Second Foal Loses Hooves Then Put Down Nevada BLM Action

Horseback Magazine

BLM Report

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Foal Which Would Lose Hooves Laying Down Last Week

Photo by Laura Leigh

By Steven Long

HOUSTON, (Horseback) – The federal Bureau of Land Management confirmed today that a second foal has died at their hands after losing its hooves possibly from being driven down a Nevada mountainside by a roaring helicopter.
“Apparently there has been one more foal that was euthanized because of hoof Sloughs,” BLM spokeswoman JoLynn Worley of the agency’s Winnemucca office told Horseback Online.
The agency classifies the 1669 horses it has rounded up at the current Calico Mountain gather as “excess.”
Horseback has asked for the report of the BLM veterinarian who treated the foal. The foal died Saturday after two weeks of treatment. Worley has said she will post the report on the website when it becomes available.
Activist and videographer Laura Leigh noticed the foal laying down last week during a visit to the BLM hospital site. She had found the animal a caregiver outside of BLM control, however, it was too late.
According to a website set up for the current Calico roundup citing day to day progress on the capture of wild horses, the bureau acknowledges 27 deaths since the “gather” began on December 28th.
The BLM also admits that 20 to 30 mares have miscarried since late December.
Helicopter induced roundups have consistently resulted in wild horse deaths according to BLM statistics released late last year to Horseback Magazine.
In 2008, 45 percent of the roundups resulted in at least one fatality, and on one in Nevada, 27 horses died. The total number of deaths through injury or for other reasons totaled 126 animals that year.
The 2009 percentage of dead horses on BLM roundups is slightly worse at 46 percent resulting in at least one horse death. In July, a Wyoming gather proved fatal to 11 horses
Over the two years prior to the 2010 roundup season a total of 205 horses died at the agency’s hands
In BLM roundups, horses are often driven down miles of rocky slopes by a roaring helicopter. Such was the case in Wyoming this year when 11 horses died at Coconut Creek when 349 horses were caught.
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Thanks, Steve!