Terri Farley

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Where Have all the Mustangs Gone?

Broken Arrow, broken promises

The public is barred from Broken Arrow Ranch on Indian Lakes Road in Fallon, Nevada. Though privately owned, it is supported by the Bureau of Land Management as a feedlot for thousands of "protected" wild horses.

Public Property: Keep Out

Except for a few highly-orchestrated visitation days, members of the press and public have been considered trespassers since May 2010.
According to an internal email, BLM cut off public access due to "the damage that is being done to the BLM’s image as the result of the tours." *
*BLM denied this information. Read more in "There Are No Secrets at Indian Lakes."
Eyes Wide Open

In my blog entry from March of 2010, you'll see why Broken Arrow gates are literally chained shut.

We saw too much.

My March 26, 2010 phone interview with John Neill (then-director of both Palomino Valley and Broken Arrow wild horses) was an honest one in which he revealed the existence of "phantom foals." The unrecorded birth and death of foals born inside BLM facilities was and remains standard procedure.

Friday, March 26, 2010 --Fallon Foal Death

Mare stands guard over new foal, photo by Tara Kain

There's a new set of hooves in Heaven.

BLM's death tally for the week doesn't show what happened.
However, visitors are allowed to tour the tax payer funded Indian Lakes wild horse facility. It's land-locked inside a private ranch in Fallon, Nevada, but opened once each week by reservation only for two hours.
Three observers from the CalNeva Cloud Foundation and photographer Cat, visited Sunday, March 21 and took photos, video and notes.

Saturday, March 20

a pale dun foal is born to a buckskin mare

Sunday, March 21
11:00 Members of the public arrive to tour the Fallon facility. Director John Neill is their guide and he waits for a late arrival
11:37 tour begins
11:45 visitors observe buckskin mare and newborn foal in a pen with other adult horses. Foal looks like "he had melted into the contours of the ground" according to one observer and Mr. Neill said the foal was a weak newborn from the night before.
12:30? Sometime during the tour, members of the public notice a nursery pen with just six mare and foal pairs inside and wonder why the buckskin and her foal aren't with them*

(RIGHT: As adult horses move, mare makes a protective barricade of her body, photo by Tara Kain)

1:45 Tour ends, passing by the buckskin mare and her foal. Mr. Neill agreed with visitors that foal might be sick and indicated he would check on it. If necessary, a vet would be called. He added that volunteers from WHOA might be asked to bottle feed the foal if it couldn't rise to nurse.

2:00 as observers depart, foal is still down.

Monday, March 22
no deaths are listed on the BLM's facility update, so CalNeva Cloud observers hope for the best

Tuesday, March 23
9:55 am
Still no deaths listed for the weekend**, but one observer calls and talks to John Neill who says "the colt was euthanized." She understands Neill to say the vet had determined the colt had a broken femur and must have been kicked.
The caller commented, "Oh, that's why he never got up."
Neill replied, "No, he was up that morning nursing." Sometime after that, he speculated, the colt must've been kicked."
Neill said the foal was destroyed via chemical injection.

(with freedom tantalizingly close, mare urges foal to rise and nurse, photo by Tara Kain)

Friday, March 26
I reached John Neill at Palomino Valley wild horse corrals and he answered my questions about the Medicine Hat stallion I've told you about before and this foal.
He clarified two points from the timeline above:
* "Once we know the colt's strong, we put them in the nursery pen" along with their mothers
** Live births are not entered into BLM's system until horses have been freeze-branded, which takes place after four or more months.
Since foals delivered "in facility" are not listed as born, they are not listed as dead. So, they are not posted on BLM's online Calico Round-up updates.
John Neill described the last hour of the little dun's life.
"He was down during the tour. Afterward I went out to check on him and he was packing a right hind leg and he had to be put down."
"When did the vet come?" I asked.
"He didn't."
"Was it a compound fracture so that you could see it was broken?"
John answered, "I could just tell, so I took care of it."
***
After our call ended, my English teacher brain flashed to "I am cruel only to be kind." Hamlet, I remembered, and knew that if I were watching over a newborn foal with a fatally fractured femur, I would not want it to suffer.
But "Hamlet" ends with a stage strewn with corpses.
I tried to get confirmation that such a leg injury is easily diagnosed, but the two vets I consulted disagreed on both diagnosis and prognosis.
John Neill told me "We have births daily and if something happens like this or there's a bad mother, we can't track them all accurately."
Is it fair to the public that our mustang foals are born and die without notice?
This is not Neill's decision; it is BLM policy. As with so many other BLM policies, the numbering of lives and deaths are rough estimates.
That's wrong.
There are no disposable mustangs. Taxpayers have no disposable income, especially for a system they hate.
There must be a moratorium on the capture of our wild horses, before a ruined system erases an entire species.

