In March 2003, 59 horses arrived at their new home in Murchison, Texas—finally.
The Fund had received word in January that hundreds of wild horses in Crescent Valley, Nevada, were in danger of going to slaughter.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) claimed that the horses were trespassing on federal lands.
In reality, these animals were the unfortunate victims in a decades-long grazing and land dispute between the agency and two members of the Western Shoshone tribe, who have long argued that the land where the horses roam belongs to the tribe.
The BLM and the Nevada Department of Agriculture gave animal rescue groups only days to take as many of the horses as possible and planned to send any remaining horses to livestock auction, where they would be sold for slaughter.
The Fund immediately arranged to take the least adoptable horses to the ranch and networked with other organizations around the country to find homes for the remaining animals. The Fund's threatened legal action delayed the round-up and gave animal rescue groups more time to arrange for sanctuary for the horses.
Eventually there was a cooperative agreement guaranteeing that all of the horses would go to sanctuaries, and none would go to slaughter!
Fund staff members picked up 59 of the horses in Nevada—two mares and 57 stallions. The equines appeared to be in poor condition and in need of food. Many had scrapes and other signs of injuries due to their frantic flight away from the BLM's helicopters.
During the drive to Black Beauty Ranch, staff stopped every few hours to check on the horses and to give them food and water. Due to a storm, the caravan stopped for a day and a half in Albuquerque, rather than frighten the animals and risk the unsafe weather conditions in Texas.
Once at the ranch, the horses were all vaccinated and placed in a pasture where they were given more hay than they had ever seen in their lives. One of the mares arrived pregnant and gave birth to a young colt, who now gallops alongside his mother.
The horses are very energetic and playful. After they fully recover, they will freely roam the nearly 1,200 acres of the ranch with hundreds of other horses and burros.
Related Links
- Read about the Miracle Horses, who were on the slaughterhouse floor when their reprieve was handed down from a judge in Washington DC.
