Mustangs

[Janis Moore]

This was in the Denver Post:

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_17163894

Thought some of you would find it interesting.

Janis

[Sara Peterka]

You know, when I got my mustang, I was educated...I thought. All postings were rosey and glowing and everyone was thrilled with their horse. I assumed costs for round up would be off set by adoption fees, and the program was a bit self sufficient.

Oh so untrue. One current round up is scheduled to cost $4.5 million and they are rounding up an area the size of Delaware.

These are not species native to the land, nor necessary to balance ecological situations. This land is rented (for good money) to ranchers and otherwise is an income to our country.

Many, Many of these mustangs are "unadoptable" and live out their lives on ranches contracted by the government (kind of like horse welfare).

You want to talk about a colossal government "money pit", it is this program.

Although, I really do like the idea of inmates training horses...I think they could get more horse for less money and support US farmsers by buying them from people who make sound breeding decisions.

Wild horses are wild animals. Yes they can be trained, but there is a difference in how they act. My knowledge is not vast on the subject, but I have broke a quarter horse and a few Belguims and a couple minis. The 2 mustangs I worked with were just different and much more independant thinkers, less trustworthy, more in it for themselves.

I do not support BLM mustangs for this use.

Is it interesting...I suppose, but smart government, absolutely not.

Sara

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--
"We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom. "
— Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

[LH]

I know a couple who have 2 mustangs, purchased as youngsters from a
BLM sale at the same time. The horses are used for trail riding and
competitive trail/endurance events. One mustang is a confident,
steady mount. The other one... not so much, and has given them some
challenges.

I would guess that the outcome of training a mustang depends upon age
at inititation of training and conditioning for human use/interaction,
the horse's individual personality, and the skills of the trainer or
owner.

On a similar note, I've seen more than one person struggle with young
and adult horses purchased from the Canadian PMU farms- wow, some were
no different than a feral mustang off the range!

The prisoners are probably learning a lot about life, survival,
patience, empathy and more.

Lisa

[Sara Peterka]

My mustang was ~18 months old when I got her. My aunts was ~6 months. Mine was a far better horse.

I know many people who have success stories with mustangs. My point being, so much more could be accomplished with so much less work with a horse bred and raised for a purpose by a knowledgeable person.

The costs to the government are astronomical. The costs to the mustang herds, deadly. Did you ever watch Mutual of Omaha "Wild Kingdom" in the 70's & 80's? Rounding up a wild animal off the desert range and mountain tops, with helicopters kills enough of them that in my book it would be less cruel to manage by hunters....but of course, we've done away with the meat market, so we'd have to render the meat.

The PMU farms are a whole different issue. Many of the horses in those are very well bred Percherons and Belguims. Some quarter horses. Their primary source of income is the urine from the pregnant mares. That is what the farm exists to create...urine. A by product of that is, of course, the resulting foal. One would assume that the best foals are held back as replacement animals for breeding stock. One might also assume that keeping a mare perpetually bred and hooked up to a pee collector would wear on her patience. The ones that create problems would be sold. I'm just saying, you probably are better off with a mustang than one of the mares. A foal...you probably have a slightly better shot and probably a pretty pedigree.

We have many animals that are not indigenous that must be managed by...us...because there are no natural predators and they will destroy the environment if left to their own.

Sara

[LH]

You should look at the PMU websites... I assume there are some PMU
farms remaining. Many of the horses don't have pretty pedigrees and
many of them aren't that useful to the average pleasure or competitive
rider (chunky draft crosses with not-so-great conformation). I think
that many of the herds are large, and the horses and their foals are
not handled as frequently (or even not at all) or with the same intent
to produce a riding horse, as one would expect from the average
breeder of performance horses.

I do recall very clearly the folks who bought the yearling draft-cross
PMU filly- she was unhandled and dangerous, and scared, too. These
people were really overfaced. I know that not all are like that, and
some farms do train some of their horses.

Weren't helicopter roundups of mustangs outlawed? I don't remember.

Marguerite Henry wrote a fiction kid's book about "Wild Horse Annie",
who was an activist for mustang protection, back in the 70s, I
believe.

Don't even get me started about the horse meat debacle. There are
thousands of horses starving and abandoned in the U.S., especially
since the economy hit a lot of people really hard- the equine rescue
groups are beyond heavily impacted.

Lisa
p.s. Yes, the prison program and prisoners would probably do better
with wellhandled young stock horses!

[Sara Peterka]

The only knowledge I have of a PMU breeding facility was in a Belgian magazine I purchased at a local auction and another of a Percheron magazine. The Belgian magazine, I read years ago, might still have it, but point being the magazine was likely from the 80's and the article is a bit of a blur to me...but there was a photo of litterally hundreds of mares being brought in from pasture to be checked for pregnancy and "hooked up". The photo was from a well known and supposedly good breeder with quality lines herd. Some of the stallions from the herd were advertised in the magazine, if memory serves.

One would assume that draft horses would be good candidates because of their size and general history of tolerating tieing in barns. Most people I know who have draft horses tie them usually at night, anyway. Drafts also produce more urine for obvious reasons than a riding horse.

As far as mustangs go. I went to one auction. The horses were suprisingly calm. The people handling the horses were darn good. They moved them efficiently and the set up they had allowed them to load and move and halter the mustangs with little risk to the handlers and little stress to the horses.

One would assume that if the PMU farm is not breeding quality stock that the foal is an inconvenient and costly byproduct. If that is the case, chances are the handling the foal received prior to going to those folks may have been less than gentle and maybe even abusive.

At least in the case of the mustangs the one to one human handling they receive is gentle and so those folks would have gotten more of a "blank slate" with a mustang, instead of a foal that sounds like it may have been mishandled.

I just looked up cost of mustang round up and found a reference to helicopter usage. I suppose it could be older, but I really don't know how else they would do it. The terrain is so vast and dangerous for human horse teams to navigate, 4 wheelers and dirtbikes might work in some instances...

Wild Horse Annie is on the BLM mustang literature. I wonder if she really intended for the program to turn in to this.

Sara