ACTION ALERT: Stop the BLM’s Barbaric Sterilization Experiments on Captured WIld Mares
This is an Action Alert from the The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign.
Photo of a veterinarian with a chain ecraseur being used during an ovariectomy.
The Bureau of Land Management is planning barbaric, archaic and dangerous sterilization experiments on captured wild mares at its Wild Horse Corral Facility in Hines, Oregon. These experiments have never before been performed on wild horses or, in the case of two of the three proposed procedures, in horses anywhere at all! The agency is accepting public comments on an Environmental Assessment (EA) and now is the time to voice our united and strong opposition to this outrageous proposal!
At least 100 mares — 75 of whom will be pregnant — will be subjected to “ovariectomy via colpotomy,” a dangerous procedure in which a veterinarian makes an incision in the mare’s vagina, inserts his arm into the vaginal cavity, manually locates the ovaries and rips them out using an “ecraseur,” a rod-like device with a chain on the end. The painful procedure will subject mares to the risk of infection, hemorrhage and evisceration (intestines coming through the incision) and cause mares in the early to mid-stages of pregnancy to abort their fetuses.
In domestic mares, this procedure is not common, but when performed, requires a post-surgical 4-7 days stall confinement, during which the first 48 hours are spent in crossties to prevent the mare from lying down. No such restraint is possible in wild mares, and the BLM intends to turn them out to corrals after the surgery with open incisions and no restrictions on movement. This fact lead the National Research Council (NRC) to conclude that the fatality rate for the BLM’s proposed experiment would be “higher than the one percent reported in the published literature,” which is based on surgery performed in domestic mares.The NRC a stated that less invasive techniques would be preferable to this procedure in wild mares.
Two less invasive experimental procedures are also proposed that would use endoscopes to achieve sterilization without removal of the ovaries. However, these procedures have never before been done in horses, domestic or wild, and appear to be infeasible for use in wild mares.
Please take a stand against these dangerous and costly BLM wild horse experiments today. The BLM deliberately avoided public opposition by skipping the scoping stage of this process, so let’s use the EA stage to show the agency just how many citizens and taxpayers oppose these dangerous and costly experiments on our wild mares. Take action below!
NYC Carriage Trade Downsized and Relocated in New Agreement
The following is an excerpt of an article by Pat Raia for TheHorse.com.
New York City’s carriage trade would be down-sized and its horse stables relocated to a renovated Central Park facility under an agreement between Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city’s carriage cabbies, and Teamster carriage driver Steven Malone. The agreement would reduce the number of horses on New York City’s streets from 220 to 75.
In 2014, the nonprofit organization New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, and Safe Streets (NYCLASS) called for a citywide ban on horse-drawn carriages on grounds that the carriages were inhumane. At that time, 16 members of the city council pledged to support a NYCLASS ordinance that would replace horse-drawn cabs with electric vintage-replica cars.
The proposal sparked controversy between some equine welfare advocates and carriage horse owners and drivers who argued that further regulation would force them to relinquish their horses to new owners. It also spawned several copycat proposals in cities across the United States, including Chicago, St. Louis, and Salt Lake City.
Orphan Foal Season Prep at Chilly Pepper-Miracle Mustang
Our friends at Chilly Pepper – Miracle Mustang Equine Rescue are preparing for the orphan foal season. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to be a rescue that specializes in critical, injured, neonatal or orphaned foals, read the excerpt from their newsletter and see where your contributions go:
As we prepare for the upcoming orphan foal season, I wanted to share with y’all what is happening. As far as the financials go, here are some of the places your donations are going: (Bless your generous and beautiful hearts)
Monthly board for the 40+ wild horses is $1000.
“Our” portion of the total hay bill is $2100 per month
So the total monthly bill “just for feed and board” is at $3100
The other $4000 being spent on hay is being generously donated by the amazing folks at WIN. She donates the $4000 every single month.
ALL of the wild ones need their hoofers done, and this will be approximately $750 for the use of the facility and the trims.
For shots and worming it will be approximately $50 per horse, which will be $2,000 +
American Horse Council Priorities Win Approvals
(Washington, DC)- The 114th Congress, though it started with the partisan gridlock that has become the new normal in Washington, ended the year with a burst of productivity by passing several major pieces of legislation including a tax extender bill, an omnibus appropriations bill, and a five year highway bill. Each of these bills includes provisions favorable to the overall horse industry that have been priorities for the American Horse Council.In addition, other bills championed by the AHC have seen Congressional action and could be passed with enough industry support in the second session of this Congress which adjourns in December.
“The AHC works on a diverse set of issues that impact the horse industry, often over the course of several years. For this reason it’s not every day that we see several AHC priorities pass Congress in the span of a month,” said AHC president Jay Hickey. “These three bills included tax provisions, guest worker reforms, and trail programs that will benefit the racing, showing, and recreational segments of the industry.”
The Tax Extender bill, called the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015, reinstates three-year-depreciation for all race horses for two more years. It also increases the Section 179 business expense deduction back to $500,000 and makes this provision permanent. The bill restores bonus depreciation for qualifying new property, including assets used in the horse business, such as horses and other equipment, purchased and placed in service during 2015 through 2019. The bill also restores and makes permanent favorable tax treatment for land donated for conservation purposes, particularly land donated by farmers and ranchers, like horse owners and breeders.
Mesa Verde Wild Horse Update
The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign delivered nearly 9,000 letters to the National Park Service. Here is an excerpt from their press release:
Durango, CO (January 11, 2016) . . . On Friday, the American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign submitted official public comments to the Mesa Verde National Park urging protection of the historic population of wild horses there. AWHPC submitted letters from 8,982 citizens urging the Park to explore ways to protect and humanely manage this herd with its comments.
