# The wild mustang question.



## MotherOfChickens (13 September 2016)

The BLM voted to cull the wild mustangs it's currently holding (ie those in holding pens) last week. Those of you who have seen the film 'Unbranded' are well aware of the issue and Ben Masters and his work. His blog post below sums it up.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/ben-...6-whb-advisory-board-meeting/1604227873207723

It's obviously caused much outrage-from those who would see them free at the expense of ranchers and seemingly the environment, and those concerned of the live transport of these horses for culling in Mexico. I admit the latter does concern me, (although I see no alternative to the cull). It does seem like such a shame and a waste but those numbers are just astounding. As with so many things, opinions are polarised and there's a lot of suspicion and conspiracy theories about the BLM given that its a government dept etc. 

Is there any alternative do you think?


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## Rollin (13 September 2016)

Monty Roberts described the horse as the most successful prey species ever.  I know how hard it is to recover our 'ample' grazing after two months of hot dry weather.  

I agree that culling is the only short term answer but not to the Hell of a Mexican slaughter house.  I have seen some stomach churning video produced by the American Humane society.  American horse lovers should lobby to have properly controlled slaughter houses re-instated in the USA.


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## MotherOfChickens (13 September 2016)

agreed-this is a link to a slightly more in depth look at timescales and recommendations.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/wild-horses-euthanasia/


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## Equi (13 September 2016)

We need to be eating horses. Thats the only alternative.


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## MagicMelon (13 September 2016)

Sorry but in my opinion the horses were there way before the cattle, so IMO the horses should not be killed purely because some farmers have taken over the land with cattle to make money. As usual the need for money screws everything. Why can't they really push these horses for making into decent riding horses?  I know there's some weird thing in the US where Mustangs are looked down upon for some reason but effort should be put into showing how good they can be then more people would at least buy them and have a use for them if they cannot remain where they are. They're the US's wild horses, IMO they should be doing absolutely everything to look after then and not rounding them up to kill.  Its an absolute disgrace.


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## MagicMelon (13 September 2016)

equi said:



			We need to be eating horses. Thats the only alternative.
		
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What alternative is that? The horses are still killed, what happens afterwards doesn't matter.


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## ycbm (13 September 2016)

MagicMelon said:



			Sorry but in my opinion the horses were there way before the cattle, so IMO the horses should not be killed purely because some farmers have taken over the land with cattle to make money. As usual the need for money screws everything. Why can't they really push these horses for making into decent riding horses?  I know there's some weird thing in the US where Mustangs are looked down upon for some reason but effort should be put into showing how good they can be then more people would at least buy them and have a use for them if they cannot remain where they are. They're the US's wild horses, IMO they should be doing absolutely everything to look after then and not rounding them up to kill.  Its an absolute disgrace.
		
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Horses aren't native to America, though, are they?  Aren't these the descendants of horses brought in by Spanish adventurers and invaders??

They weren't there first, the buffalo were.


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## Orangehorse (13 September 2016)

There is a programme to make Mustangs into riding horses.  The USA event rider that did well at Burghley takes and trains Mustangs.  Also the riding stables that I went to in Montana.  The guest riders didn't ride them though!  The trainer said that underneath all the training they still had the instincts of a wild horse, even though they were very rewarding to work with.  So not matter how many are caught and trained, they aren't going to be suitable for  for all riders or for all leisure riding purposes.

The most important thing is "humane culling" which I guess is the most difficult thing to achieve with wild flight animals.


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## MotherOfChickens (13 September 2016)

ycbm said:



			Horses aren't native to America, though, are they?  Aren't these the descendants of horses brought in by Spanish adventurers and invaders??

They weren't there first, the buffalo were.
		
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there were horses there, they died out/were hunted to extinction but had in the meantime crossed the Bering Strait. They became domesticated and then taken back over to the US by the Europeans.

I'm not sure whether they were there or not is helpful in dealing with the problem they are faced with now. That is, tens of thousands of horses on land that can sustain 1/3 of that number. Horses that not enough people want or can use (and I'd have one in a heartbeat), horses that might starve to death or die of thirst.  12,000 more will be born next spring.


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## Equi (13 September 2016)

Orangehorse said:



			There is a programme to make Mustangs into riding horses.  The USA event rider that did well at Burghley takes and trains Mustangs.  Also the riding stables that I went to in Montana.  The guest riders didn't ride them though!  The trainer said that underneath all the training they still had the instincts of a wild horse, even though they were very rewarding to work with.  So not matter how many are caught and trained, they aren't going to be suitable for  for all riders or for all leisure riding purposes.

The most important thing is "humane culling" which I guess is the most difficult thing to achieve with wild flight animals.
		
