper to buy locally raised beef, and because there’s very little space, the Angus has become a popular breed. The fact that it tastes good is just a bonus.
As for why we aren’t eating bison…I put it down to the fact that the majority of Americans are very conservative in their eating habits. For some reason, Americans tend to shy away, culturally, from eating stuff they don’t normally eat. I personally have eaten not just bison but elk, reindeer, wild boar, ostrich, emu, venison from multiple species of deer, and quite a few other things most Americans wouldn’t touch like eel or snails…but I wasn’t raised in America.
(And no, despite being English, I do draw the line at blood pudding. Eww)
I owned a BLM horse for a short time, but sold him because although trained by the prisoners, I always felt I had to make him cooperate, rather than him being eager to please. I dunno, just wasn’t the horse for me. He was cute enough though, and he got a home where the people appreciated him more. I don’t think I would own another one.
Some of the comments on the video link posted were hilarious — “they gave Cloud’s family PMZ and when the mares realize they can’t get pregnant they will be so sad! It will wreck the family!” Umm… ok.
I agree with the folks that like the idea of there being a few herds of wild horses, properly managed, but I don’t think we need thousands of them running around the West. It’s just not really a cause that grabs me one way or the other, but it does seem to incite a lot of hysteria among some people. I do agree that most of the herds are just feral domestic horses, despite what people say about them being “wild.” Horses are a domestic animal, like a beef or dairy cow. Yep, some got loose and made a life for themselves in the wild. But they are hardly unique animals in terms of genetics or anything, or at least the majority. You can’t easily tame a zebra … they are wild animals. I see a difference there from a “wild horse” which is easily tameable.
I agree that Mustangs that go to good homes are better off than they are in the wild. I agree that the BLM should continue to have roundups as necessary to prevent overpopulation. I also strongly believe that contraceptives should be used to prevent mares from becoming pregnant/causing overpopulation in the first place.
However, I do not agree with the timing of the roundups – I would much prefer to have it happen later in the year when the foals are older and more able to handle the stress.
I do not agree with removing Mustangs so beef cattle can graze there. This is, in my opinion, giving up the welfare of the horse for money.
I also do not agree with keeping unadopted mustangs in holding facilities. If they are not adopted after 3 times, they should be humanely euthanized. I completely agree with whoever posted saying that since they have not been given medications, it would be smart to euthanize them with a bullet then sell the carcass for meat for zoos, etc. This way, not only would we not be wasting money keeping unadoptable horses in less than ideal conditions, the proceeds from the sale of carcasses could be used to help fund managing the feral population. Not an ideal solution, but it would seem to help the greatest number while minimizing the burden placed on all of us taxpayers.
Longtime lurker here. First, let me say that I am not anti-slaughter, but I am not pro-slaughter either. I do think think slaughter (or processing) is not inherently evil, since the AVMA and AAEP say that the captive-bolt gun method of slaughter is humane, just as a bullet to the brain is. So, that said, what is the big problem with mustangs (or any horses) going to slaughter? (I know, I know…I sure don’t share the popular viewpoint on here regarding slaughter.) Really, though, vets find it humane, doesn’t it make sense to put some of those unadoptable mustangs to good use, instead of just euthanizing them and filling up landfills?
But, I do agree with the management of mustangs, and if that means rounding them up, then so be it, but there need to be more options of what can be done with them, since relatively so few of them get adopted. A question that came to my mind is this: if mustangs are “wildlife,” why are they managed by the BLM and not the various states’ departments of wildlife? They ARE just feral, and horses had been extinct on the continent for centuries before the Spanish reintroduced them. I read this somewhere, and it makes total sense–that calling mustangs native would be like calling elephants native because of their wooly mammoth ancestors!
Really, though, the thing that really prompted me to finally throw my hat in the ring is the number of misconceptions of public land ranching. Public land ranching (cattle grazing) doesn’t compete with mustangs or any other wildlife as much as you might think, because cattle grazing is closely managed according to growth seasons and sustainability. And wildlife benefits from public lands ranching because of the improvements to water resources, for example. Rangelands are uniquely renewable resources, and the BLM needs some kind of income, right? At least ranchers pay for their use of the land, when any Joe Blow camper/hiker/biker can go have free use of the land at no cost. So personally I think public land ranching makes sense.
I totally agree that the romantic claptrap over the mustang is just that, and that it IS more for humans who like the idea of “pretty horsies running free.” (While really, most of them aren’t that pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.)
Back to management of mustangs, because while I think a sustainable number of them is fine, it is ridiculous to pour so much money into keeping them around after they are unadoptable. Euthanize, slaughter, whatever–something needs to happen. Hell, let the departments of wildlife manage these “wild” animals, and have a season on them, just like any other big game animal!
It is a total waste of taxpayers money to chase a bunch of mustangs around the range with heliocopters manned by convicted thieves. Leave em be and spend my money on something that doesn’t falsely puff up the worth of the darn BLM.
