After the holding pens, where the horses and sorted and marked, they are taken to the BLM Corrals.
This is where the horses will live until they are adopted, which could takes years. The older ones and ones that no one wants, will be shipped to a refuge in Okahoma to a private place where the public is never allowed to see them. The tax payers will pay millions of dollars a year to keep these horses there. They stallions will all be gelded, they will not go as family units, their days of being free are over forever.
The horses are put into the corrals, separated by sex, so the family units are
no longer together. The foals are taken away from their mom's until they
arrive here at the corrals, where they will eventually be paired up again.
This was so sad, the stallions on the left calling and nickering to their mares
on the right....nose to nose through the fencing...
Any one who thinks that these horses are not a family, needed to be here
this day. It was heart breaking to listen and watch them.
The Stallions and mares remained like this, nickering to each other, until
a more dominate stallion decided that they were to close to his mares, and
he then took over, biting and kicking to keep the other Stallions away from the
fence and mares.
This guy was totally mad at the world...he would prance back and forth.
kick and bite the other stallions, he was so angry...
He would almost challange another stallion to come close
I think he felt so helpless..to see them in the wild, they are so proud
and so strong, defending their family. Now they find themself powerless
to do anything, he cannot get to his mares or foals. Total confussion as
to what has happened within a matter of a few hours.
Their faces are cut and scraped from running into the metal corrals
and fighting the trailers when they are being loaded. The look in
their eyes made me cry...it was heart breaking for me to watch the once
free and beautiful animals now caged like a prisoner.
By clicking on the picture to enlarge it, you can see the scrapes on their
faces. This was just one days trapping, some were hurt much worse,
some so bad that they had to be destroyed. This should not have had
to happen to them.
Further down the line was this mare and her foal...the
poor little guy was so sore he could hardly move.
This was very sad to see, to think that human's have
such a lack of respect for such a small and helpless
animal, this doesn't say much for the human race. It made
me sick to think he had been run up to 10 miles, through rocks
and brush.
She was nervous of us, but her love for her foal was
much stronger that her fear of us, even after what she
had been through. We stayed back and only watehed
her a couple minutes.
We walked out into the big holding areas, these horses had come in
during the last several days. This mare was not in very good shape, she looked
to be old and was thin and shaggy. Its a wonder she even made the gather, but
her foal was strong and beautiful.
This baby is beautiful, what a little champion it is for it has
survived a run for its life, and made it...some were not so lucky.
After coming to look us over, she walked back to her mom
Cute..this little one knew enough to lay in the shade of its mom..
This made us smile, one of the few times this day that we were able to.
We walked further and looked at all these horses, that just a few
days before had been free and living with their families...all gone..
The blue marking on them tells what area of the Twin Peaks that
they came from..
Another pretty foal...
It is heartbreaking.
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