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There is no such thing as humane killing, there is only as accurate as possible killing. They will round them up and shoot them as they go through the chute or sniper them from helicopters..won't be easy for the horses. But then again neither would getting pounced on by a pack of wolves.


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## Orangehorse (13 September 2016)

equi said:



			There is no such thing as humane killing, there is only as accurate as possible killing. They will round them up and shoot them as they go through the chute or sniper them from helicopters..won't be easy for the horses. But then again neither would getting pounced on by a pack of wolves.
		
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Yes, that is what I meant - mass killing of any sort is never going to be "humane" is it?


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## hackneylass2 (14 September 2016)

PZP  and as far as possible humane killing of those animals in holding pens.  To profit from these horses by sending them to Mexico is barbaric.


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## ponyparty (14 September 2016)

It's definitely more humane than starvation or dying of thirst... Think people need to be realistic about the ability of the land to support these animals, and the fact that their existence in such huge numbers is destroying habitat for other wildlife, causing suffering to other species as well as horses.


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## Cortez (15 September 2016)

MotherOfChickens said:



			there were horses there, they died out/were hunted to extinction but had in the meantime crossed the Bering Strait. They became domesticated and then taken back over to the US by the Europeans.

I'm not sure whether they were there or not is helpful in dealing with the problem they are faced with now. That is, tens of thousands of horses on land that can sustain 1/3 of that number. Horses that not enough people want or can use (and I'd have one in a heartbeat), horses that might starve to death or die of thirst.  12,000 more will be born next spring.
		
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 While it is true that the first protohorse (eohippus) originated in what is now North America and migrated across the Bering Straits to Eurasia, that was millions of years ago and there was never interaction with humans at that time. The horse (equis) is not native to America. The problem is that there are more horses than there are people to care for them, which is the root of most animal welfare crises. Mustangs are not easy horses to deal with and they are not suitable for what most people want to do with horses. The BLM have been keeping mustangs on feedlots for more than 25 years and frankly, having visited a few sites, they would be better off dead.


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## tallyho! (15 September 2016)

I'm no vegetarian... but why can't people see the obvious? As demand for meat and milk escalates, there will be nothing left of this earth. It will be grazed down to dust by the appetites of an increasingly western world. Then, we will all simply get gassed by cow-farts.

Cowspiracy is actually a really informative film. It's made me realise that humans will have to compromise soon or else our habits and greed will be the thing that gets us in the end. After that, the planet will surely recover, with a sigh of relief we are gone!


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## ester (15 September 2016)

Orangehorse said:



			There is a programme to make Mustangs into riding horses.  The USA event rider that did well at Burghley takes and trains Mustangs.  Also the riding stables that I went to in Montana.  The guest riders didn't ride them though!  The trainer said that underneath all the training they still had the instincts of a wild horse, even though they were very rewarding to work with.  So not matter how many are caught and trained, they aren't going to be suitable for  for all riders or for all leisure riding purposes.

The most important thing is "humane culling" which I guess is the most difficult thing to achieve with wild flight animals.
		
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Yup the program has done a great job of showing they can become excellent ridden animals. The trouble is that there is a finite number of ridden animals required.


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## Casey76 (17 September 2016)

They're not really "wild" though, are they?  They are feral.  As an introduced species they can do (and do do) a lot of damage to the environment which isn't able to support such a large animal in such great numbers.

If people stopped thinking of them with romantic/idealistic thoughts, and thought about them instead as if they were a very large Australian rabbit, people may eventually see the need for the culls.

I do not agree with keeping them mouldering in pens, nor being shipped vast distances to Mexico or Canada for slaughter.  America needs to wake up and realize that they need a great many slaughter houses.  All of this "end the slaughter" is absolute BS perpetrated by bunny huggers who have no real concept of the realities of life.


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## ester (17 September 2016)

End of slaughter has already happened though? AFAIK there are no moves to reinstate it in the US? It is one of the worse things that could have happened for animal welfare.


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## SusannaF (30 October 2016)

To answer a few questions:

1) There is (I think) only one horse slaughter plant in the US and it kills them to feed zoo animals.

2) BUT mustangs are protected under federal law and should never be going to slaughter with the law as it stands.

3) Lots of American horses do still get slaughtered after transport to Mexico and Canada

4) There does seem to be evidence that humans and horses co-existed in the USA pre-conquest but it's very very new: http://www.horsetalk.co.nz/2016/09/30/scientists-extinct-horse-humans-in-oregon-cave-system/

5) The US slaughter plants were shut down twice over. Once because federal funding for inspections was frozen, and once because the states and towns in which the last slaughter houses operated did not want to host them because they'd experienced years of having the sewage system flooded with slaughter waste (people literally had blood coming up in their baths and toilets) and the plants tried to get out of paying much by way of tax and avoided being inspected.

