October 9, 2009 – Mountain Update

It’s been really unpleasant here this week. It has been cold, windy, and snow has been falling all around the area. We had a semi-decent day yesterday, which has turned out to be the literal calm before the storm. (There’s a big Canadian cold front moving through now, and it’s even more unpleasant!)
I took advantage of yesterday and headed out to the range to get some observations in. It ended up being a very successful, though chilly, day out there.

I started out by doing some scoping into the Burnt Timber area. The first harem I saw was Doc’s.

This is the best I could do with my camera, but I actually can get right in on them with my spotting scope. Many cold-weather observations are done through my scope as this is the most efficient way to do it. Also, I can see just about everything I need to see with the scope. If I see anything that seems off about a horse through the scope, then that may warrant a trip where I get closer to that particular horse.

During this scoping, I also saw Baja and Two Boots’ harems. Here was a case where something was off; I noticed that Two Boots’ colt foal wasn’t visible. I then headed over to Burnt Timber itself. This would allow me to get a closer look at Two Boots’ harem while also letting me find more horses in Burnt Timber while being able to go to some vantage points from which I could scope out Sykes.

The first horses I saw on Burnt Timber were Lakota’s harem.

Nearby was Prince and Ireland, and just up from there were Mescalero and his two mares. Down from Mescalero was Santa Fe and his harem. Scoping out into Burnt Timber again, I could see Duke’s harem and the bachelor Ferdinand. Further in was Jackson’s harem; Littlefoot was down the ridge from them. Jackson’s mare Brumby is one I get a lot of inquiries on; she is the mare who tied up during the roundup. She and her foal are doing quite well now.

I hiked down to Two Boots to see them next.

I just want to once again express how impressed I am by Two Boots. Would you ever guess that he’s 20 years old? As I got down there and walked around the harem, I saw that the colt foal really was missing. I’d last seen him with the harem on September 23rd. It’s hard to say why he disappeared. Maybe it was weather related, it isn’t uncommon for young horses to disappear during big storm events. The foal’s mother is the mare Sequoyah.

Her daughter in the harem also had a foal this year, and she was looking pretty good yesterday.

Scoping to Sykes, I was able to see the harems of Blue Moon, Custer, White Cloud, and Coronado. Some of these horses were really high on Sykes while some where nearly to the lower, arid parts of the ridge. All seemed to be just fine, even the tiny foal in Coronado’s harem.

The last horses I saw were the bachelors Galaxy and Fiesta. They looked pretty intent on getting whereever they were headed. By this point, the sun was pretty low; and it was getting a lot colder.

Besides the blue paint and missing family members, you’d not really know these horses have recently been through a huge roundup. I’m not really seeing any soreness, and the horses are acting like you’d expect them to act this time of year. I really like being able to get a large set of observations in this time of year. It was only six harems and one bachelor I was unable to find in Burnt Timber and Sykes, so that is a pretty good day considering the weather. I’m going to be out of town for the next week, and so I look forward to getting back to the mountain to see how all of the horses are doing.

September 16, 2009 – Adoption Info

I’ve been up on the mountain twice this week, and I plan to put up a post with photographs of what I’ve seen tomorrow. For now, I just want to post a link to this PDF. The PDF has some information on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Adoption, including a map and directions to Britton Springs. You can see the PDF by clicking here.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some specific information on the horses.

September 7, 2009 – Gather Day 5

Today was a pretty tough day. It was cool and windy this morning, and so this prevented the helicopter from leaving early on. Horses that were to be removed who hadn’t yet been prepared and processed were taken care of. This is where I think it got tough. The horses just seemed a lot more nervous going through the chutes today compared to previous days. There were those incidents earlier on with the young males jumping out of the chutes, and there have been some other times when the horses would bang around and rear up in the chutes. Today, though, there were a few that were actually trying to climb out of the top of the chutes.

I’m not sure if they could possibly succeed, but I really don’t want to know. It just was not a good situation with these horses doing this. Fortunately, someone was usually there to keep them from doing this; and so the later incidents were not as scary as the first one was. This first horse to do it up here was the young bachelor Hunkpapa. The only signs of injury I saw on any of the horses who did this were some bloody lips, but otherwise they seemed to be physically okay.

As the day progressed, the helicopter went up and was soon down with the first horses. The first group to come in was Morning Star’s harem. Today I was able to actually watch the horses come in with the helicopter for my first time. On the other days I was back in the chutes, and I couldn’t really see much besides the helicopter. While I was down there, they explained to me how this all worked. Apparently, the helicopter pushes the horses down; and the horses are often allowed to set their own pace. The helicopter just keeps them moving in the direction he wants them to. When they get to this final area here, the helicopter starts to speed up to get them moving faster through the wings toward the trap area. I’m sure you’ve all seen the domestic horse that is released around this time too. This horse runs down the trap to lure the wild horses in that direction. It is for this reason that these horses are called Judas horses (they are also referred to as Prada horses).

Morning Star’s family was put through the chutes to get hair samples for the DNA analysis and to give some of the females PZP. Meanwhile, the helicopter had gone back up to get some more horses that he had pushed partway down the mountain. Soon we were alerted that he was close, and we went back to the traps. He brought two harems in fairly close together. The first was Cloud’s harem, which I know was very hard for many of the people watching. In this photograph below you can see the Judas horse running along the wings with Cloud’s harem running along with him.

A short while later, the helicopter brought in the second group. This was Jackson’s harem.

