06/21/2026
Oh, those wonderful mares.
This is my story from the Range: What the Mares Are Teaching Us
Some things you only notice when you’ve spent as many years out on the range as I, and several others have. It has been long enough for the seasons to stack up, long enough for the horses to start recognizing our Jeeps, long enough for the land itself to feel like it’s letting you in on its secrets.
When people talk about the wild horse birth control program, they usually picture medical side effects, something physical, something you could measure with a stethoscope or a blood test. But after all this time watching the Fish Springs herd, I can tell you: their bodies, their health is just fine. Strong backs, bright eyes, good weight, dappled coats, good movement. No issues there.
The changes we’re seeing aren’t in their health.
They’re in their stories.
And it all starts with the mares.
A wild mare has always had her own quiet strategy: she’ll allow one stallion to cover her, maybe two, sometimes three. We often watched Gabby have a strategy each season since she turned two. Each year, she left her band and carefully selected the stallion who would sire her next foal. She was bold and brave about it. I recall her demanding Samson breed her. He met her on the perimeter of his band, and she snuck off for a quick encounter. Nature’s insurance policy. If one stallion has a low s***m count, another might not. It’s a system older than fences, older than roads, older than any of us.
But with the steady use of PZP, something interesting has happened.
The mares are allowing more stallions to cover them, far more than before.
Not because they’re confused or unhealthy, but because their bodies aren’t cycling the way they used to. They’re open longer, and the stallions know it. They want to increase the odds of getting in foal.
And the stallions?
Well, they’ve changed too.
In the early years, each band had its own corner of the world, like families who lived on the same street but kept their own yards:
Blue held the north
Blondie kept to the west
Shorty stayed down south
Socks ruled the center
They’d cross paths now and then, a dust‑up here, a greeting there, but they didn’t travel as one big herd.
Now the bands seem to stay closer.
Sometimes they move like a loose neighborhood, drifting together, splitting apart, then coming back again. Almost as if the stallions are giving the mares more chances, or maybe the mares are giving themselves more choices. Hard to say who’s leading who.
None of this is harmful.
It’s just different.
A shift in the rhythm of the range.
Maybe it’s just my observation… but after all these years, you start to notice the small things. And sometimes the small things tell the biggest stories.
If you have been following our herd for years and you’ve noticed these changes too, We would love to hear what you have observed. Do you agree with my observation? We started birth control in 2014.
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