[chattiesmom]

My post will be long and emotion filled. It will also be filled with what seemes to be contradiction. I am sure that there are other members here at YT that have other experiences to share about their involvement with mustangs. This is just one person's story, speaking first hand. Not only did I adopt a total of three wild mustangs, I became a volunteer for the BLM for several years. Don't get me started on my "America's Living History" soapbox - if I did, admin would need a new server to handle the volumes I would type

In the mid 90's I fulfilled a lifelong dream and adopted two mustangs from the BLM. It was the most incredible expreience. The adoptions are an exciting EVENT - well they were back then. You went the day before in and camped at the site - and strolled through the pens of horses and listed the horses that you would like to adopt. The adotpion was held by lottery. You were assigned a number, the numbers were dropped in a hat and a BLM staffer pulled the names and made and announced your adoption number from the office steps. Kind of old fashioned, but part of the fun.

I cannot begin to explain or make you understand the thrill of walking through the horse pens in the pre-dawn listening to the soft rustling of the horses walking around, listening to them munching down on alfalfa, the smell of sweaty horses mixed with urine and dung. For a horse lover, it is a once in a lifetime experience. My heart is racing now just remembering.

The horses that were safely adopted to loving homes are the few lucky ones.... the ones that aren't so lucky are adopted by people who fulfill their adoption requirements and then sell them to rodeos, rendering plants, or are abandoned to starve and die.

The mustangs don't have many wild predators to help keep their numbers in check. If this were so, then nature would naturally weed out the sick, weak, old, and unsound specimines and only the strongest and most healthy would survive. Because there isn't that check and balance these horses are reproducing at an alarming rate. The population is increasing, and there is no place for them to go. Our Federal Government allows big cattle farmers to use OUR FEDERALLY owned land to graze cattle and sheep for next to nothing. THIS LAND BELONGS TO YOU AND TO ME AND TO THE MUSTANGS!!! The large cattle people have a lot of pull politically, the wild horses don't have much of a voice speaking for them.

What is hidden from the public are roundups where helicopters are used to herd the mustangs into areas where they are run off of cliffs or are penned up and shot. It makes me sick to type those words, but it is happening more than you would like to know. The BLM turns it's head because their agency is understaffed, has little funding and few heros to help.

So the problem is what to do with the Mustangs that have been forced from the land that was promised them? The BLM tried using contraceptives - it would put drugs in the watering holes that would prevent the mares from coming into season. If I can remember way back when, it was determined that this wasn't a very effective method of birth control. They capture and adopt out as many as they can, but with the economy the way it is, taking care of a horse is very expensive. And way too many of these horses are unadoptable.

So what do you do with a wild and free spirit that has no where to go? I am bawling like a baby as I type this because I have loved three wild ones. Even if the government rescinded the ranging permits for the large cattle/sheep ranchers, the wild mustangs would still face the problem of having no natural predators and their numbers would be ever increasing. It seems like capturing the male horses and castrating all but the very best and releasing them would help with population control.

This next comment will probably bring down the walls of YT upon me, but having known and loved wild horses in a very personal way, I would rather see them humanely euthanized rather than penned up for the rest of their lives. These horses need to be able to run free, not kept in 6' tall pens 20' x 30' for the next 15 to 20 years. Equate this to a dog living in a crate for all of his adult life with no opportunity to run and play.

If anyone wants to talk Mustangs, just pm me. I can tell about the little weanling that we adoped (the third mustang) that would lay down in the pasture and let my children use as a pillow.

This post was copied from an earlier thread and edited a bit due to come typos.