Comment by: Lance Earl 2011-01-26 11:38:10

With regard to foot note 5, I think I understand the formula. Net losses equals (total sales + total expenses) X 4. I wonder if I can use this system at tax time.

Reply by: Kathy Mahan 2011-01-28 11:45:22

with regard to foot note 5.. Perhaps he mispoke, and may have been quoting the cost difference over the average lifetime of the horses in question?

Reply by: Lance Earl 2011-01-30 04:22:08

"And some people estimate that they lose as much as $500 million (5) a year," There is no misspoke about it. First, his source is "some people". He has nailed nothing down. Second, he threw that number out ($500 million) to raise the boiling point of people to stupid to check it out. This is not a factual political letter. It is an ad, possibly a paid ad. Certainly a manipulated ad because he himself bought and regurgitated the numbers without one bit of confirmation.

Comment by: Kathy Mahan 2011-01-28 11:40:51

What needs to be considered here is Rancher DO get paid to graze mustangs. Privately owned ranchers at being paid to be Long Term Holding facilities at basically the same rate SAM has proposed.

The cost savings is that it would remove 1000 horses from short term holding where the cost is much higher, up to $2500 a year. Also include the cost of shipping 1000 horses to the mid west, which is not actually allowed under the Wild Horse & Burro Protection Act.

An added bonus is that at Mustang Monument the American People would actually have an opportunity to see their wild horses, instead of them being hidden away on a ranch, with NO accounting to the tax payers of where they are, how many there actually are, or if they have been shipped out in the night.

In my area mustangs that were never offered at a single adoption are shipped to LTH.(never seemed to be any listed on the BLM adoption calendar, no facility photos on the web site either, and never participated in internet adoptions) I'm talking young, healthy, curious, friendly, just coming 3 year olds who will now forever live at tax payer expense, because you can not I am told get one back out of LTH). In the year the horses were available I didn't see any adoptions in our area, no facility days like they used to have, no delivery incentives, in fact I know of people who called the facility who were told they "didn't do adoptions there anymore" To which I said "WHAT?!?!?!" Trainers I know called more then once to get TIP horses (Mustang Heritage Foundation Program) and were always told "We have no geldings" really? none? in the 800-900 horses on the facility? When a trainer found some she wanted they didn't return her calls and refused to load out for her when she finally reached them in person.

I'm not saying there aren't great people working at the corrals. In fact I like most of the folks at the one near me, but this just didn't seem to me like an honest effort to do right by these horses, or to be pro adoption. The local corral folks get squeezed I think, by bosses & bureaucrats. I think we have all felt that way in our own jobs on occasion... like your hands are tied by current policy, rather then whats truly right.

Horses are going from round up to closed facilities. No public viewing, no offering them for adoption.. They are shipped from there to God knows where because BLM doesn't feel we deserve the right to know, all we are given as a response even if you do know a horses number is grasslandpasture, and yes said said just like that, a pat answer with no real meaning, a mechanical programed response.

Lastly I fail to see how Mustangs grazing those AUMs would effect others cattle ranching in the area at all.. They would be using existing grazing allotments the grass will just be eaten by horses instead of cows. She bought the ranches with the allotments, every other ranches allotments in the area would still be in force and available for cattle. (talk about paranoia, and prejudice)

Reply by: Lance Earl 2011-01-30 04:49:26

I think that you need to check your facts. Pickens says that the cost is $2500 per horse per year. BLM says that it is less than the $500.00 Pickens wants.

American people will be able to see the Mustang. It is my understanding the Pickens plans to charge people to view these horses. Wait, she wants to open an amusement park and have the tax payers provide the amusements and then charge them to see what is already theirs.Not cool.

Prior to Pickens purchasing these grazing permits, what species of animal grazed under those permits? Were they horses? They were most likely cattle. Loosing these permits will raise the cost of beef production because to produce an equal amount of beef, produces will have to turn to more expensive means of feeding these animals.

