WILD HORSES IN MY YARD

HERE in Western Nevada there are thousands of "wild horses". These horses are not indigenous to the area. In other words they were not here before humans arrived, in particular white Europeans, who brought horses with them in the mid 1800's. Of course there were areas in the west were Spanish explorers came in the late 1500's and 1600's and brought horses with them. Wild horses in the western US come from these two sources.

The horses we now see out on the range are come from domesticated horses that were either abandoned, turned loose or one way or another escaped human control. A better term might be "feral" horses, in other words, horses come from once-domesticated animals.

Some of these wild/feral horses are very recent to the range. The cost of owning a horse is prohibitive. I know people who owned a horse but for various reasons could no longer afford to keep it, and were unable to sell it so they just turned it loose out onto the range. Though this is the exception, it does indeed happen.

Right now there are approximately 2,000 to 2,500 wild/feral horses in the Virginia Range, a relatively small, dry, mountain range east of Reno and Carson City, Nevada. The problem is that natural forage and water on this range is limited, and getting more limited with the expansion of human habitation. As the horses breed and multiply resources needed to sustain the herds become quite strained, leading to poor health and even starvation. It is not uncommon to have horses come into ones yard searching for grass, or anything edible. It really is quite sad. The only time of the year these wild horses really have an abundance of feed out on the range is in the spring or early summer. The rest of the year is often very difficult for these beautiful animals.

Of course State and Federal programs that allow people to adopt captured, or rescued horses see some of them to good homes but only a small percentage. The growing problem is that the horses are multiplying beyond what the range can sustain. Organizations like the American Wild Horse Campaign are now inoculating the wild horse mares with PZP that makes them sterile in an attempt to control the future population of horses.

For those of us who live here with these feral horses as our neighbors it is always, at least for most of us, a joy to see the horses in the fields around our homes. It is not uncommon at all, too, to see them wandering up and down residential streets looking for a yard they can slip into as they search for food. Indeed, I have fed them out of my hand with carrots, apples, even loaves of bread when they are desperate for food in the winter months.

Another cool program that has been successful is to have prison inmates care and train the horses on prison property to get the horses ready for adoption.

Wild horses in my yard a couple of weeks ago.

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This wild horse doesn't look too wild at all.