Rare Spanish Mustangs HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I know someone in the Seattle area who has rare Spanish mustangs he can’t GIVE away. They’ve been on Craigslist, no responses. Want one? Contact me, I’ll hook you up.
Rare. Yeah. About as rare as Chicken McNuggets!
4 those who think it’s 2 early 2 round up foals, the first snow up there will be falling shortly, and the last 1 will fall in june. foals r safer now. stupids.
ruthie, 1-handed 4 now
At last a reasonably rational discussion on adopting mustangs, horse slaughter and managing rangeland. Kudos to those of you keeping an open mind on problems that are truely complex. Unfortunately, many people (including a number of bloggers) overly romanticize the aura of the “wild horse”. Therein lies much of the problem with our society’s concept of animal abuse, cruelty and neglect. If it were so simple with no controversies……
The argument that the mustang is a feral non-indigenous species has historically been a stumbling block for mustang advocates. As it turns out, that label may not be entirely accurate, according to some recent research establishing the modern horse’s existence in North America long before the Spanish conquistadors reintroduced them. So, is the horse really a reintroduced native species?
“The wild horse in the United States is generally labeled non-native by most federal and state agencies dealing with wildlife management, whose legal mandate is usually to protect native wildlife and prevent non-native species from having ecologically harmful effects. But the two key elements for defining an animal as a native species are where it originated and whether or not it coevolved with its habitat. E. caballus can lay claim to doing both in North America. So a good argument can be made that it, too, should enjoy protection as a form of native wildlife.” — Jay F. Kirkpatrick and Patricia M. Fazio, Natural History Magazine, The Surprising 

History of America’s Wild Horses (Read the article in its entirety HERE.)
Take that a step further. The last modern horses on the continent roamed Alaska about 12,500 years ago. Where did they go? Scientists now believe that humans hunted them to extinction. Read an interesting article on the topic HERE.
Hmmmm…guess all those other wild critters would be better off with humans to care for them, too, huh? Been to the zoo lately? Yeah, there are some happy wild things.
…Really late here…but I’ve been wondering since I read this earlier in the week, if anyone remembers that mustangs (or any modern horse) are not indigenous to North America. Period. They had disappeared from all of the Americas about 10,000 years ago ( http://www.discoverseaz.com/History/Horse.html ).
Spaniards re-introduced horses to North America in the 1500s. This is incontrovertible. Nature had selected horses OUT of North America, and they were re-introduced inadvertantly and certainly not naturally.
The fact that we have Mustangs is part of our ROMANTIC heritage – not our natural history. Anytime you introduce a non-native species into an ecosystem…it will probably need extensive management. Hence, the BLM. Birth control and euthanasia are two reasonable means of controlling over population.
Adopted out, these horses (as already mentioned) often get into the hands of those least equiped to deal with their challenging needs. I’ve been riding for more than 30 years, and have no interest in taking on a project of that magnitude. I know my limits.
Black Frost, did you read my prior post, and the links therein?
Well, I’m late chiming in but I also see myself as a middle of the road view point. Whether the horses are naturally supposed to be where they are or not doesn’t matter to me. The fact is that they are there now and have been at least since they carried people west to populate this country. The land is being fought over by people who want to put cows on it. That’s fine with me, as I eat meat and like US beef and would prefer to keep the prices down. Having the horses there doesn’t have to be a problem for the ranchers if the BLM can manage the herd the way they are supposed to through adoptions, euthanasia/slaughter, and birth control. I would likely not have a problem with slaughter if there were horse-specific facilities but there aren’t- so I have a problem with it and euthanasia is a viable alternative for me.
So we have two extremes here: the bleeding hearts who think no horse should live behind a fence and the money hungry who would like to get as many head on public land so they don’t have to hay their animals as much.
I have 2 mustangs and one rescue Thoroughbred. One of my mustangs was owned prior by someone who had no business with him and became terrified of him. He was my FIRST horse ever. Through my years with him I’ve learned how to be a pretty good hand with horses. He is also my FAVORITE horse out of my 3. I will be the first to say that I had no business with that horse. Now I know my limits – they are no serious rearing (to flip over backwards horses) and most of those I’ve seen are domestic raised horses who are badly handled by people who think they know- but they don’t know. There are tons of riders out there like that.
My 2 mustangs don’t eat much. Together they eat what my 15.2 TB does. They have pretty good feet. Heck my black horse has text book feet that every horse should have. They aren’t prone to colic. They don’t get nuts if I have to confine them for longer than I’d like because of weather- the TB can get nutty and he is a fairly laid back horse otherwise. I’m never going to be a top level rider at anything and I like to do different things and my mustangs are versatile enough to do whatever I want with them. They would NOT be so hardy if we took them off the land. This is why I’m not FOR these human preserved bloodlines of mustangs like the “Spanish” or “Nokota”. If humans select for traits then they will quickly lose the only thing truly valuable about them. They are a part of our country’s history if not this continent’s history and I am one of the people who prefer using them to other breeds of horses. I don’t want to see them gone because it’s a resource I use. I do want to see them managed smartly though.