Imagine, if you will, that the government opened a chain of stores to compete with Walmart and such. Imagine that Walmart and the rest of us paid taxes to build these stores. Imagine that they sold cut-rate merchandise and promoted it as top of the line. Finally, imagine that they sold it for less than the cost to produce it. Everyone would cry "FOUL!".

Now, lets have a look at the mustang program. I am a horse breeder. I breed exceptional performance horses. I, you and everyone else pay taxes to care for the mustang. I, you and everyone else pay taxes to promote mustang makeovers and other such nonsense. Then the government sales an inferior product into the market, directly competing with breeders like myself. The government has no legitimate place in commerce, yet, there they are.

In what ways is the Walmart illustration different than the mustang reality? Mustangs should not be available for adoption. In doing this, the government has stepped on my right for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Prior to the wild horse and burro act, mustangs could live and exist as they always have. Impact on the tax payer was negligible, herd numbers were in check, and the mustang survived. All was well.

Paranoia, and prejudice? This will be your only warning. Keep it civil or I will show you the door. Attacks, name calling, etc, will not be allowed here.

Reply by: Kathy Mahan 2011-01-31 00:54:30

You can not go to Indian Lakes/Broken Arrow (or whatever it is called this week) and see mustangs. It has been closed and will remain closed I am told,(and yes, I have asked) The horses there are not available for adoption, just waiting to be shipped off to Long Term Holding; which is also closed to the public. You can not see them, you can not adopt them, you can not find out anything about them, except if they die before leaving the facility, and then only if they are over 4 months old, and they feel like reporting the death.

The grazing permits.. :sigh: Try to stay with me here. THE PEOPLE THAT HAD THOSE RANCHES SOLD THE RANCHES ALONG WITH THE PERMITS. THEY WEREN'T GOING TO RANCH THERE ANYMORE, SO THEY DIDN'T LOSE ANYTHING, THEY SOLD IT, AND MADE A LOT OF MONEY DOING IT. I doubt they are unhappy. EVERYONE ELSE IN THE AREA, STILL HAS ALL THEIR PERMITS AND CAN STILL RANCH JUST LIKE THEY HAVE BEEN. THE AUM COST IS NOT EFFECTED, IT'S NOT GOING TO COST THEM ANYMORE TO RUN THE SAME NUMBER OF CATTLE.

To illustrate this point imagine there was a market on the corner, and Joe sold it. It becomes a church, or a bowling alley, but not a store. (because that would be the same as if Joe were still running his store, and she is not going to be running beef)

The new owner gets to use the parking spaces outside the store, but they aren't taking anything away from the other stores, in fact the other stores get even more business because Joe's customers have to shop somewhere else. The new church/bowling alley actually attracts folks who never came to that part of town before because, they have a store like Joe's near their house, but not the church/bowling alley. While they are near the church/bowling alley they shop a little here and there and the stores nearby make even more money!

Its apples and oranges. It won't cost any more for ranchers to ranch cows near there or away from there. It will be the same. Maybe the price of beef goes up a little bit, which isn't a bad thing for the local ranchers.


You seem to have some sort of personal beef with the Mustang Heritage Foundation, The Extreme Mustang Makeover Events, and I'll assume the TIP program, (where trainers get paid to gentle and find adopters for horses that would otherwise be headed to Long Term Holding living on tax payer dollars until they die)

Have you met any of the folks at MHF? cause they are the greatest folks! REALLY! We adore them! Kind, caring, high energy, and they just ooze positivity, but will tell you to Cowgirl up when you need to hear it too. They are actively working on finding solutions, & improving the situation, every one is a real go getter.

The MHF events are doing pretty well & from what I've seen I'd guess between the sponsors, ticket sales, merchandise, & horse adoptions the events might be paying for themselves.

I've been to several of the Makeovers beginning with the original event in 07. Have you been to any of the events? Ever spoken to the trainers? The adopters? I have. I'm in the stands, in the barns, at the booths.. You know what most of them want? A nice, quiet trail horse. Most of them are not there to buy a performance horse, but some of them are, and they find some Jim Dandys let me tell you.

