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> Could you cite your resource for info on what percentage of wild horses
> are  mustangs (that is, a identifiable breed of horse)?  I'd be very
> interested  in reading about how the BLM or whoever knows this.  Are all
> BLM horses  blood typed or is there some other identifier that BLM is
> using that I  haven't heard about?
Don't feel alone, Lif--the geneticists haven't heard about them, either. 
(I get an earful on this subject every now and again...)

>  But how do you know what's in a wild horse's ancestry?
> How  can you insure that you're getting a mustang and not a horse that
> looks  like a mustang but is the only one in the herd with a plow horse
> for a  grandparent?
And what precisely IS a mustang?  I know, I know, there are all kinds of
web sites out there with all sorts of mythology, but the bottom line is
that the herds out there are feral herds, and the best one can do to trace
ancestry is to know what sorts of horses were historically turned out in
that particular area.  Some feral herds are the result of ranch herds that
had some pretty thoughtful breeding going on--aided by the availability of
Remount stallions.  We had some really dandy endurance horses come out of
one specific herd in southern Idaho that you could just about have dropped
onto the Standardbred tracks to race--not much question what the Remount
focus of the local ranchers in that area was.  Others have had TB, Morgan,
and Arabian Remount stallions as significant influences, and yes, a few
had draft stallions turned out, originally to raise artillery horses for
the Remount, and later to raise bucking stock for rodeos.  Still others
have bred willy-nilly to pretty much anything that got loose, and that
shows as well.  (It all gets back to breeding, sooner or later.)

> > a very high percentage of the blm wild horses are well suited for
> > endurance riding.  you might call it a "grab bag"  approach, but most
> > any  of them that you pick will be able to get the job done.
> Again, where's the documentation for this?  I believe that just because
> of  sheer numbers we know that a high percentage of Arabians will be
> suited for  endurance.  But do we have enough BLM  horses entered in
> rides to come up  with as much meaningful data like we do with Arabians?
>  Has anyone done an  analysis of BLM horses in endurance at all?  Is
> "BLM horse" even something  that people put when they fill in the blank
> for breed?
I've seen some fairly successful feral horses competing--but again, it is
usually pretty evident looking at them what their ancestry is likely to
be, and it is interesting to find how multiple successful ones come out of
specific herds (ie are all related) while individuals from other herds
don't work out near as well.  And when one delves into the history of the
horses in the area, one can often come up with specific Remount sires that
were turned out.  (And remember that in many of these herds, the partbred
colts were routinely rounded up and gelded to become saddle horses, and
successive generations of various sorts of purebred stallions were turned
back out to sire more foals.)

I grew up on horses that came from just such situations--and on all of our
ranch mares, the ranchers could actually tell you the pedigrees, some back
several generations.  Nope, not a one was registered, and some had
different breeds represented down the pedigree--but some of those feral
herds that were managed by old-timey ranchers were VERY closely monitored,
and some of them kept pretty good records!  Our best ranch mare when I was
a kid was actually 15/16 TB--and would have made a heck of a good
endurance horse.  She was sired by a TB Remount stallion named Cheyenne
Chief, who I later found out also spent some time over in the Burns area. 
I don't know if my sister still has the pedigree information she
originally got from the old rancher who raised her or not, but I do
remember reading it as a kid.  One of our other mares had TB,
Standardbred, and Saddlebred in her background.  Our other two mares we
only knew who the sire was, and what the dam's name was (one was sired by
a half-TB, and one was sired by a half-gaited stallion of some sort)--but
I'd wager the ranchers they came from knew another generation or two back
on the dam's sides.

Too much of this history has been lost as the old ranching generation has
died off, but these horses were pretty good examples of the same sort of
"breeding" that is running around in feral herds today.  Nothing
mythological about it--but like any other "breed" the quality of the
individuals in the herd still stems from the qualities of the ancestors
that were turned out to breed in the first place...

Heidi



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