I think that more needs to be done to drastically reduce the numbers of the horses in BLM sanctuaries – range horses over 10 years old and 3 strikers. Horses need to be evaluated- if they can be gentled then gentle them and if not then Euthanize them. It would be great to have a sanctuary full of gentled horses for people to adopt. It would reduce the cost of having to sedate them for vet and farrier work too. Some of these 3 strikers are babies and yearlings and they gentle down and halter break very quickly.
My 2 are not necessarily better off in captivity. My one that was rounded up in Feb ’06 and adopted to me May ’06 was in great weight with great looking feet. I do think they would elect to stay with me given a choice- they like tasty food! Triple Crown Complete, Alfalfa/Raspberry treats, apples, carrots. They also like being groomed and pampered (braided manes etc.).
Annette Carter
If you’ve never checked out the Extreme Mustang Makeover site, please do. I had the opportunity to go to Ft. Worth last year and watch the event. It’s amazing what can be done with these mustangs. And they are, no doubt, better off with their adopters than they were before they were rounded up.
I can’t believe I’m still reading the comments on this but, eh, what the hell. They’ve made me angry enough that I’m turning all environmentalist hippie on the issue. I’d rather be thinking of Mustangs as super magical creatures living under rainbows then ranting about how they all need to be rounded up and euthed … So many harsh opinions and yet so little research…
To fugly: Your friend’s horse is a Kiger Mustang. There’s a difference. Not all Spanish Mustangs are equal. After the Kiger herd was created in ’88 they became very popular and a large number of people adopted the BLM Kigers and immediately began breeding them, over-breeding to be precise. There’s too many domestic Kigers and not nearly enough demand. (Not to mention it seems to miss the whole point of owning a Mustang)
On the other hand, there are very few Pryor Mt. Mustangs. Most Pryor fans are actually *gasp* responsible and don’t breed their Mustangs. That makes the Pryor horses rare.
And to StPetersGal: You’re an idiot. These aren’t domestic horses. Mustangs in the Rockies (Colorado,Wyoming & Pryors) don’t start foaling until mid-June. There was a foal born on the mountain while the round-up was being conducted, and there was another one that was less than a week old. This is part of the reason why the roundup was called off early. It’s easier to round them up in snow when they’re older and can handle it better.
Yeah, they’re Mustangs, they can handle traveling long distances. But going at a gallop for 10 miles? That’s not normal for them, and it’s a big enough distance to be tough on any horse. I’d like to see what would happen if I got on any message board on the net and suggested that galloping my two-year old horse for an hour straight was a good idea. I’d get banned and I’d deserve it.
There, I replied one last time, and that’s all you’re going to hear from me. I am disgusted at the way this is being treated. Clearly very few people commenting on this post actually know anything about what’s really happening to the Mustangs. “Oh, I like seeing pictures of all those wonderful, happy Mustangs who have been adoptedâ€. Yeah, me too! But for every 1 success story, there’s at least 30 more that have tragic endings. Never would have thought that fugly would be the one with the rose colored glasses duct taped to her face…
I couldn’t help it, I had to pop back in and see how the conversation was going. Pretty sane, for the most part, which is surprising. Mustang management is a complicated issue, in a lot of ways, that’s for sure. I really like the point that was made, that mustangs are part of our “romantic heritage,” not natural heritage. Honestly, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to chime in again if it hadn’t been for the comment referring to ranchers: “the money hungry who would like to get as many head on public land so they don’t have to hay their animals as much.”
I live in Nevada, which is made up of mostly public lands, and naturally public land use issues are probably more prevalent here. Ranchers cannot just decide on a whim how many cattle (or sheep) they get to turn out on public lands, or for how long they get to turn out. It is true that grazing costs less than feeding hay, but I know for a fact that sustainability is the foremost thing in most ranchers’ minds, because if the land gets overgrazed, the land won’t be as good for the next grazing season. Most ranchers are 3rd or 4th generation, which means that the land has supported grazing for that long. Not to mention that the BLM and USFS both monitor grazing allotments, and it is the ranchers’ responsibility to maintain troughs and water improvements, and to keep cattle from “camping” on creeks–and all of this is in order to maintain the health of the rangeland ecosystem. Mustangs, however, aren’t subject to any such regulation. Has anyone seen the damage a herd of mustangs does to a small spring? (If not, picture trampling it into muddy oblivion so it is virtually destroyed for any use.) Mustangs are basically giant locusts.
It is not a matter of mustangs vs cattle–it is more a matter of mustangs vs deer, elk, antelope, bighorn sheep, rabbits, birds…you get the picture. The management and thinning of mustang herds is not because of ranchers’ supposed greed, but for the interest of maintaining an all-around healthy ecosystem, which includes both use by domestic animals AND wildlife.
