September 7th, Labor Day 2020

This Labor Day, we’d like to thank our dedicated volunteers for the hard physical labor involved in managing wild horses! Keeping them healthy, wild and free is a huge job, probably more labor intensive than most people would guess. It is definitely a labor of love.

These are our important programs that we operate under contract with the AZDA (Arizona Department of Agriculture)

1. Emergency Feed Program
   Our volunteers load and haul 190 bales of hay per week, and spread over 2500 flakes to the horses at the feed stations: = 150 volunteer hours per week or 600 VHM. (Volunteer Hours per Month)
2. Habitat Improvement Program
   Our volunteers cut and haul miles and miles of downed barbed wire and trash: = 50 volunteer hours per week or 200 VHM
3. Rescue program
   Our volunteers take 24/7 care of our rescues, cleaning, feeding medical care, improving property etc: = 200 volunteer hours per week or 800 VHM
4. Fencing program
   Our volunteers maintain, monitor and fix fences and gates to keep horses safe: 20 hrs per week or 80 VHM
5. Road Patrol Program
   Our volunteers monitor Bush Hwy for open gates and horses crossing between 6 am and 10 pm to keep horses and people safe. We are the first ones to arrive and the last ones to leave the TNF: 80 hrs per week or 320 VHM’s.
6. Fertility Control Program
   Our certified darters search for and find the exact mares that are on the schedule for their boosters. It takes many hours to find and dart each mare. We have 8 certified darters plus their assistants, they do all of the administrative work to log it also: 60 hrs per week or 240 VHM.
7. Monitoring and Recording of injuries.
   When wild horses get injured our volunteers document and monitor those horses until they are healed and record the improvements: 50 hrs per week or 200 VHM’s.
8. Education, organization, communication and fundraising.
   We also have administrative volunteers and managers who do a lot of labor from behind their computers to keep it all running smoothly: 100 hrs per week or 400 VHM’s.

When you add all that labor up it amounts to almost a million dollars per year if you had to hire the people for it. But our volunteers don’t ask for credit, don’t ask for pay and they don’t boast about it.

Keeping the Salt River Wild Horses healthy and free is a true labor of love and the many hands make for light work. Thank you dear SRWHMG volunteers.