Comment

Comment by Shirley on September 17, 2010 at 11:06am

This was a BLM auction. (Bureau of Land Management) At this sale people have to to comply with some pretty stiff regulations to qualify to purchase one of the animals. The young were available to buy for $125. and the ones over 4 yrs. old were selling for $45. They have to have extra tall fencing and things like that to make sure that the horses are kept safe or the potential buyers can not purchase them. I know there is an extensive list but I don't think I've ever actually read the list ~~mostly cause I know I can't have another horse or donkey. The people that buy at these auctions are looking for nice cheap horses and expect that them to take more time and patience to train because they are from the wild. A few were born in captivity because they were born after their moms were captured from the range. Once captured they are kept in large multi-horse pens. Some are taken across the country by large stock trucks to be sold in different states. This group of horses and donkeys were captured in the western states, (Utah, Nevada, Arizona) and brought to Michigan in an attempt to find homes. Because of the regulations put on buying them, none of these animals should ever make it to the meat market for slaughter. That is how it is suppose to work.
At this time there is a great deal of controvercy in our country. Some of the greedy people want the horses taken off the government owned land & others want them left alone on the land to run wild and free as they have for 100's of years. The government used to do round-ups of small amounts of horses and would sell most of them and that was suppose to keep herds samll enough that there was plenty of food and water so they could stay healthy and fit. But now they are doing the round-ups much more aggressively and reducing the herds too much. As they reduce the horse herds the ranchers are adding more cattle to the land so there is less and less food for all BUT it's not the horses causing the problems, it's the cattle. To the cattle ranchers that want to use this cheap land the horses are nothing but a nuisance for them and they'd just as soon they were all removed so they could add more cattle. It's a very disgusting situation with plenty of people very angry on both sides. There are laws in place to protect the horses from this but the laws are being ignored and those in power are abusing that power. Makes me just sick. One of my goals is to inform people in this country what is happening and encourage them to write letters etc. to the people with the power so we can try to get it stopped. Much damage is already done in the sense that they have rounded up many thousands of horses already. The sooner it is stopped, the more horses will be left in the wild.
Sorry if this was way more information then wanted to hear. I am very concerned about the whole issue.