Another benefit of cattle/sheep grazing is that, since where and when they graze is strictly controlled, their use of the land serves to lessen the fuel load for wildfires, which again benefits wildlife (which obviously cannot be controlled in the same manner). But I digress. Time for a glass of wine…
Sorry Fugs I just reread your last paragraph so let me add:
In summation, I only want to own mustangs raised in the “wild”. Horses are horses and to me don’t get choices. I want horses to have a hard life- it develops the horse I prefer. That means some have to starve, some have to die by predator, and all have to travel 25 miles a day to food or water and their feet and over all constitution will benefit from it.
There are alot of horses out there presently and quite a few of them (yes even much younger than 2 years old) are stressed beyond the breaking point in round ups and they sometimes die from it. It’s not a happy reality but just leaving them all out there in these numbers is not the answer either. The reality of a budget has to be imposed upon the program so the numbers need to come close to matching what fits the budget. I don’t believe that there are more tragic endings with mustangs than there are with general horse, dog, or cat rescue as a whole. There must be better management of ALL over population of animals we allow to breed. Not a ban on breeding necessarily but better management. Socialogically, we must take responsibility for the minimalization of suffering. I don’t know but perhaps we should learn how to do that with the animals already in our care – the animals bred on purpose in captivity that the breeders so easily thereafter shuck the mantle of responsibility and buyers allow to starve in their yards -before we hurt our brains about the animals that nature cares for and either feeds or feeds to something else.
I have a lovely mustang, who was caught on the range at around 2 years old. she is an awsome mare. she has the freeze brand on her neck and it tells all her info. she is such a cool horse. and she is in good condition, and came to me in good condition. she is happy and gets feed everyday at the same times, she doesn’t have to worry about where and when she will get fed. and she also gets scratches which she eats up like apples! she can’t get that kind of attention if she was “running free” on BLM land
Jumps for Joy: While I did make the comment about the greedy ranchers, I don’t see anything wrong with the ranchers wanting to make money. It seems to me that the BLM mentions the wildlife on public lands as an afterthought in their management plans. I do know how destructive horses can be to any environment but I still think that with management of the numbers, which means keeping the herd numbers fairly low, everybody can be happier with the arraingement. The ranchers and the people like me who love these horses. The only ones who will never be happy are the radical wild horse huggers. But there are tons of radical eco-freaks out there who won’t be happy until we are all wearing grass skirts and living in caves again and riding nothing BUT wild horses to reduce our carbon footprint. The only thing that changes is the “thing” that each radical is passionate about.
Just wanted to clarify since I obviously did not convey the sarcasim I felt.
BEEF, it’s fer dinner!
Annette
Fugs, I hate to say it but I think you’re as full of hyperbole here as the sops who wrote those emails. You’re just presenting two different extremes. I received all those “emergency updates” too, from various sources — some more rational than others — and though I’m more or less on the side of the mustang advocates’ arguments, I constantly cringe at all of the anthropomorphizing that goes on. (The stories about Cloud “courageously turning to bravely face down the helicopter” made me want to lose my lunch, especially when observers said they’d “never seen a wild horse do that.” I’m not a veteran of roundups themselves, but I know wild horses: some of them will run into a chute no problem, and some of them will turn around to face whatever’s hazing them — be it rider or human or helicopter — and take a measure of whether they could run it down. It’s pretty normal horse behavior; it doesn’t make your special palomino the horse messiah or something.)
What people on both sides of this issue need to realize is that wild mustangs are WILDLIFE. We don’t round up deer and rabbits and mountain lions to save them from starving. If there are deer eating your flowers, Fish & Wildlife won’t turn up when you call with a trailer and a catch pen and remove them for you. Horse advocates need to realize that if they want these animals to be free, then that also means they’re free to starve and free to die. But it’s not as simple as that, either. If wild horses are destined to die horribly — as BLM is constantly warning us — it’s not due to entirely natural causes. Humans constantly interfere with the horses by fencing off water, overgrazing with cattle, pushing horses into the most marginal habitats possible…. I honestly don’t see what’s wrong with a horse living to a ripe old age in the wild and dying out there on the mountain. It’s the natural order of things, and frankly these horses aren’t exactly doing badly… many of the studs gathered in this roundup are in their late teens and early twenties, and they’re doing great. The horses looked strong and fit. Are they doing as well in every area? I don’t know. I do know there’s food up there on that mountain, even in the wintertime. They’ve lived there this long. They’re tougher and smarter than you’re giving them credit for.
Whether horses have a place in our ecosystem is, I think, a stickier question. We’ve used horses for so long that I don’t think we can honestly say that they have a “native” range anymore. I don’t think it’s *too* much of a stretch to call the American mustang a reintroduced species, since the modern horse was here before early human predation caused an extinction, but whether they can slot into the ecosystem that exists *now* without acting as a truly destructive invasive species is I think something that hasn’t even been scientifically examined: every scientist who’s approached the subject seems to be in the pocket of one side of the argument or the other. On the other hand, the entire prairie ecosystem — which is where these horses should be, rather than the high deserts they’ve generally been left to — isn’t really the native system anymore, either. The prairie as it existed is gone, right down to the grasses. We have a ridiculous overabundance of “game” animals like deer and elk, often in areas (like Yellowstone) where they hardly existed to begin with, much less existed in such numbers. Fish & Game routinely try to introduce game animals that aren’t native to an area so that people can shoot them without having to drive so far. (Attempts to introduce bighorns to the Pryors is part of the reason the BLM wanted to round up these same herds in the 70s.)
