Recently an AWHC volunteer attended one of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) satellite adoption events in Okeechobee Florida. She recounts the experience below.
(March 1, 2022) The BLM adoption event in Okeechobee, Florida was quite a sad event for me to observe.
I was startled to learn that the 55 mustangs and 12 burros who arrived in Florida were in Utah just the day before, where the temperatures were below 0 degrees.
According to BLM staff, they had one layover in Illinois where the horses were rested for five hours before continuing onto Florida, where they arrived in 85-degree weather. That’s quite a trip and quite a change. Many of the animals seemed quite thin and dried clumps of mud covered their bodies.
We arrived at the facility on Friday at 11:30 AM. There were only a few horse trailers in the parking lot, but there were about 20 cars. When we walked in there was no line for adoption and there were about 25 adults and a lot of children moving around the 6 pens. Each pen had 10-12 horses/burros in them who were generally as far away from the people as possible.
During the hour and a half that we were there, we saw a total of 9 horses leave. There was a group of 5 horses who were adopted/sold together. They were all crammed into an old 4 horse stock trailer. It took nearly an hour and a LOT of banging, crashing, and clanging of gates to get the group sorted and loaded. The horses being sorted appeared very stressed out and scared as did all of the horses in all of the pens during the process.
It seemed that MOST of the people were just there to see the mustangs, not serious adopters. No large horse trailers were seen anywhere. We left around 1:00 wondering if things were going to pick up in the afternoon.
I arrived for the second day of the event and was there from 11:00 until 12:45. I was shocked to see there were no cars or trailers in the parking lot when I arrived. I couldn’t imagine that all of those horses and burros had been adopted/sold.
However, apparently, this was a successful event for the BLM. There were only 10 horses left at this point. These remaining horses were considerably quieter today and were even coming to the panel edges to munch on some hay. There were not many people there moving around at this time and the energy of the place was considerably calmer.
It was another 85-degree day, though, and ALL of the horses seemed more “tucked up” (tucked up is when a horse’s stomach is visibly drawn in) today—with at least 3 horses observed lying down and rolling. They didn’t seem to be colicy but rather desperately attempting to rid themselves of the dirtballs clinging to their bellies and tails—and maybe get rid of some of their long, winter hair.
ALL horses again became very agitated anytime the BLM staff started walking down the alley to sort or do whatever. Around 12:15, one gelding was sorted and loaded—an individual adoption by a woman. It was a fairly uncomplicated, but still loud and stressful sort-and-load.
I was told the 9 remaining animals (one Sale Authority, two Trainer Incentive Eligible, six adoption animals) would be going to a BLM storefront in Bell, Florida.
On this second day...there were just a few people that came and went. When I left at 12:45, there was one family still there looking and things were getting packed up by BLM staff. The event was officially over at 1:00– and the hauler was hooked up and ready.
By my count, 23 Internet Adoption mustangs were picked up; 12 burros were adopted/sold; 23 mustangs were adopted/sold; 9 horses would be delivered to the storefront in Bell, FL later that day.
It remains to be seen if any of these horses or burros will be victims of the Adoption Incentive Program (AIP) and if our investigations team will identify them in the slaughter pipeline next year.
