The Mustang~spirit of the west

[thistlebloom]

I know about the adoption. It was a longtime dream of mine growing up and as a young adult to adopt a mustang.
Never got an actual BLM horse, but did buy a wild range horse that had come off an Indian reservation from a horse trader.
He was starved and mangy and very ugly. But he was a bay and had such nice long pasterns.
It took three weeks to just be able to put a hand on him, but after that he trusted me and we became partners.

Anyway, this mustang stuff is an emotionally charged subject, and it's clear that there isn't going to be any coming together over it.

 

[ninnymary]

Valley, I like how you "owned" your actions about the other person. It shows your maturity.

Mary

 

[valley ranch]

Morning Mary, And I like how you watch and listen.

thistlebloom, That wild range horse would have been a Mustang?,,, You're in Idaho, Was he geld?

There are horses out here we get to know, remember them when they were part of a bachelor band, see him when hes running away with his vary own mare and watch him protect his band.


You mentioned Indian reservation, out here they have all the water, like Pyramid Lake, so in drier years, the horses that drift to the water can be in for a bad way to go, not like in the movies.

If we're heading in or coming back out and we see a band we'll stop and the girls will take pictures.
Kinda neat to see the lead mare give instructions to the band and the stallion chest out watching to see if we're are a problem or people he knows.

 

[ducks4you]

Bob,
In a good year with adequate rainfall where I live (IL) my 3 horses eat just pasture on 4 acres for 6 months out of the year. It isn't gone in two months bc the rainfall and the sun encourage enough growth to sustain my small herd of 3. Pasture maintenance is an imperative and I am still learning. My horses got kicked off of my 3 acre north pasture in September. When we bought the property (1999) the previous owners had it as a cornfield. I was feeding alfalfa mix to my herd of 5 and THEY seeded the pasture. We have had several drought years and there is a great deal of clover in it now, not bad, but I'd like more pasture grass. I will continue to fertilize it this winter and I have 50 pounds of pasture grass seed that will go out next big snowfall OR be spread with rotted manure in the early Spring. Horses don't defecate like cattle or chickens, walk and plop. When they eat in their own every day pasture they defecate in the corners or on the edges and the middle of the pasture suffers without fertilization. It's a little bit tricky, using their aged manure bc parasite eggs can live a long time, but you deworm and monitor them, and hope that dry and cold and dry and hot weather kills the eggs.
OUR Spring grass comes in very lush, so I have to limit their intake when it's growing fast or else I'll founder them.
I bought 450 (65 pound) high quality grass hay this last year and I feed 14 flakes/day to my 1,100 lb gelding, 1,200 lb mare and 1,350 lb (16.3hh) gelding. They are ALL over 5 on the Apgar scale. Keeping more hay than necessary enables me to feed hay in their shelter whenever I need or want to do so, and their shelter is in the turnout area around the barn, maybe 3/4 acre, and a sacrificial "dry lot."
I applaud anybody who shows kindness to animals and credit yourself taking in a Mustang and keeping him/her well. Most unhandled horses who have not been abused can be pretty easily trained.
That said, I am always confounded how people believe that they can pick a horse that has had to live off of the land, where nobody has cared for them, pay their $145.00 adoption fee (often the cheapest horse that you can buy) and expect a healthy animal and be patted on the back for "doing a good deed." I have not ever been a Mustang fan, especially after I discovered that our tax money pays to keep them, without my representative voting for this.
What is worse are the idiots at the BLM who mismanage them, sometimes moving them to Mexico for meat, more often herding them with helicopters and running the foals and colts to death. This doesn't happen when they are rounded up on horseback, but you'd need to be a horseman to do that and that requires non-bureaucratic expertise.
Btw, me and the meat market both bid on my horse "Corporal", (Arabian, 1982-2009, RIP) and for $5 more I got him in 1986 for $135.00
LOVED that horse and he died in my shelter at 27yo of a stroke.
People also don't know that often the "heartless" meat market buyers will get a good horse that isn't wanted and will turn around and find a home for said horse. It's not simple to label the heroes and villains. It is EXPENSIVE to keep many horses. Adoption ranchers come and go bc of cost. (When I taught riding lessons I noticed that riding academies ALSO come and go and benefited every time a stable quit teaching.)
People who aren't horseman are totally unaware of the industry and the volume of current unwanted horses for whom they are not enough interested owners, very much like the volume of unwanted dogs and cats. The glut of Mustangs just exascerbates this problem.

 

[valley ranch]

Hi, Good for you, it's clear you love and care for your animals. Most people out here do also.
As to the glut of horses, we don't see that here, only small bands on great expanse of land. The band are run into traps and left there without food in most cases until moved to a holding area where they are trucked to slaughter.
We, people who are trying to help protect the horse have very little pull or power to stop the way they are stampeded, the law against stampeding and use of air craft are broken, by the private companies with the BLM paying.
We, all that I know, want our local band left alone and when they're taken~it isn't easy, we haven't been able to bail them out and soon they are gone, taken in big trucks to their death.

There are fewer and fewer band and no herds except where the BLM gathers and dump them and feed them so as to make them look like an expense.

There are open areas as big as some eastern states out in the west. You can travel Hwy across this state and see to both sides valleys leading off to both side as far as the eye can see being used only by the wild horse and burros, taking food from no mans animals.

I think it's great how you care for your horses and work to improve you pasture. Thanks for telling me what you have going.

 

[valley ranch]

Many do their best to help but there is money in the sale of horse flesh and none in the protection.

 

[valley ranch]

These are Paintings not Photos, our oldest daughter painted. The girls were close to these horses and you began to feel like you know them and they know you, then one day they are gone, some place safe we're told by the BLM where they're fed and cared for.

Prints of the paintings have been sold at Shows, some paintings were done when she was very young, fundraisers and State Fair~our youngest daughter knits horses that are also sold and the money donated to the Wild Horse Preservation League, who tries to help, get fences put up, do what they can.
http://yerazel.charshafian.com/

Have you seen the movie: War of The Worlds~ not a great movie, but that seems like what's happening to our Mustangs~our wild horses.

People are told that there are many many thousands more Horses and Burros than there are, and that they are eating the west down to mineral earth, starving rancher owned grazing animals and we're paying a fortune to feed them. If you were out here in the west you could judge for yourself, doesn't look true to us or any we know.
Mustangs, wild horses, don't exactly graze, they kinda browse, eat a bit and move on.

It would be good if we could halt the Gathering & Feeding, the Stampeding, Trapping, Trucking & killing~ It isn't easy done.

 

[bobm]

For your reading pleasure regarding a true wild horse ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski'shorse/ , www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/nature/przewalskis-horse/

 

[Nyboy]

Your daughter is very talented. Does she wish to became a artist or hobby ?

 

[Beekissed]

Those horses are so incredibly beautiful!!! Just think how healthy they stay, out there without the benefit of grain feeds, chemical dewormers, farriers, etc.

Those folks will reap what they sow in this world, never fear.