The fact is, there’s hardly a habitat in this country that we haven’t meddled with and changed and sculpted to suit our purpose, whether it’s cattle grazing or creating our idea of what a “wilderness” should look like, rerouting rivers and turning wetlands into saltwater bogs. To say that there’s no room for the “invasive” horse seems a little disingenuous. If somebody could find a way to make real money off of them, there’d be no question about keeping them — we saw that with the remount program in WWI. So why can’t we find a place for them now, even if we have less use for them? Why is it okay for millions of cattle and sheep to destroy rangeland that the BLM tells us isn’t good enough to support a couple hundred horses? (And yes, it is bad for horses to move at that pace for 12 miles, especially when there are very new foals among them. They would cover much more ground in a day naturally, but they’d also do almost all of it at a walk, there’d be frequent breaks, and they’d choose their routes and footing. Being pushed by a helicopter at a trot or a lope? Not so much. The roundup was stopped early specifically because horses were coming in foot-sore. On the other side of the coin, however, it sounds to me like the helicopter pilot was doing his best to push the horses in slow and easy when he could. I can assure you that all roundups do not go this smoothly or this gently, but I didn’t see much to complain about with this one. Sometimes things go wrong and horses get hurt in the chute. It sucks, but they’re wild animals.)
In any event, regardless of what romantic notions I and others may have of the wild horse issue, the fact is that like other wildlife, we have a huge impact on the existence and habitat of these animals, and whether it’s competing cattle interests or expanding real estate development or oil drilling or — in rarer cases I think than the claim is made by BLM — the interests of the herd when there’s been a rangeland fire or something of the sort, we do have to have some artificial influence on these animals. We’ve removed a lot of the animals that would prey on them, we’ve put them on marginal habitats, and we’re constantly encroaching on those habitats. The horses can’t be left to their own devices because it’s not really acceptable to our national psyche to shoot them, which is what we do with a lot of other wildlife that are overabundant, mostly due to our own policies. In that respect I think the round-up and adoption program is a good thing. Part of the reason I think that we should be preserving these herds is our own self-interest. I honestly think that these mustangs are some of the best horses we could ever hope to have, because their wild upbringing does tend to create strong minds as well as strong bodies. I’d take a mustang over a domestic-bred horse any day, and for that reason I think the fact that the public is able to adopt them is terrific, and the modern-day remount program that it creates is fantastic. I wish every horse person at least once in their lives had the chance to work with a skilled mustang handler and a truly wild horse, because I think it would make better horsemen out of every one of us.
But there’s no reason and no logic in saying “we should remove them all” or “we shouldn’t remove any.” They’re an excellent resource and they are a living part of our history, as hokey as that may sound. What we actually need — and what I’m convinced we’ll never get from BLM, because their interests are usually in direct opposition to the welfare of the herds — is sane, controlled management. Roundups need to be minimized, and when horses are removed, they need to be removed in a smart way. The BLM knows very well that young horses are MUCH more adoptable. There’s no reason to remove so many older horses, except that the BLM knows it can now use them for slaughter-bound sale. You honestly can’t tell me that a teenage stallion like Conquistador is going to end up in a good home eating peppermints. There is also a very good argument being made that leaving the older horses and culling some of the younger ones contributes to lower birth rates and more stable social structures. The older animals exert social control on the younger ones, which is an important dynamic of sociable herd animals. (There was a really interesting case years back where young elephants in a game reserve were killing rare rhinos; ultimately the finding was that the lack of older bull elephants to keep the youngsters in line was the major factor in the killings. I’d be really interested to see some real scientific inquiry into whether any similar factors are at play with other herd animals.)
The BLM needs to run a tighter ship, publicize events (putting a strike against a horse because it was offered for adoption — even though BLM didn’t bother to advertise said adoption and so basically no one showed up — isn’t playing fair), and be REALISTIC with people about what it takes to gentle a wild horse. Some of them are easy as pie — I know one of the competitors from last year’s Mustang Makeover event was haltering her horse within hours of picking it up and riding it within days — and some of them, especially the older ones, can be difficult as hell. I have a client with plenty of financial resources who didn’t know the first thing about horses when she bought two older mares. They went through several “trainers” who turned her horses into absolute basket cases; by the time they got to me they were literally dangerous, and it’s taking me months to turn them around enough to where they can even be handled safely. And I specialize in this stuff. I also once watched BLM wranglers talk a man into adopting an incredibly dominant filly. This gentleman was 70+ years old with a host of health issues and literally *no* horse experience. He already had a BLM mammoth jack that he’d kept a stud because he didn’t know any different, and as far as I could tell that animal never left its pen in all the time he owned it. I’m not sure on what planet these people live that they imagined this fellow was a suitable home for a wild horse.
