September 14th

We considered not posting this, but we trust our audience to understand even the sad aspects of wild horse management.

Last night, one of Mick’s mares aborted a pre-term foal. This is the mare we were monitoring because she sustained a small puncture wound two weeks ago from a stick, and the wound became infected. We believe its the infection that caused the abortion.

Mick’s band is the band that was hiding in the coves all last year, so it is the only band where none of the mares received fertility control PZP, simply because they were in-accessible to our darting teams.

These types of incidents are sad, but they are perfectly natural. Her body was protecting her own health by expelling the foal. One extra benefit of PZP is that along with live foals, abortions and other sad natural foal deaths are prevented also.

Mares who abort or have a dead foal are known to go into grieving for a while and she may lose some weight. We are going to keep an extra eye on her and make sure that she gets some extra feed at the feed station.

Thank you volunteers Mel and Mike for handling this situation last night, thank you to Tina W, who alerted us, and thank you Rick as well as our AZDA AG Liaison Makenzie for checking on her this morning.

Managing them humanely for the public and by the public, SRWHMG.