“The horses of Mesa Verde National Park are part of the area’s natural landscape and history. They have been present on those lands since before the park was created in 1906,” said Deniz Bolbol, AWHPC Programs Director, who submitted comments on behalf of the organization. “We urge the Mesa Verde National Park to create a humane management plan for the horses that will preserve this unique and historic herd and protect their free-roaming behaviors, while managing their numbers through the use of humane, safe, and reversible fertility control.”
“The National Park Service (NPS) has a dual mission to preserve unique resources and to provide for their enjoyment by the public,” she continued. “The horses are an important part of the visitor experience, as evidenced by the countless videos and photographs of these beautiful animals that are regularly shared online by park visitors.”
Joining AWHPC in urging protection of the Mesa Verde horses are thousands of Coloradans, including Durango resident Kate Feldman, a psychotherapist and horsewoman who states, “The Mesa Verde horses are an important natural and historic resource in our area. I and many other local citizens value this beautiful wild horse population and urge the National Park Service to protect these horses, not eradicate them.”
ACTION ALERT: Stop BLM Spaying Experiment
An new action alert was issued by the American Wild Horse Campaign. Act now – comments are due by January 14, 2016.
We have only until Thursday (1/14) to get comments in to oppose the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) disastrous plan to spay wild mares on the range in the White Mountain Herd Management Area (HMA) in Wyoming. Surgically removing the mares’ ovaries is both physically dangerous and psychologically devastating as it stops the production of hormones that drive natural behaviors. AWHPC is committed to fighting this ill-conceived and destructive proposal, which also includes the removal of at least 169 wild horses, leaving fewer than 400 mustangs on 1,600 square miles of land! We need to bombard the BLM with comments opposing the spaying of mares, so please take action today and share this alert with your friends and family!
Lawsuit Filed to Stop BLM from Sterilizing Idaho Wild Horse Herd
Return to Freedom, the American Wild Horse Preservation & Sanctuary and the Cloud Foundation have filed a lawsuit in the Idaho District Court challenging the BLM plan to permanently sterilize the entire herd of wild horses in the Saylor Creek Herd Management Area charging that it violates the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 and the National Environmental Policy Act. This is an important action and needs support. Read the press release and find out how you can support them.
What’s New with Roll? White Line Support Team
We got the team together again today with Roll to assess what we were going to do going forward. The hoof wall did what we hoped it would for eight days and stayed intact with daily cleaning and new wraps, but it was now beginning to get stress marks at the heel. We knew that without adequate circulation to the area, it would no doubt begin to deteriorate. This bought us some time, however to brainstorm for a solution to the support problem going forward.
Our support team arrived including veterinarian Greg Farrand, farrier Dean Geesen, assistant farrier intern Lance, Ranch Manager Chad Leppert, assistant ranch manager Steve Leppert, my assistant Kristen Florence and me. We discussed whether or not to resect the hoof wall.
How we did this was an important consideration. The nippers could cause torque that might result in cracking. We discussed whether or not to use nippers only or a dremel, or both.
We discussed what kind of support would be needed from the shoe and we were concerned about the limitation for nailing the shoe onto the hoof since he does not have much foot left to nail to.
We finally decided to use both the nippers and the dremel. Dean first nipped away at the hoof wall in very small increments with both the straight nippers and then in the smaller areas with a rounded narrower nipper.
When he got all that he thought he could safely done with the nippers, we then went after the edge with the dremel to create a smoother line that would inhibit cracking.
Then Chad cut down the custom made the shoe to fit what was left of his foot. We opted not to go completely around the toe, leaving it and the left side open and covered the hoof across the heel instead.
Dean put a bead of borium on the shoe at the toe of his opposite foot for traction and it was useful the minute we took him out of the Tack Barn and onto the snow leading to his pen. As he stepped onto the slick snowy surface outside, the good foot did slip, but he was able to catch himself with the Borium bead.
We talked about doing a test to see what kind of circulation he had in the foot and decided it wasn’t really feasible to do it. Roll has side bones and ring bone in the foot and that alone would produce irregular circulation patterns in the foot. Therefore, the test really wouldn’t reveal anything that would be helpful at this point. We opted not to do it.
We also talked about doing an ultrasound on the connective tissue to make sure we had cleaned out all the fungus, but again, it really wouldn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already suspect to be true. The main concern was if there was any more fungus left in the foot, but after resecting the hoof wall and cleaning the affected area, we could see with our own eyes with the help of the x-rays that there was nothing left to ultrasound.
We put Roll’s foot onto the hoof stand, checked it once more and then Dean set the ¾ custom-made bar shoe with minimal nails that he and Chad had made.
He then taped cardboard over the affected area with gorilla tape to keep the glue away from it. Once that was in place, he then applied an extra-hardening glue to the bottom of the foot to hold the pad in place. This would lend more support to the hoof and allow it to do its job more closely to normal giving the sole and frog a more even surface of pressure.
Once the glue was in place, he put on a tough blue pad to provide some support to the sole and to help hold the shoe in place. Our veterinarian, Greg Farrand suggested that we brush out any dirt and debris that adhered to the foot every other day as the pad and cardboard were compromised. Then we would just cut new cardboard and wrap the tape back around the affected area to keep most of the debris out of the affected area.
We had to use both minimal nails and glue together to keep the shoe in place and we will try to go 7 weeks before re-shoeing if possible. Our local farrier supply house, “Oleo Acres” recommended using the supplement Hoof Power made by Delta Mustad Hoofcare Center in Forest Lake, Minnesota to help accelerate hoof growth. We opted to use Providone-Iodine to clean the affected area every other day as Greg said the concentrated “White Lightning” was better to use at the onset and for a shorter period of time. As we go forward, we will be sure to continue to share our experience with all of you. Please continue to keep Roll in your prayers.
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