Once they were in, we headed down to double check that each member of his harem was there and that they were in good shape. As we came close to the trap, the workers there had us stop and not come any further. They said that one of the mares was shaking, and they called for the veterinarian. They said that she had been tied up, which means that her stomach muscles were bound up. The group was very slowly taken down to the chutes so that she could be treated by the veterinarian. The mare was Brumby. After she was treated, the group was put into a pen so that she could recover. The veterinarian watched her closely for the rest of our time there, and by the end he said that she was recovering very well. This was one of the first really big incidents in which a horse was not doing well during this gather. From the moment that the workers told us not to come any closer to the end when the veterinarian was sitting there watching Brumby, it was pretty apparent that all of the workers were taking their jobs very seriously. They were very concerned for Brumby, and they did everything they could for her.

Another group was brought in a while later. This was Duke’s harem. Duke has one of the newer foals in his harem; she was born during the week of July 19. The foal seemed to be doing well as did the rest of the harem. While this was going on, some of the horses were loaded onto trailers so that they could be released.

These horses were Admiral and Sitting Bull’s (pictured above)  harems as well as the bachelors Fiero and Exhiliration. They were taken to the Sykes Ridge Road entrance of the range to be released as this is an area these horses live in. I didn’t get to go watch them be released, but I was told they were out of sight very quickly once the trailer doors were opened.

Toward the end of the day, I had someone come and ask me about the horses that are in the stallion pen. Apparently there had been some discussion that a mare was in with these stallions. There hasn’t ever been a mare in there with those stallions. When these horses are being sorted, the workers are asking and re-asking me if the horse is a male or a female so that it can go to the right place. They are obviously figuring this out on their own as well. It’s something that everyone cares a lot about. The stallion pen is right behind the chutes.

I hope that this is only a temporary arrangement for these stallions, and I hope that they can be more separated when there is space available in the other pens. I hope this all because this isn’t an extremely stable situation. Trigger and the young males from his harem definitely have established their area in the pen. In fact, a second watering area had to be added as they wouldn’t let anyone else there. These horses are in the bottom of these photos. In this photograph is Trigger, Great Star, Hipshot, Holster, and Itasca. Putting Conquistador in the pen with these other males definitely added more tension to this situation. Conquistador joined Bo, Shane, Floyd, and Hickory. They are in the top photo. It isn’t uncommon to see these stallions having confrontations with each other, and so hopefully they can be split up soon.

Also, I saw that there were some inquiries as to why some people were allowed in the chutes while others weren’t. From what I understand, it came down to people not wanting to sign volunteer agreements with the BLM. Without these agreements, the BLM shouldn’t allow people back in these working areas. We did sign a volunteer agreement to help with this gather, primarily through horse identification.

There were 36 horses gathered today. I think that there are tentative plans for the gather to be done by the end of Wednesday. I’ll post more tomorrow.

September 6, 2009 – Gather Day 4

Well, I had some other information posted here; but I think it would be better if we save these topics for later. If you read it, I hope you were able to understand it properly. If you haven’t read it, all I would like to convey is that each and every horse on the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, and on any wild horse area for that matter, is important when considering their possible contributions to the herd’s genetics and thus the herd’s long-term survival.

Let’s get to today. We started out by heading up to Commissary Ridge as that is where things were supposed to be starting. By the time we got there, the helicopter had already landed; and we heard that Conquistador and his harem had been caught.

Conquistador’s harem was loaded into a trailer, and we all headed back to Britton Springs where they were unloaded.

After we had all left Commissary Ridge, the helicopter went back up to head toward the mountain horses. After we had been at Britton Springs for a while, the helicopter arrived with horses from the top. He had brought down Chino and Bolder’s harems. I had originally thought that traps would be used on the mountain some, similar to how they were used on Commissary Ridge, but these horses were pushed down the mountain. Below is Bolder’s harem as they enter a pen.

After these horses were brought in, they were brought through the chutes so that hair samples could be taken, PZP could be given, and horses scheduled for removal could be removed. This was just like had been done earlier.

When the helicopter went back up, I was able to find it with my binoculars and watch. Eventually he seemed to have found horses, but they came down Sykes Ridge. I’d say this was a longer way to go than Burnt Timber would be, but I don’t know the exact reasons why Sykes Ridge was used for these horses. It took quite a long time for him to get the horses down to Britton Springs, but they did show up eventually. (Chino and Bolder’s harems were brought in at about noon, this next group came in just after 3:00.)

This was a pretty big group of horses. When the horses are brought in like this, with different harems getting mixed up, they are first put into a big pen right at the end of the trap area.

At this point, the horses actually do a pretty good job of sorting themselves out into harems. The groups that came in here were Stiles, Flint, and Teton’s harems along with the young bachelors. The bachelors made it a little harder for the harems to calm down and split up. When these big groups are like this, I get to go back and tell them which horses go with which harem so that they can be split up and put into pens. We just don’t want to have horses from different harems get put with each other at this point. Each harem is isolated out and then walked down to their pen, as can be seen with Teton and Flint’s harems below.

Once we are ready at the chutes, they are brought through the chutes, which are near these pens. From here they go back to pens. The horses that are scheduled for removal and have been processed, which at this time are only the horses caught on Commissary Ridge yesterday, are split up by sex. Males are in one area while females are in another. Some of the younger males and females are together in their own area, though. The mares with foals are also in their own area.

Today, there were 36 horses brought in. Of these, 12 will be removed. I understand that tomorrow morning the helicopter will be going out to try and push more horses down to Britton Springs. I believe that some more horses who have been gathered but will not be removed will be released back onto the wild horse range. I will post more tomorrow.