I own a Quarter horse, a paint, and a Haffie. We also have a Quarter filly with no papers because her dam got dumped cheap by a QH breeder without her papers and no breeders certificate for the foal to come, Oh and we have 4, yes FOUR mustangs.

Each is from a different place, and are a different "type". I have a mare people say they would swear was a quarter horse if she weren't branded, but she is all mustang in spirit. Brave, Curious, & discriminating. She won't abide rudeness from humans, but will do almost anything in trade for a good scratch. Another we get asked if he is an Andalusian. He's the smartest most athletic horse I've ever owned. My husband used to lay down and put his foot on his chest, that's how much he trusted this horse. The third is a Curly, with the most beautiful gaits, but haunted eyes. She is the one who will forever pine for her old life in the wild. The last is a bold, mischievous little Rez filly. She is the instigator in our herd, trouble with a capital T, but loves and is so careful around children.

Don't misunderstand I like Quarter horses. Foundation Quarter horses, not so much the half breed appendix, the tiny footed halter cripples, or peanut rollers. Mustangs are inferior to a quarter horse? They helped create the Quarter Horse breed. Where do you thing their speed and ability to maneuver so quickly came from?

I purchased/adopted a horse at one of the Makeovers, and ended up leaving him in Texas when a man asked to buy him from me after the sale because he had fallen in love with that horse and just that horse. That's how it is with mustangs, if you are open to them. He regretted missing out on buying him, and we still keep in touch and visited with them last year. Nice man, great horse, they make a great team.

You speak of being frustrated in your pursuit of happiness, but you would deny the happiness mustangs bring to so many? I should not have my mustangs because they are bad for your business? I was never in the market for a high end performance horse, and frankly neither are most of the horse folks I've known in my life.

Success in business is achieved by providing a desirable product, or service at a quality, and price which makes it popular enough to be profitable to produce. Sometimes it's a teeter totter, sometimes it's a roller coaster.. You may be on the downside right now, but so are a lot of people.

I don't think the makeovers are ruining your business, you might just need to keep up with the market. Honestly, if the market is for mustangs right now, maybe you should try training some. Many of the trainers I've spoken to at the events say their Mustangs learned faster and retained more then the Quarter Horses they have been training.

*BLM spends more then $500 year on horses in the SHORT term holding facilities. I did the math early last year on figures from their own web site. I encourage you to do the same. Divide the budget for the WHBP by the number of horses in holding. When I did it for 2008? I think it was, I came out with $828 per horse. So if they are paying $475 in long term, then short term cost would be much higher to make the average be almost double that figure.

Ranchers pay BLM $16.20 for 12 AUMs. (12 AUMs is the amount of forage a mustang would graze in an entire year.) Based on Bob Abbeys $475 per year figure for Long Term Holding, We (tax payers) pay ranchers $1.30 a DAY to graze horses, while Ranchers pay us (tax payers) $1.35 a MONTH. So we pay 30 times more to graze these displaced mustangs. 30 TIMES MORE!! That should tick you off just a bit. Talk about lack of balance! I don't blame that on the horses, I blame that on BLM. Ranchers are paying less, and getting paid more... They're making money off both ends of us.

Finally the true trouble with balance on the range is that man has done away with too many native species, then claim there is no predators for the horses.

Here is how I would fix that...

We reintroduce the native predator species and let them keep the horses in check. If lions, wolves & bears become a problem for cows, then ranchers should try running buffalo instead of those sissy cows. Buffalo obviously fared far better then cows on the real range, didn't there used to be millions of them too?

Reply by: Lance Earl 2011-01-31 10:29:27

I am not going to bat this around over and over again, however, I will clarify a few points.

1. When I talk about grazing permits, and the cost of raising beef, I am not talking about the cost to individual ranchers. I am talking about the net cost to the American consumer. Nationally, the average cost to produce beef will increase as grazing low cost grazing areas are lost. The grazing areas that Pickens has bought reduced the grazing area for produce beef production. Therefore, the national average cost to produce a pound of chuck will be affected.

