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

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Friday, July 12, 2013

Counting Wild Horses : Why Statistics Don't Stack Up




 

How many wild horses do you see? According to BLM: 2

Babies born to mustang mothers in Federal captivity are not wild horses until they are old enough to be branded.   

The rhetoric of death is complicated. 
As an English teacher and word lover, I wonder: is this an example of oxymoron or irony? 

Maybe it's a logic problem.

Bureau of Land Management is legally required to protect and preserve America's wild horses. 

If records for a wild horse facility show BLM paid for disposal of 241 dead wild horses, how is it that 577 equine corpses were picked up for disposal ?

The discrepancy is made up of phantom foals.

In May 2013, BLM explained it this way: 

 "How many horses have died at the facility since Jan 1, 2013?  According to the Wild Horse and Burro Program System, the number of horses that have died at PVC from Jan. 1, 2013 through April 1, 2013, is 37. This number does not include stillbirths (aborted fetuses, animals born dead and newborn animals found dead) and young foals that died before they were freeze marked. Foals are freeze marked when they are weaned. This varies with the size and condition of the foals and the mares, but usually occurs sometime between three and six months of age."

As a stereotypical English major, I'm usually willing to take the blame for my trouble with numbers.  This time, I don't think it's me. 

BLM's statistical problems as diagnosed by the National Academy of Sciences won't clear up until fuzzy math is no longer a matter of policy.  


***Read more about Animal Angels' investigation captive mustang deaths here: http://bit.ly/1050IcN  

Labels: BLM, BLM death statistics, phantom foals, wild horse math, wild horses

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Posted by Terri Farley @ 7:46 AM   0 comments

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Friday, April 09, 2010

Virtual Visit to Your Horses


Hola Readers,
On March 28, mustang advocate Tara Kain took these photos at the wild horse holding pens in Fallon & she is allowing me to share with you.
Above, you'll see some phantom foals, whose births and deaths are not recognized by BLM until the foals are branded.

High spirits can get you hurt in crowded conditions, but these two mustangs have found a somewhat open spot for play.










This mustang's chest shows signs of the pigeon fever which BLM first said was 1) impossible this time of year 2) showing up at Fallon, but not worth treating.
What will that do to wild horses' chances of being returned to the range or transferred to other BLM facilities? And if BLM deemed these same horses healthy when they came in off the range AND say the time of year AND soil conditions aren't right to transmit the disease at the Indian Lakes facility, where did it come from? Some are suggesting horses were infected in the trucks of their captors.
The Cattoor family website claims the company has "humanely" rounded up 150,000 wild horses, burros and wild cattle. Horse experts have mused that one of the main symptoms of Pigeon Fever, seeping pus, might remain behind in even a washed trailer. If it wasn't completely disinfected, they tell me, it could become a crucible of contamination.
I know some of my readers are experienced with Pigeon Fever. What do you think?
Adios,
Terri

Labels: Cattoor, Fallon, Indian Lakes, mustangs, phantom foals, pigeon fever, wild horses

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Posted by Terri Farley @ 2:22 PM   5 comments

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Saturday, April 03, 2010

Phantom foals


photo used by permission of Cat Kindsfather


Three things to think about:
1) Newborn horses like the dun foal above -- trying to rise and nurse despite a broken leg suffered in a corral crowded with adult horses -- do not exist in the world of BLM until they are branded.

2) Only one vet is under contract to care for the thousands of mustangs in BOTH the Fallon and Palomino Valley facilities.

3) Despite promises to welcome the public at wild horse gathers and holding pens, program manager Don Glenn allows NO humane observers at the wild horse facilities except "by appointment"

If you object, please sign this petition to President Obama, asking for

an immediate moratorium on wild horse roundups

Labels: BLM, Don Glenn, Indian Lakes, mustangs, Palomino Valley, phantom foals, pigeon fever, terri farley, wild horse deaths, wild horses

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Posted by Terri Farley @ 2:00 AM   8 comments

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