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Oregon's Kiger Mustangs
The below story reprinted from an article in
The Oregonian (November 18, 2007) by Larry Bingham
 If our love affair with the fabled Kiger mustang, perhaps the most sought-after wild horse in the West, can be summed up by a single person, then listen to Betty Linnell. As owner of the Double L Kigers and Three Creeks Ranch outside Medford, she bought her first Kiger in 1993 and fell so hard for the breed that she eventually sold off all her quarter horses and replaced them with Kigers.
"It was their beauty and their romantic history linking them to the historic Spanish mustangs that first caught our eye," Linnell says. "But it was after using them, after seeing their stamina to go all day chasing cows in rugged terrain, that we really got hooked on them."
Now she breeds and sells them nationwide., and operation of the Portland Aerial Tram.
Bureau of Land Management Oversees the Herd
Thirty years after a group of wild horses was moved to the isolated Kiger Gorge on Steens Mountain because of similarities to the Spanish horses brought to North America centuries ago, hundreds of people have become, like Linnell, smitten with the breed and its lore.
But not all wild mustangs are so popular.
The federal Bureau of Land Management oversees an estimated 31,000 wild horses in 10 Western states. Because the horse faces no predator in the wild, other than mountain lions, herds would double every five years if not culled. To keep a balance between horses and habitat, excess animals are offered for adoption through public auctions, but not all find a home.
Of the roughly $38 million spent on the program, more than half goes to caring for the 22,000 older horses that haven't been adopted and live on ranches primarily in Oklahoma, where each horse costs the government about $1.27 a day.
The BLM's horse specialists are looking at ways to better match the number of horses culled with the number adopted. Some herds undergo birth control that renders mares infertile for one cycle, says Craig MacKinnon, head of the program for Oregon and Washington.
Kigers, however, seldom end up in government sanctuaries. Most are adopted, and many fetch prices that surprise those affiliated with the BLM's Wild Horse and Burro program. Today, the Kigers are their own cottage industry. Four registries compete for authority and prestige. Kigers generally sell on the market for between $900 and $6,500, stud fees range from $250 to $850, and there's even a KigerFest once a year.
The Round-up
By the time the Kiger auction takes place every three or four years -- the most recent was last weekend -- the Internet buzzes with chatter. Breeders get excited about the new stock; trainers look at their calendars, knowing they'll be called on to tame the wild animals; and horse lovers across the Northwest -- and from as far as Rhode Island, Georgia and Michigan -- start booking motel rooms because they go fast in the town of Burns, population 3,000.
The hype filters all the way down to remote southeastern Oregon, 70 miles from the nearest town, to the rocky canyons and rimrock buttes of Kiger Gorge and Riddle Mountain, where two Kiger herds run free.
The government subcontracts the roundup to a Utah company, one of two such outfits nationwide. Wranglers and a helicopter sweep the wild horses from their sagebrush-and-juniper haunts.
The animals that best represent the breed are corralled, examined and freeze-branded before they are released to propagate the legendary herds. The others are held for adoption.
But before the chosen return to the wild, a wrangler traps them in a steel chute and yanks out a fistful of mane hair. The hair is bound for a California genetics lab that may one day solve the mystery of their ancestry.
Then they are loaded into trailers and driven for miles back over rugged roads until they reach a bowl of land surrounded by low mountains for as far as the eye can see. The cowboys turn their rigs around and pop open the back doors. Ten mares and three stallions thunder from their confines and disappear back into the wild.
What do you get when you buy a Kiger?
You get a horse used to foraging on bunch grass. You get "a magnificent mind," says Linnell, who also is registrar for the Kiger Horse Association and Registry. "Very even temperament, a bonding between a horse and a person that I have never seen in a domestic horse."
You get a horse so healthy that California breeder Shauna Dingus says not everyone shoes them. You get a horse so majestic that DreamWorks paid a reported $50,000 for one named Donner and used him as the model for the central character in the animated movie "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron."
"You are getting something that is a part of American history," says Dingus, owner of Flying D Kiger Mustangs and registrar for the Kiger Mesteno Association.
What you don't get is definitive confirmation that your horse is a purebred descendant of the 16 Andalusians that Cortez took to Mexico in 1511.
The Dun Factor
"The only thing I can tell you for sure is they exhibit characteristics known as the dun factor," says specialist Jim Johnson at the BLM's Vale office. "The Spanish horses had the dun factor. At least it was common to a lot of the horses the Spanish introduced."