As much as I support mustang adoption, I think it’s insane and completely disingenuous for you of all people to say that all horses are better off in captivity. I used to work in wild horse rescue and I had a front-row seat for the awful — and incredibly frequent — result of people taking on a wild animal that they hadn’t the first clue of how to handle. Some of them were just neglected all to hell. Some of them had been tied out or beaten or shot or abandoned or starved deliberately. There are a lot of great homes out there, but you should know better than anyone that the true end for a lot of these horses isn’t a family corral where they’re lavished with loving attention from a wonderful financially stable family. Particularly for these older horses that are being removed, the BLM isn’t really even *looking* for homes for them; they’re looking for livestock trucks to ship them north. They’re better off in captivity? Tell that to my mare who was fat and happy on the range before her entire herd was rounded up and starved. The first time I saw her she was still hundreds of pounds underweight and at age nine was nursing off other mares to survive. I love my mare, I think in the way that horses do she loves me too, and I love having her in my life, but I don’t think for a moment that if she knew the score and had the choice, she wouldn’t be back out there, taking her chances.
Was all the hubbub over the Pryor roundup crazy? Yeah. It was. That round-up appears to have actually been very well-run — in part, I have no doubt, because there were people there watching. I have to wonder if any of these people are willing to pull as hard and put in as much time and effort with herds that aren’t media darlings. As in all things, some moderation is needed in our wild horse policy. And as long as people keep shouting from one side that the horses need to be free and nothing bad is ever allowed to befall them, and people keep shouting from the other side that they’re worthless range rats and we need to round up the lot of them, we’re never going to get anywhere. It’s unfair to talk about this like a zero sum: it’s not an either/or. It’s not “round them up or they die A HORRIBLE DEATH!” Everything dies. Some animals die by predation or lightning strike or starvation. Some animals run a race on a broken leg or waste away in the back of a barn. So are we going to fight for improved welfare and management of ALL horses everywhere — whether that means educating owners about proper care or making smarter management decisions for horses on the range — or are we going to advocate for the end of a breed just because we don’t get what people see in them?
I’m in total agreement here. The principle is very much the same with dog and cat adoption. Does my Black and Tan Coonhound that was found as a stray out in the cold, skinny and starving have a better life here with us? Or would he rather be free, running the woods chasing raccoons? Umm, yeah. His excitement at his breakfast and dinner feeding tell me differently, as does the crazy wag I get from him each time I get up in the morning or come home from work. I hate when only one side of the story is published. They obviously haven’t watched any documentaries about horses in the wild, and the exact way you said it… how their “family bonds are destroyed”. One of the things I learned as a horse person is NOT to equate human emotion and feelings to horses’. It’s not the “American Dream” for horses to grow up, find one lifetime mate, settle down in a valley, have a few foals and live out happily until retirement, where they’ll enjoy the golden years together. I’m thinking the same way you are – most, if not all, of those adopteds are living the life of Riley right about now compared to where they started out. AND THEY SHOULD! But that’s just my opinion.
horsefever, that’s kind of a dangerous line you’re drawing there. In Eurasia there are men who ride and drive with caribou and have done so for a very long time. Should we then consider all of Alaska’s caribou to be “domestic animals”? I guess that’s okay, because they’re probably happier in captivity anyway, so let’s get to work on building some caribou corrals. How about elephants? Moose? Camels? Rats? Wolves? Mink? Pythons? Hedgehogs? Llamas? Alpacas? Burros? Water buffalo? Fox? Muskox? Do all the captive elk and deer on game meat farms mean that elk and deer are domestic species now? The fact is that we humans have forced domestication and captivity onto a great many animals, many of which you really wouldn’t expect, so that we can use them for transport or harvest their meat or generally just do whatever we want with them. (Just ask factory-farmed chickens, turkeys, cows and other creatures how well the cushy captive life is working out for them.) If that domestication is also a revocation of the species’ “wild” card, what sort of “wild” species do you suppose we’ll have left?
CC, if you think the mustangs being rounded up aren’t going to slaughter, you’re clearly not familiar with the state of the law. Horses over 10 — which is a great many from this round up — and horses of ANY AGE that go through three adoption events without being adopted — which in this economy is most of them — ARE being sold for slaughter. That’s the whole point of the Burns Amendment. I understand carrying capacity. I also understand that the BLM consistently fails to provide any sort of thorough EIS or other scientific analysis that proves whether herds ARE exceeding or going to exceed their range’s carrying capacity. I understand that herd areas are being zeroed out or are shrinking until the allowable carrying capacity justifies a round-up.