6) They do need to sort out what happens with the mustangs. The present system is seriously inadequate. They don't have enough natural predators for the horses, either, so they can't just go on multiplying without it becoming not just harmful to the environment but also dangerous for the horses, I'd have thought. But the programme suggested for spaying the mares looked atrocious &#8211; it wasn't being done humanely or with due caution about infection. The whole story is a big mess.


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## Pigeon (30 October 2016)

I think culling is the only option for these horses, which is heartbreaking, and they need to look at how it has got to this situation in the first place. I also think the transportation to slaughter is unnecessary and horribly cruel. 

They need a branding and gelding programme, it wouldn't be that hard to do. I read somewhere that stallions that have undergone a a vasectomy rather than a full geld still hold their position in the herd.


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## MagicMelon (30 October 2016)

I think its shocking whats going on. I dont know enough about land management to comment, but I wonder if absolutely all avenues have been thought about. At the end of the day, it seems to come across that greed is simply the reason that these Mustangs are getting cleared off the land (for more and more farmland / grazing land). Otherwise, can't they really try to push the Mustangs as riding horses? Perhaps run competitions / leagues for Mustangs etc. (a bit like the racehorse series here for example). I dont know what they're good at in particular but I bet they'd have decent uses if people were encouraged to buy them. I'd happily take one if I was there


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## tallyho! (30 October 2016)

MagicMelon said:



			I think its shocking whats going on. I dont know enough about land management to comment, but I wonder if absolutely all avenues have been thought about. At the end of the day, it seems to come across that greed is simply the reason that these Mustangs are getting cleared off the land (for more and more farmland / grazing land). Otherwise, can't they really try to push the Mustangs as riding horses? Perhaps run competitions / leagues for Mustangs etc. (a bit like the racehorse series here for example). I dont know what they're good at in particular but I bet they'd have decent uses if people were encouraged to buy them. I'd happily take one if I was there 

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The truth of the matter is, there just isn't enough cows and wheat to supply the steak, burger joints and latte machines in America and beyond. So we must continue to make way for these essentials. We would die otherwise!


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## Zuzan (30 October 2016)

tallyho! said:



			The truth of the matter is, there just isn't enough cows and wheat to supply the steak, burger joints and latte machines in America and beyond. So we must continue to make way for these essentials. We would die otherwise!
		
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That's about it...  the cattle do far more environmental damage than equines do...  

And as for being non native I would disagree.. whilst the horses that exist there now are the descendants of domestic horses the equids that existed and went extinct are so close (there is a paper on this that compares mitochondrial dna) in terms of genetics and behaviour that it is quite hard to argue that they current equids are "non native".   I would argue as above that the issue is not so much the equine impact on the environment as it is human.    funnily it seems that at the root of all wildlife management issues .. it isn't the "wildlife" per se that is the issue it's the humans.


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## Caol Ila (31 October 2016)

The cattle are managed and the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) doesn't let ranchers run cattle wherever they want.  If a certain area can't support X number of cattle that year due to draught or whatever, the BLM doesn't give ranchers permits to graze there.  The Mustangs obviously go wherever they want.

The environment can't support unchecked population growth of Mustangs, which are an introduced species no matter how you look at it.  Obviously there is less range, due to human activities, but unless you do something to check the population, horses will starve to death and damage the range for other wildlife.  

You can only push Mustangs as riding horses so far.  And they do. It's true that once tamed, they are fantastic riding horses, but it takes a knowledgeable and patient horseman/woman to gentle a feral horse fresh off the range.  Like the UK, the US has a horse overpopulation problem -- not enough homes for existing domestic horses, NOT including Mustangs.  If there aren't enough people to take in horses born into domestication, the wild ones have no chance.  People aren't lining up at the door for Mustangs; you need the right experience and appropriate facilities (no, your dodgy barbed wire paddock isn't going to work) and most people don't have either.


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## asterope (31 October 2016)

There really doesn't seem to be much of a solution other than culling mustangs, I'm afraid.

The problem isn't so much cattle grazing as it is straightforward overpopulation and lack of resources. Mustangs are starving to death and are being corralled partly for their own welfare. Numerous attempts have been made to train mustangs as riding horses and, while they do make good riding horses, they're also not for everyone and, as previous posters have noted, the US has too many horses anyway. No one wants to adopt a mustang when they could have a much "safer" horse - or, rather, there simply aren't enough people who want to train mustangs and keep them to make any difference to the overall population.


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