Labels: Broken Arrow ranch, Indian Lakes, John Neill, Palomino Valley, phantom foals

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Posted by Terri Farley @ 11:43 AM 0 comments

Thursday, February 03, 2011

Sixteen Foals

photos by Karen Hopple

Palomino Valley BLM Wild Horse Facility
The Sun J truck, carrying mustangs trapped on the Antelope range, arrived at 2:20 pm, 2/2/11.
The driver wore pink boots and pink knit gloves. She wouldn't give her name but verified she's a Sun J employee, then ducked under the truck to escape questions before helping facility manager John Neill unload* the wild foals.

The first horse tumbled out backward, but kept her balance. Most horses were sorrels,but there were also bays, duns and paler horses,including a palomino.

Bodies huddled together as close as possible, the foals stared at the truck which still held their mothers. Others scanned their surroundings. The red chestnut foal with blaze, pictured at blog-top, was clearly traumatized. Panic kept that expression frozen on her face. She and a few others sought the comfort of nursing from other foals.
This method of self-soothing proves these babies are too young to be separated from their mothers, even though they may meet BLM's "weanling" guidelines.

Despite that, the mares were funneled into another pen. Mares and foals crowded against the fence between them.Since some horses wore paint markings, perhaps they'll be allowed to pair up today.
All horses looked lean and healthy. Two older mares were thin, but moved well.
According to John Neill, many horses have been trapped and shipped to PV this week:
Sunday
52 horses 32 mares and 20 foals
Monday
35 horses 34 mares and 1 foal
Wednesday
42 horses 25 mares and 16 foals
More than anything, I'm concerned about the Monday numbers -- too few foals. Where are they?

Please share this information with your friends at work, at church, at social functions. People will care, if they know.
The cost to our country is huge.
Sincerely,

Terri

* done by poking whip/bag spook-sticks through the pierced steel sides of the truck

Labels: Antelope Complex, foals, John Neill, Palomino Valley, Sun J contractors

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Posted by Terri Farley @ 10:13 AM 4 comments

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

"There Are No Secrets at Indian Lakes"

On June 9, 2010, BLM closed the facility on Broken Arrow ranch in Fallon, Nevada, locking wild horses in and the public out.
Since then, horses from the Calico Mountains, Tuscarora, Twin Lakes, Ely and other ranges have been corralled, castrated, and processed there. And they've died.

Many of us have requested public viewing of the wild horses and most have been denied. BLM's John Neill and Dean Bolstad have refused my requests because:
1) Indian Lakes isn't a public facility, but an overflow facility on private land
2) Visitation ceased because of the associated workload
[America's horses should be on rent-free American acres & beyond asking questions & taking in two horses -- I don't think I've interfered with chores]
3) Indian Lakes is not unique in infrastructure, animal viewing opportunities or health/handling protocols and the Palomino Valley is more convenient to visitors.
Indian Lakes may not be unique -- BLM updates showing deaths from routine gelding, and horses "found dead" "reason unknown" makes me wish it were -- but the mustangs are individual creatures.
Wild horses are tough. They take care of themselves in the wild, but they cannot when they're captives. One vet can't check -- let alone doctor -- thousands of horses. BLM staff, for many reasons, don't check wild horses carefully enough to notice injuries, disease, even starvation.
The public sees wild horses with fresh eyes,even when it hurts to look.
If we'd been at Palomino Valley instead of Indian Lakes, suffering foals with hooves sloughing off, with broken bones, with no mothers to nurse them, would be BLM secrets because they do not exist in the world of BLM until they are branded.
If we'd been at Palomino Valley instead of Indian Lakes, respiratory disease, draining pus pockets and facial injuries would have been treated as business as usual.
Because we're locked out, we can only guess at the welfare of foals born at Indian Lakes.
In a recent email, Dean Bolstad told me "There are no secrets at Indian Lakes."
But this year has proven I'd be a fool to take BLM statements on faith.
The Department of Interior won't open the gates to the wild horses, but they can open them to the American public.
BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program Chief Don Glenn has the power to
RE-OPEN Indian Lakes. Ask him to open the gates: Don_Glenn@blm.gov