2. Are mustangs inferior? Read article 1 and article 2.

3. Native predators... What about man. Have we not been predators from the beginning. Has not man traditionally captured and hunted these animals? If you are worried about maintaining native species, The horse will have to go. They are not indigenous. Now, before you say that the horse is indigenous to America based on fossil evidence. Allow me to share the definition of the word from the World English Dictionary: originating or occurring naturally (in a country, region, etc); native. Did the modern horse originate in America? No, they have found a distant cousin and called it early horse. Whatever that was is a closely related to the modern horse as I am to the chimp. By that same standard, I can show that the chimp is indigenous to America. Now, even if you could argue that point, how does the mustang fare when you apply the second point of the definition. Does the mustang naturally occur in America? No. Whatever used to live here was removed by nature. You want to limit public lands to native species, wonderful.

4. Buffalo. Have you ever tried to manage a herd of buffalo in wide open spaces? If you choose to make a suggestion, at least make an intelligent one.

5. I did not say that the mustang is ruining my business, I said that I am being forced to fund my competitor's promotional efforts. Show me one other industry where that is the case. And if you can show me another case, I will show you another violation of a citizen's constitutional rights.

6. You keep talking about the cost of the current mustang program. People like you are responsible. Repeal the wild horse and burro act. Reverse the no slaughter bill. If you do that, the cost will go away, the mustang will survive and the numbers will be managed, the mustang will again be and asset and not a liability, you will be able to go on to private lands and look because there will be no reason to close these areas, and finally, those horses that do die will suffer much less than they would in a lions jaws. It seems to me that my solution would give you everything you want!

Reply by: Kathy Mahan 2011-01-31 15:24:16

Wild/Feral/re introduced whatever. The cattle aren't native either. The horses at least originated here, and were back running wild before cows arrived.

What you seem to leave out of the equation is that we are talking about PUBLIC land, it doesn't belong to the ranchers. Frankly I think it's time ranchers start paying a realistic cost for their use it's use. A $1.30 a day is the going rate of grazing, yet the BLM grazing rate of $1.35 a month has only risen $.23 (as in cents) in 45 years. I find that to be gross mismanagement of our public resources. Nothing else I know of has had that low of an inflation rate.

Range balance isn't less then 3%. That's the percentage of AUMs for mustangs, and even that small amount is getting slashed in a huge way right now. Less then 3%, there really isn't anyway to call that balanced.

I know you profess to not like math, and declare it too finite, but it is actually infinite. There is logic but also magic in it's patterns, and they are found everywhere in nature. You can google mathematical patterns in nature if you don't want to take my word on it. There's some awesome stuff out there written by some pretty smart folks.

I read the "articles" you posted as reference and it is still just you, and your opinion. My vet thinks my mare is as nice as a many well bred quarter mares. That's his opinion.

I'm not looking to breed my horses so they don't need them to be perfect. I don't show much. If we do yes, it's a mustang show, or a local riding or team penning group. Most people don't train to show at high levels. It's very expensive to train and show a horse at the level I'm assuming you show at, and If you are not looking to breed, it's not important for a horse to have an impressive performance record. It doesn't mean they can't perform to that level, the owners chose not to.


I knew a guy with a bunch of degrees. He was a Lawyer, he was a Dr, he may have had more initials after his name then I have letters in my name. He wore those letters like a testament to his intelligence. It irked him that I could look at something and point out things he had missed. Logical things, simple things. Those letters didn't bring him someone that loved him, they didn't make his kid want to spend time with him. They were worthless in areas that really matter in life.

Looks like you work with children, do you think those handicap-able kids care about a horses pedigree or show record? Heck no! They love the horse for who he is, and how it makes them feel. That's what hanging with a mustang is like. It's as real as it gets.

