FAQs
Are you a rescue or a sanctuary?
What is the difference?
Starlight Mustang Sanctuary is a hybrid sanctuary / rescue.
The fundamental difference is that a sanctuary provides permanent, lifelong care for unadoptable equines, while a rescue rehabilitates and rehomes equines and matches them with forever families.
Starlight Mustang Sanctuary primarily takes in unhandled horses or burros directly from the BLM / USFS and owner surrenders. We then introduce / reintroduce these equines to the basics: haltering, leading, picking up feet, and trailering. As our intakes meet their training milestones, we will offer them out on lease to carefully considered, well-matched homes. As we do not want any of our equines to ever end up in the slaughter pipeline, and we are not in this for the money, we do not resell any of our horses or burros.
Some horses and burros will not be suitable for private homes even after training: those with injuries, older age, or special needs. Those equines will stay at our sanctuary for life.
Do you fundraise to outbid private buyers for famous or flashy mustangs in BLM auctions?
Short answer: No. We want every horse to have a safe and loving home. We do not believe that every horse needs sanctuary placement, but we want to be there for the equines that would benefit from the additional resources and care that we can offer at our sanctuary.
Long answer: While we do adopt unhandled mustangs directly from the BLM / USFS, we primarily look for horses that have been passed over with no bids at auction, or sale authority horses. Although we will not fundraise or use our general funds to buy the "famous" or "flashy" horses, we do offer a "Wild at Heart" Sponsorship program. Sometimes private individuals fall in love with certain mustangs but do not have the ability to personally adopt and house them, or they may want to gift a specific mustang with life in a sanctuary setting after it is gathered. Through this program, private individuals or groups are able to donate a designated amount toward the purchase of specific, special mustangs that these private individuals wish to sponsor at our sanctuary. This sponsorship program is one of the many ways that we raise awareness for our sanctuary and also raise additional funds to adopt, house, feed, and train the "plain" sorrels and bays that others overlook or our owner surrenders.
Do you rescue horses from kill pens?
Short answer: No. Buying from kill pens funds the very practice we all seek to eliminate and puts other equines at risk, so (with a few limited exceptions for mustangs that we know from their home ranges or for a bonded herd mate to one of our current rescues) we opt not to participate in this cycle.
Long answer: While it is true that a certain number of horses and burros *do* get transported across the border for slaughter, many of the "kill pen" and "feed lot" horses posted on social media with "bail prices" and "ship by dates" are just meant to manipulate our emotions as a way to get to our wallets.
"Kill buyers" typically buy a certain number of horses that they are going to ship for slaughter no matter what. These horses are purchased for rock bottom, below meat prices. There is nothing you can do to change the outcome for those particular horses as they are not re-offered for bail. However, kill buyers buy way more horses than they ever intend to ship, more than their "quota." These excess horses are often purchased for higher-than-meat prices and then offered for "bail" at 3-4X higher prices than what the kill buyer originally paid. The kill buyers then turn around and use that profit to fund the purchase of more horses destined for slaughter. The thing is, if these horses are not "bailed," the kill buyer is not going to ship them for slaughter, because he cannot afford to buy horses at higher-than-meat price and sell for meat price (that would be an economic loss). He will go out of business. So those horses, if not bailed, will be shipped to another auction and the scam will continue.
Here is a really excellent in-depth article about this cycle if you want to read more.
Some things to look out for to alert you to scams are:
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bail prices set far above "meat price" (about $500/head)
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offers to hold the horse back from shipping for partial bail
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urgent, emotional please due to shipping dates in the next 2-7 days
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severely underweight, injured, blind, or sick animals (these horses will actually be rejected as "unfit" to transport across the border by the livestock inspection agents in the receiving countries)
Are you heartless? What about the poor horses that will ship to slaughter if you do not step in?
Many, if not most, very reputable national equine organizations do not recommend supporting the slaughter pipeline by "rescuing" or "bailing out" horses from "kill pens." Please do your own research on this topic, sourced from reputable equine organizations. Also, please support reputable equine rescues, sanctuaries, and reputable equine trainers that take in owner surrenders and unhandled equines to gentle and rehome, as this is what really keeps horses and burros out of the slaughter pipeline.
But [other rescue, sanctuary, person] takes in kill pen horses and has dozens or hundreds of saves.
We do not offer an opinion on what other rescues or sanctuaries do with their funds or what private individals do with their personal money. We have researched the issue and have come to a decision that we think is right for us. We choose to advocate for legislation to stop the slaughter pipeline at the source, like the bipartisan SAFE (Save America's Forgotten Equines) Act that if passed, would permanently prohibit the slaughter of equines for human consumption in the US, but as importantly, would ban shipping, transporting, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donating an equine to be slaughtered for the same purpose.
For more information see SAFE Act and contact your congress members to show your support for this bill!
Do you try to keep families together?
Short answer: When possible, we would try to respect the equine's own social bonds and keep a bonded pair together.
Long answer: Our human concept of "families" is vastly different to an equine's concept of a family. We rely on thousands of hours of observation of equine behavior, both domestic and wild, to shape our understanding of horse families and bonds.
Equines are herd animals. In the wild, their literal survival depends on their relationships with other members of their social group. A "band" of horses is a small, close-knit group of 2-18 or so horses.
A family band typically has at least one dominant stallion (male), a group of mares, and their young offspring. The band stallion may be shadowed by one or more lieutenant stallions that move with the family group and help protect from outside horses, but do not routinely breed the mares.
If a family band were gathered, the human in us would feel inspired to reunite the stallion with his mares, or the mares with their offspring. But in the natural world, breeding stallions often evict the offspring from their natal band, sometimes as early as 1-2 years old but commonly by ages 3-4. Stallions also compete with each other for breeding rights, often superceding each other as the dominant stallion for a particular band of mares or breaking a large band up.
While there are some stallion-mare pairs that have been together for years and show clear signs of bonding; many times, the bonds that wild equine observers notice persisting for years and even decades in these natural settings are the mare-mare bonds within a breeding band. Bonded mare-pairs will frequently stay together even when their band stallion changes, or if the band splits apart.
The other common band structure observed in the wild are "bachelor bands," groupings of young stallions that have been evicted from their natal band but are not strong enough to compete with the dominant stallions for breeding rights. Some of these stallions may spend years or decades roaming the countryside with the same bachelor buddies. Some may never branch off and get a family band of their own, making those bachelor bonds the closest ties they will ever have in the wild.
Despite never relying on these social partnerships for survival in the wild, domestic equines remain herd animals by nature and require same-species social interactions, in many cases forming life-long bonds with other equines if given the opportunity to do so by their human handlers.
At Starlight Mustang Sanctuary, we try to provide our equines with the social structure necessary for their long-term happiness and well being, trying to keep bonded pairs together and maintaining them in a herd setting as much as possible.