Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

Boy do I have a treat for you folks.

Last March, I met a group of students from the University of Missouri who traveled to Southwest Colorado for “alternative spring break.” While some college students are sunning on the beaches of South Padre Island, Fort Lauderdale and San Diego, these radical guys and gals set themselves up to do some good somewhere that needs some good work done. Kathe Hayes of the San Juan Mountains Association heads up the program and works with Forest Service and BLM personnel to determine projects that need done. Students travel to areas on San Juan public lands to do all kinds of work, and in the Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, past projects have included fence removal, sign placement, reclamation of illegal roads, and cutting and treating tamarisk.

Amanda Conner was a senior and one of the leaders last year – her second trip to the area. She was already a horse person (an animal science major, I think?), but I found out recently that our Spring Creek Basin wild horses so piqued her interest in mustangs that she started looking for a way to spend time with them on an internship. “Somehow I ended up with a job documenting the horses in Sand Wash Basin for the HSUS as part of their study,” she said by email. Cool! That was last summer, and she got to know a lot of the horses. HSUS is the Humane Society of the United States, and it was the PZP study she was part of. She’s headed back for another stint this summer. Can’t get away from them, huh? 🙂

Fast forward to now. Amanda reads this blog regularly, she said, and she has kept up with news about our three mares that were introduced from Sand Wash Basin last October after the roundup there. Guess what? She has pictures of Kootenai and Raven!

She’s easy to pick out, right? Amanda said she thinks this is Kootenai’s natal band, and her sire is likely the band stallion Tumbleweed.

There she is on the far left. Amanda thought Kootenai’s mother was the grulla right next to her or a bay mare; they were a close-knit group.

Doesn’t she look so young? And “cute as a button”! She was in her 2-year-old summer here. She should be 3 this year. I think that’s probably right.

Now a couple pictures of our black-and-white girl:

There’s Raven with her band at a water hole. How lucky are we that Amanda sent these pictures?

Undeniably our Raven girl! The sooty palomino at far right is the band stallion – Amanda called him Corona. Note that Raven looks very similar in the photos to how she looks now, which seems to reinforce my suspicion that she might be a little older than Mona and Kootenai. If she is pregnant (uh-oh, is that a spoiler?!), Corona could be the sire!

And one more photo Amanda sent along:

This palomino pinto mare and her foal were in Corona’s band with Raven.

Amanda is headed to graduate school, where she will study equine reproduction. That should be right up her alley after working with the HSUS on the PZP study.