There are a lot of people just like to have fun with their horses. I'll bet there are way more family/recreational horses in the US then high dollar performance horses. Some of them are probably the rejects from the overactive breed mills that churn out horses with the same 3 bloodlines dotted all over their inbred pedigree. You know, the lots of winners in the bloodline mentality that brought us HERDA & HYPP. My mustang mare is probably less inbred then your quarter horses. Except for BLM intervention she is a product of natural selection. If I do take her to a show I list her breeder as God.

I still don't see how you are being force to fund government care for your competitors. Most people adopting mustangs wouldn't buy a horse from you anyway. Mustang folk tend to appreciate the real things in life, the relationship is the reward.

Besides if BLM had managed them better in the many years folks have been asking for them to find other management methods there wouldn't be so many standing in those pens. The GOA told them 10 years ago their method was flawed, and nothing changed until the last 12 months. They still refuse to add science. Their solution is to decimate the populations and in 3 years double the number in holding. I don't see that as positive progress, and I am not working to repeal the WHBPA, I want it restored and for there to be proper management of our herds. It's not the horses fault that the BLM politicos have their heads up their rumps for a good while.

I wasn't kidding, and I do know Buffalo are harder to manage. It is the fact that they are bigger, bolder, and stronger that makes them less likely to be lost to weather, or predators. That they are also healthier for us to eat then cows is an added bonus. Man managed to "control" them almost out of existence, so I think it's possible they could be effectively managed now with a bit of effort. The extra meat and hardiness of the beast just might pay off and be worth the bit of change it takes in the beginning.

Reply by: BJ Johns 2011-01-31 20:37:36

OK what everyone is not saying is... Pickens wants to run the horses on the 500,000 acr. FREE.. YEAR AROUND (with the wildlife and horses the land can not handle that).. and the BLM PAY HER... cattle ranchers run the cattle on BLM for only 3 or 4 months a year... so why should she be able to run the horses YEAR AROUND???? Cattle ranchers feed in the winter... but PICKENS, you can bet will not feed a lick. AND...BLM does NOT get over $100 million budget for anything.. soooooooooo.. BLM will be out the money for the livestock that will run on the 500,000 acr. and they will have to pay $25.00 more a head for long term holding... so how is that saving tax payers anything?
Ok ya.. and I am sure your MUSTANG looks so much like a Quarter horse because..SHE IS ONE... horses are turned out in Nevada all the time.. and I am sure she is the offspring of just such a horse.

Reply by: Lance Earl 2011-01-31 21:22:43

Excellent point BJ.

I would like to add one thought about the mustang being a quarter horse. I am sure that there is some of that blood in them, however, my experience would indicate that they are still a substandard product.

In my past five years of producing versatility ranch horse clinics and competitions, I have seen mustangs on many occasions. Always, always, always they have been among the very worst at the event. Never, never never has one earned a single point or as much as a penny. Now I know that there are surly exceptions, but I believe them to be rare. On the flip side, if you buy a well bred cow horse, they are generally pretty strong. The exception is the occasional horse that just does not work out, in other words, the horse with mustang like qualities. And it is not just my opinion. If they really had all this potential, we would be seeing them showing, placing and winning. We do not. That is not opinion, that is fact.

Reply by: Lance Earl 2011-01-31 21:41:03

Yes, I do work with kids and adults. Initially, They do love the horse for who he is, and how it makes them feel. Kids also love puppies and kittens, it is just how they are wired. But as they grow, things change. For most people, the simply mediocre can get a bit boring. They reach a point where they are wondering what next. When they see what can be done with an exceptional animal that has been bred for specific traits and had proper training, their eyes light up. This is where a child's automatic love of animals begins to become a passion. This is what I live for. I love to see a fire ignite in people. To date, I have never seen a single mustang that can make that happen.

Comment by: Lance Earl 2011-01-31 21:44:48

Some of the comments here have drifted a bit off topic and have discussed the idea that the mustang is an inferior house. If you would like to continue down this path, please add your comments here. Thanks