Re: No feral horse capture planned for Sundre zone this winter
The question that is never answered is, what positive environmental effect do feral horses actually provide? Absolutely none.
It's really all about serving the egos of the feral horse lovers. Better to have the grass they eat available to real wildlife or food producing livestock.
And I'm a horse lover, been riding, training and using them for ranching and rodeos all my life. I give the ones under my care the very best of care and assure them a good quality of life safe from predators. That can’t be done for feral horses.
I have friends who used to capture wildies during winter to sell, to supplement their income.
One time one captured a yearling filly, to thin to sell, likely wouldn't have survived the winter anyway, so turned out to be in her best interests. So he kept her, grew her out and tried to train her to ride. she never quit bucking so he used her for a pack horse.
She did well at that and spent the rest of her life as a useful well cared for animal with a better life than if she had remained in the wilderness or end up on some Asian or Europeans dinner plate. Her name was Mamie.
Now if culling is not going to happen, and I think it should coupled with a good adoption program, then contraception should enacted otherwise the numbers for the Sundre area will be well over the maximum by springtime.
I had offered to help with the contraception having had lots of experience with remote delivery of medications. But I was never asked to partake.
There is another approach to consider. The first contraception in large animals was in camels practised by the Arabs to stop their female mounts from lying down at the presence of male camels. It was a good way to immobilize the approaching army. They did this by putting washed stones into the camel’s uterus after calving.
This was the very first use of IUDs ever. Maybe there’s something to be learned from this that could be applied to the feral horses.
I actually enabled contraception in a female orangutan. It was the first ever and it worked very well. There maybe a better way to deal with the excess of feral horses if the people concerned would do some open minded thinking outside the box.
Darrel Florence,
Cremona
