Pneumonia strikes young horses at BLM facility

As you read this article by M. Harmony, remember that the Indian Lakes facility is a privately operated facility and is closed to most public viewing except for invited professionals. This facility is being paid for by our tax dollars, though the public has no access and there is no verification of the treatment and conditions of the facility.

-- Lisa Griffith

Pneumonia is claiming the lives of young wild horses in BLM custody

These young foals were captured from the New Pass/Ravenswood Herd Management Area in Nevada on January 13th, 2011. They are among the horses sent to the Indian Lakes Road facility where the pneumonia outbreak is occurring.

Photo: BLM

February 10th, 2011 12:22 am ET

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Behind the closed doors of the BLM's Indian Lakes Road holding facility near Fallon, Nevada, pneumonia is suddenly claiming an alarming number of wild horses. During the week ending February 4th, 12 horses perished in the short-term holding pens known as "Broken Arrow"; eight of them were yearling victims of "secondary pneumonia." Upper respiratory disease has been rampant among the young horses confined at Broken Arrow since last June, and now it's attacking the latest arrivals, whose immune systems are at their most vulnerable.

These were otherwise healthy horses who were recently stampeded off their expansive ranges and captured in the dead of winter, as part of the just-concluded Eagle and Callaghan Complex roundups in Nevada. A total of 850 wild horses from these roundups were shipped directly to the Indian Lakes Road feedlot. According to the BLM's own reports, at least 37 of them are now dead, with 32 of these fatalities having occurred in the six weeks since the beginning of the year.

In a repeat of the pattern that emerged at the same facility after last year's Calico Complex roundup, other horses are starting to die or be "euthanized" as a result of what the BLM's veterinarian characterizes as "hyperlipemia," a condition of metabolic and liver failure caused by the extreme stress of the helicopter chase, entrapment, and ongoing captivity. Four of the horses who died at Indian Lakes Road in recent weeks were deemed to have perished from this roundup-related condition.

The BLM and its contractors like to pat themselves on the back by citing artificially deflated "gather mortality rates" in the vicinity of 1%. Indeed, in its press release announcing the conclusion of the Callaghan Complex roundup earlier this week, the BLM boasted that the gather-related mortality rate was .8%. But that's deceptive. The true cost in equine lives is much, much higher than that. It's dishonest to count only the horses whose lives were cut short at a trap site. The ones who fall in their wake are victims, too.