My opinion may be late, but this is a topic very near and dear to my heart. It is crucially important in this debate to clarify that our wild horses are not wild by definition, they are feral horses, not native to the lands in which they now reside. They are subject to disease, starvation, predators, and yes, the politics of ranching. There is no doubt the mustang is part of our heritage, but it’s important to remember that we put these horses on the range, and it is our job to care for them. Caring for them often means removing them from the range and placing them in homes that have enough food for them to thrive. We get caught up in all the emotion of wild horses running free, but they are not wild horses! The politics behind mustang management are incredibly complicated, and most of the people advocating for “wild” horses have not put the time into truly understanding the situation, instead opting to be swept away by the “injustice” of it all. The real injustice is in allowing feral horses to starve and die without reason on the range which usually has a hard time supporting it’s natural inhabitants, let alone our ancestors’ cast away horses. I hesitate to even engage in discussion on this topic most of the time, because nothing is worse than trying to have a conversation with someone who is uneducated on the topic. The people opposing round up and adoptions are, in my opinion, the people really doing mustangs an injustice. They use strong words like “freedom, and heritage,” and other such words that stir our national pride, but it is at a very high cost to the horses that are dying from malnutrition on the range, even as I type these words. I have helplessly witnessed such deaths myself as a research assistant studying the feral horse herds of America. Many horses have come and gone from my family, but my mustang will never be for sale. He has proved to be the most sound, sane, and reliable mount I’ve ever had the pleasure of befriending. My mustang was given the option to once again run free, and while he enjoyed a good run in his “native” lands, he gladly returned for his hay and ear scratches, of his own “free” will…
I love mustangs and if they could be left on the range with proper hoof care, medical care, and feed, then I would be all for it. However, it is too true that just as many mustangs starve in the winter as with any backyard breeder. I love the heartiness of the breed borne from generations of “only the strongest survive”. Many of them are born fugly, that is true but the 2 that I have are very hardy and strong (not to mention sweet). I honestly believe that my 2 are much happier here where they have 24/7 access to food and water, no predators that are going to eat them while they sleep, and lowered odds of broken legs from running through the badlands. As you can tell from the pic that I will link, they just look so neglected and mournful because they are no longer with their “free” brothers and sisters.
http://s551.photobucket.com/albums/ii462/smrobs/Dobe/?action=view¤t=GEDC0031.jpg
http://s551.photobucket.com/albums/ii462/smrobs/Koda/?action=view¤t=GEDC0521.jpg
They are the 2 in front here.
http://s551.photobucket.com/albums/ii462/smrobs/Koda/?action=view¤t=GEDC0242.jpg
I didn’t adopt my gelding directly from the BLM, but he was indeed a feral horse, captured at the age of four if my sources are correct. His freezebrand says he was born in ’97 and captured from a herd in Nevada. I bought him from a teenaged girl who lost her job and couldn’t afford to keep him anymore. He was kept at a boarding stable that wasn’t feeding him enough (he was about 200 lbs underweight) and the girl was doing nothing to aid his severe fly allergies that had created oozing, crusty scabs all over his neck, chest, face, and legs. I can’t even imagine what he must have looked like when he was feral. He didn’t look like much when I went to see him but he had very good bones, teeth, and overall conformation, and what a DREAM to ride. Didn’t bat an eye at a single thing that my previous horse, a purebred Arab (may I never be stupid enough to purchase one again) completely flipped at, oh-so smooth, responsive, alert, and ABSURDLY intelligent. It was obvious he was only green broke (only knew “go”, “stop”, and “turn”) but he was very calm and confident and willing to move forward. He’d had EXCELLENT basic training and the girl had managed not to screw him up in the two years she’d owned him. Those were good signs that he was ready to move on to more intermediate things. And even though he was thin, scabby, and had half his mane rubbed out because of his untreated fly allergies, he had quite a pretty face for a mustang and had a very upright, baroque look to his stance. I was sold.
He’s now a solid 1300 lbs (BIG mustang, 16hh, draft blood?), has grown out a very thick, wavy mane, and is smooth all over as I keep a fly sheet on him and use a (very ouchy! expensive but GOOD) fly treatment during pest season. And now, some photos:
A close-up picture of his reaction to fly allergies, a month or so after I bought him (it’s actually a digital photo of a photo print, which is why the date in the name of the image says it was taken only a few days before the picture below): http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v118/sweetpea_grubb/brego/5-2-06002.jpg
A year later, no scabs, a full mane, and 200 lbs heavier: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v118/sweetpea_grubb/brego/5-16-06017.jpg
Hanging out by the pool after a bath, all braided up and with plenty of fresh, green grass: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v118/sweetpea_grubb/brego/8-13-06007.jpg
Fat, healthy, happy, and no threat from predators? Yeah, I’d say he’s MUCH better off nowadays.
Ok, I will say I haven’t read through all the comments, and I have gotten probably much the same inbox full of drama that Cathy did.
Here’s my question:
What idiot in the BLM felt like it would be a good idea to go after the one herd that has captured the attention of the world? Wouldn’t it make more sense to roundup horses that aren’t “beloved” by people the world over?
