June Happy Tails Rescue
A Stallion in a Pickle
On a dark and drizzly night, a stallion was reported on the highway. Range manager Corenna Vance relayed the report to LRTC rescue volunteers. With the help of Nevada Highway Patrol (NHP), the first two rescue responders pushed the wayward stallion, who had apparently gotten through a breach in highway fencing, into an apple orchard. The orchard was fenced on three sides, out of the way of the extreme danger of cars speeding along the major highway. The rescue was challenging with many confounding factors: the dark, the rain, irrigation ditches and holes in the apple orchard, and the mature trees the horse was using for cover. The TLAR team had to ask NHP to close a highway lane in order to safely set up a trap to capture the horse. They then needed to control traffic themselves when NHP had to respond to other calls. The rescue volunteers set up three teams, one containing the horse, one constructing and managing the trap, and one moving the horse to the trap. The containment team used construction netting to prevent the stallion from moving past the trap. Once the horse settled down near the trap opening, the containment team switched from maintaining the netting to forming a half circle around the stallion to gently add pressure to move him into the trap. This worked! The stallion was contained and then loaded into the trailer without incident. The teams drove him to an authorized release point where he will live the rest of his life wild and free. Wild Horse Connection volunteers got out quickly and identified a couple of areas where the fencing was down and in need of repair. The fences were fixed, hopefully avoiding any more incidents. Good work to everyone who worked on this rescue, you can read more about it here.
The stallion in the trap
He was safely loaded into a trailer.
The stallion being released at a safe, approved location!
Lost in the storm
Foal season tends to bring more rescues. With more little babies on the range, more band stallion skirmishes, more bachelors looking for their own mares, there are more opportunities for the little ones to get separated from their mother and the herd. This is what happened to a two-and-a-half-week-old foal when bad weather hit the Virginia Range. When the storm rolled in, the horses scattered up the hills to a safer area. The little foal got lost in the scuffle and ended up with a bachelor stallion. The stallion protected him, like a good foster dad, but obviously couldn’t support him and didn’t appreciate the little guy looking for a way to nurse. A volunteer noticed this and called the range management group, Wild Horse Connection. Corenna Vance of WHC sent out the Technical Large Animal Rescue Team to help safely relocate the foal to his family. The team worked patiently and diligently to secure the foal. With a couple of team members positioned to discourage the stallion from running and taking the little guy with him, another one watching the stallion closely for safety, one slowly approached the baby from behind. His low energy movements looked almost slow motion. Once the foal was secured, the team wrapped him in a blanket to both calm the foal and protect the team from flying hooves. After volunteers identified the missing foal and what band he belonged to with the help of the database kept by the fertility control team, volunteers were able to safely transport and reunite the mom and baby, in one big happy ending! You can read more operational details and watch videos of the rescue and the happy reunion here.
The foal and his “foster dad”
LRTC member patiently and quietly working his way towards the foal
Mom and baby being reunited!