BLM and Wyoming Honor Farm place 46 gentled animals
RIVERTON, Wyo. – The Wyoming Department of Corrections Wyoming Honor Farm and the Bureau of Land Management placed all 46 gentled wild horses and burros that were available for adoption into new homes on Saturday. Almost 250 people attended the adoption from throughout Wyoming and several other states.
The high bid of the adoption was $5,000 for saddle-trained Walker, a 2-year-old grulla gelding from the Divide Basin Herd Management Area east of Rock Springs. Of the eight burros offered, a 6-year-old named Kodak, who had been trained to ride, pack and pull a cart, fetched the winning bid of $800. Overall, the average price for a riding horse was $2,147. The halter-started horses went for an average of $413, and $669 on average for a pack-trained burro.
Walker has a bright future at the Wyoming Catholic College in Lander. Equine instructors in the school’s Horsemanship Program will train him for use in their Introduction to Horsemanship course. The program has adopted Honor Farm-trained horses in the past.
Instructors Lorine Sheehan and Marjorie Papadopoulos attended the preview the day before to watch the horses and get a sense of which ones would work in their program. Walker was their first choice going into the adoption the next morning.
“Walker was calm, had beautiful transitions, wasn’t pushy, was listening and waiting for instructions, was built well, and had great movement,” said Sheehan, director of the Horsemanship Program.
Both instructors are fans of the Honor Farm training program and mustangs in general, considering them easy keepers with good feet.
“I’ve never had soundness issues with a mustang,” said Papadopoulos. “The fun thing about having them in our Horsemanship Program is that we get to ride them, too.”
“We’re excited you guys do this,” added Sheehan. “It’s really good for the wild horses. And horses teach you so much about how to be a good human being.”
Two adoptions are held at the Honor Farm each year—the next one is scheduled for May 10, 2025. Working together over the past 36 years, the Honor Farm and the BLM have placed more than 5,000 animals removed from overpopulated herds into good, private homes.
There’s still time to adopt this fall! The next adoptions in Wyoming/Nebraska are at the Elm Creek Wild Horse and Burro Corrals in Nebraska on September 20, Deerwood Ranch near Laramie on September 28, and Wheatland Off-Range Corral on October 18. For more information, check the schedule on our website.
To learn more about the BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro Program and adopting a Wyoming wild horse, visit BLM.gov/WHB or contact the national information center at 866-468-7826 or wildhorse@blm.gov.
The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land located primarily in 12 western states, including Alaska, on behalf of the American people. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. Our mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of America’s public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.