Although I probably fit into the same almost middle-aged hysterical female category that many of Cloud’s “fans” or “followers” do, I pissed off at the pictures of the grey mare trapped under the ramp while horses load over her from one of the previous round-ups.
It seems like the people organizing the round-ups are almost purposely trying to move as quickly as possible once they have the horses, rather than slowing down and making sure that they do everything possible to prevent horses from getting injured.
Hope I haven’t repeated exactly what the previous 159 folks said
Sorry Fugs, I know this is an old(ish) post, but considering the subject I had to get my two cents in (or 20, or 200…) Appologies if some of this has already been said, I skimmed the first page and didn’t see anything that seemed to cover the topic completely.
I came across the Cloud story right about the time of the roundup. I’ve been a mustang person for about a year now, starting with riding an 8 year old gelding that needed a tuneup, which progressed to adopting my own in June. There is a lot of hype and drama surrounding Cloud’s herd because of the documentary, but some of the more sensible people have some very good points.
1. There are too many mustangs. I think everyone knows that by now. In a lot of cases, roundups are necessary to maintain herds at a number that can survive on the resources available. This is NOT the case with Cloud’s herd. For one thing, several bands were rounded up in their entirety because the land they survive on is Forest Service land, and not BLM, therefore technically not set aside for them under the Wild Horse and Burro act. Despite the fact that the horses had been living on that land since before the act went into effect, and should have been grandfathered in. Also, if you watch the documentaries, these are not skin and bone horses nibbling on sagebrush. The mountains they live on are very lush, and while they might get a little thin in a hard winter, all of the horses are fat and happy in the summer. Not starving by any means.
2. Why keep any mustangs on the range, you ask? Well, besides the American heritage bit, many of us mustangs fans are such because of the conditions these horses survive in. Natural selection works, plain and simple. Wild (excuse me, “feral”) horses are very healthy, hardy, and generally easy keepers. If HYPP ever showed up in a wild herd, you can be sure it wouldn’t be perpetuated, because falling over and thrashing on the ground is a sure way to say “free meal!” There are rarely any major conformational defects – plenty of less-than-perfect conformation, but not mechanical defects that will prevent the horse from keeping up with the herd. I could keep going but I think you’ve got the point on this one.
3. What’s so special about THIS herd, besides the documentary? Well, as it’s been pointed out, there’s lots of nondescript fugly little mustangs in pens, often from desert herds. Going back to pictures again, you can’t deny that Cloud’s herd has some nice looking horses. Not only do they have FANCY KOLOR, but they are well built and likely to make good riding horses. So assuming we do want to maintain some mustangs on the range, shouldn’t we try particularly hard to maintain the ones that are worth having? According to a geneticist the Cloud herd is now below genetic viability, meaning it will eventually die out. That may not be 100% true, but there was no good reason for removing those horses anyway.
4. The round up itself. Yes, these horses are used to covering miles every day grazing, but a lot of that’s at the walk. Most predators trying to take down a horse will use a surprise attack, as few can keep up with a horse at a dead run. The helicopters take the horses down as fast as they can to save time, which is often a full gallop. Never mind that the roundups are often held during or shortly after foaling season, so there are pregnant mares and newborn foals going at that speed. AND, while the desert horses are covering flat ground, Cloud’s herd is coming down the side of a mountain, over rocky terrain. Would any of you endurance folks like to try that? No?
5. But they could be adopted and have a warm home with alfalfa and nose kisses! Yeah, or they could end up like 35,000 others who are kept in overcrowded pens where, you guessed it, they are still fighting over food, but now at taxpayer’s expense. If they’re lucky they get shunted around between facilities for 15+ years. If they’re not, they get the ugly Sale Authority brand that allows the government to throw them on the truck to Canada.
6. Follow the money! The BLM has paid out over $20 million dollars in roundup contracts to Cook and Cattoor since 2000 – gee, I wonder what their agenda is? Never mind the criminal charges for illegal slaughter roundups. While on the flip side the BLM is being paid by ranchers to range cows on the land the mustangs are being pulled off of – cows, by the way, being much more destructive and harmful to the environment than horses.
7. So what IS the answer? Like everything, there is no perfect solution. But there are much better options than the ones currently being practiced by the BLM. There is land that could be taken back for ranchers – yes, we are the fattest nation, congratulations. Believe it or not, it won’t kill you to drop the Big Mac in favor of a salad. There’s also privately held land that supporters of the mustangs would be willing to put herds on. Contraceptives are definitely useful (however, the point made by Cloud supporters is quite valid, which is that the long term affects of many of these has not be documented and they cause fertility problems for years after being given, including out of season foals). Adoption efforts need to be ramped up – the Trainer Incentive Program is one of the best ideas the BLM has had in years. But it wouldn’t hurt them to do a little marketing, and hiring someone to simply halter break them would help greatly, so that they can be handled and started by any competent trainer.
Ok, my head hurts, enough ranting. Maybe someone will actually read this.