It’s been about a month since the remaining Fall City 40 horses were seized in Enumclaw. These 24 horses have all been signed over to SAFE now, so we have full responsibility for their housing, feeding, and vet care, and we are taking steps to find homes for as many of them as possible. We are so grateful for the support we are receiving from this community to help us manage this huge rescue effort! It’s a lot of work, but with your help, we are making big changes for these horses!
Keep up to date with the horses at their website: http://mayday.safehorses.org
With regular feeding, the horses are starting to look and feel a lot better. There are some really nice looking horses in this group with cute markings and decent conformation. We’ve even discovered some unexpected athletic ability (like jumping!) in one or two of them. Most of them at least seem open to the idea of sharing the world with humans, and are becoming more gentle already. Wild horses are a challenge, to be sure, but most of these horses were born into this herd, not in the wild, but not exactly in captivity either. So we hope the young ones especially will make an easier transition from wild to domesticated.
As of this moment, six of the 24 horses — four mares and two colts — have been moved to new homes. Several of the remaining horses are in the process of being sent to foster care with experienced trainers for gentling, which will make them much easier and safer to place into adopt. All of the stallions will soon be gelded, and we’re finding adopters who can take in mares who are likely to be pregnant. Progress is being made.
But this is a tough time of year to be placing horses, and these are horses who are especially tricky to place. So we still need our community’s help with this rescue effort. Specifically, what we need includes:
• adopters who have experience with wild, unhandled horses
• trainers willing to foster and gentle one of these horses so we can place them more easily
• donations for the considerable cost for care, feeding, housing, vet costs, and transport of these horses
• people keeping an eye out for the missing mare, stolen by the owner, and for other groups of horses possibly owned by the same individual
We’ve also received some questions about the group of horses located in Auburn WA that were owned by the same person who owned the Fall City Forty. Those horses, about 50 in all, now belong to the owner of the Auburn property, and she is offering them for sale at $800 per horse to try to recoup her losses. There are several ponies, mini horses, and foals in this group, several colored horses as well. We believe that these horses came from feedlots and auction houses, so they are not wild horses. But they have not received much handling in the last year, so they will still need gentling and training. If you are interested in buying one of these horses, contact Dee Bowman at BnGRanchLLC@gmail.com SAFE has offered to cover the cost of gelding any of the stallions in this herd on behalf of their new owners.
