Ranchers about 18 months into contract; auction this Friday and Saturday at BLM facility in Delta
With the Days of the Old West rodeo fast approaching, and its annual horse parade preceding other popular events, it’s almost natural to have horses on the brain.
Gregg and Randie Smith could relate, as they see hundreds of equines every day.
The Smiths house wild horses as part of a contract with the Bureau of Land Management, under the bureau’s wild horse management program.
The Sutherland couple answered a solicitation less than two years ago put out by the agency in bidding for space.
“We thought well, we should try for it,” Randie said. The Smiths filled out the necessary paperwork, put it in the mail, and played the waiting game.
Eighteen months later, and out of hundreds of other applicants, they got their answer.
“Then we started doing the first paperwork to get the first horse in the yard,” Randie said. Beyond that paperwork, there were on-site visits and other requirements.
Modifications to their existing facility—it was used previously for a herd of cattle—were needed to house up to 1,500 wild horses.
“We had six months to have our first modifications done,” Randie said. “We had half of our allotted horses in the first phase. Now phase two is complete.”
The Smiths own the land and facility itself, Randie said. The only agency owned piece is a hydraulic chute, used to treat the animals. They are currently one and a half years into their renewable, five-year contract with the BLM.
The shift to housing the amount of horses in comparison to cattle has been a seamless one, the Smiths say. Learning curves came from dealing with horses fresh from the range and adjusting to working with the BLM.
“(The horses) are just a little bit different to work with,” Gregg said.
When a new shipment of horses is brought in after a gather, the facility is quarantined, Gregg said.
“When we ship in new horses, they will quarantine our yard so that we can’t ship out at the same time, until those new horses have a negative Coggins test before any thing can resume.”
Coggins is an equine blood test to see if the animal is a carrier of Equine Infectious Anemia.
Currently, the facility holds anywhere between 600 to 800 horses. The numbers will fluctuate based on gathers and auctions, and the shipment needs of other facilities. The lowest number of animals dipped down to 200 last July, Randie said.
“We are set up to get more in July,” Randie said. “The last shipment we received was in October.”
Their stays are generally short, anywhere between five to six months. The longest horses have stayed was over a year, Gregg said.
Animals from the Owyhee, Eagle, Pancake and Stone Cabin horse management areas in Nevada are held in Sutherland. Horses from the Chokecherry HMA in Utah are also in the pens, said Trent Staheli, a BLM facility manager.
The horses are separated by age and sex, and generally kept within their own herd groups before being assimilated with other groups once testing is completed. Pregnant mares and those with foals, single mares and geldings are all separated from one another.
Staheli manages the bureaucratic side while the Smiths oversee the physical care and preparation of the animals.
“They do most of the physical work, whereas I handle more of the ‘office work,’” Staheli said. “We get requests in from other facilities, or adoption events; those come to me. Then I talk with Gregg, and we decide whether or not we can fill that.”
The animals held in Sutherland will either be adopted out or sent to long-term pasture—those are animals typically deemed too old to adopt.
“They’re basically sent to a ‘forever home,’” Staheli said.
An adoption event will be held in Delta on Friday and Saturday at the BLM corrals, 600 N 400 W.
Gates open Friday at 9 a.m., with bidding to follow at 10 a.m.—see the advertisement on Page 8 for more information.