The government didn't get into the wild horse business until an Arizona woman named Velma Johnston, and nicknamed "Wild Horse Annie," was outraged by the slaughter of feral horses. Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. In 1977, BLM managers in Oregon noticed that horses rounded up in isolated Beatys Butte had striking features.
The dun factor means a range of colors from a buckskin brown to a reddish dun brown to a mousy gray called a "grulla." Other characteristics that link the Kigers to Spanish horses include a dorsal stripe down the back, zebra stripes on the knees and hocks, ears outlined in black and bicolored manes. Kigers are smaller than other horses, and have a slender face and wide-set eyes.
Bill Phillips, 80, was one of the BLM managers who segregated the horses in 1977. He is as surprised as anyone at the hoopla. "It wasn't our goal to set up a breed," he says. "Our goal was to preserve those horses. Here was a concentration of genes we thought worth preserving."
Today, Kigers are an official breed, but Phillips wonders if the future might reveal the interest to be a fad. Palominos were once hot. Then it was appaloosas.
One thing the future may bring is an answer to the Kiger's lineage.
Genetic Testing of the Kigers
The mane hair gathered at last month's roundup could go to geneticist Cecilia Penedo at the University of California at Davis if the BLM grants permission. "They obviously have characteristics in common with Spanish-type horses," Penedo says. "The idea is to test them for DNA markers and compare them with other wild horses in the United States, as well as other breeds."
The most extensive genetic work done so far was years ago when Gus Cothran, then director of the Equine Blood Type Research Lab at the University of Kentucky, tested more than 200 Kigers. "The evidence says there is some degree of Spanish blood in the Kigers but there is nothing there that would positively say they were old Spanish lineage," he says.
The Spanish blood could have come from Morgans and quarter horses, which also have Spanish in their background. "So you can't say which way it goes," Cothran says. "At this point, we know there's Spanish blood. But we aren't sure of the source."
The future may provide an answer.
When Cothran did his tests in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he based his findings on 17 genetic markers. Today, he says, scientists can examine 60,000 genetic segments. "So those things are right on the horizon," Cothran says. "How soon they could be applied is another question."
The Auction
The breakfast plates line up under the warming lights at the Apple Peddler Restaurant the Saturday morning of the Kiger auction. Horse trailers block the turn lane on U.S. 20, the main drag through Burns.
An outbreak of equine distemper has moved the event from the Harney County Fairgrounds to the BLM's Wild Horse Corrals a few miles down the road in Hines, where bales of hay have been set up around a makeshift grandstand to block the wind.
The parking lot overflows with diesel trucks, horse truckers and cattle-herding dogs. The crowd has come to buy, and nearly everyone carries a dog-eared copy of the program, which features colored photos of the fillies, colts, mares and stallions available, as well as notes about their age, sex and coloring. The programs get carted to the corrals, where expert trainers like Prineville's Kitty Lauman, who finished second among 100 contestants in the nationally televised "Extreme Mustang Makeover Challenge," teach potential new owners how to break a wild animal.
Beyond the corrals stands a giant white tent that looks like it belongs at a garden party. Inside are the vendors who cater to Kiger enthusiasts. The registries have a table, and around them are horse artists, horse booksellers and the Pacific Wild Horse Club, which sells hot chocolate and coffee. A bumper sticker on one table sums up the prevailing sentiment -- "Kiger Mustangs: The Real Survivors."
Beyond the tent is the registration room, and beyond that, the horses mill around in dozens of wooden pens. They have been vaccinated and wormed, freeze-branded and evaluated. The colt with the hernia is not available, and a few others have been removed for health reasons. The rest are ready to go to a new home.
The path between the pens and back to the grandstand is well worn.
No other horse auction creates such a scene, says artist Lorraine Pascuzzi of Portland. Many of the state's wild herds have reputations and draw their own crowd. Some people want the Coyote Lake horses because they are thought to have descended from cavalry mounts released after the Indian wars and tend to be big. Others like the Warm Springs horses because some have the colorful rumps of appaloosas. The Beatys Butte herd is said to be even-tempered and the Three Fingers horses naturally jumpy.
Pascuzzi bought a horse at the Coyote Lake auction, in what was considered heavy bidding there, for $250.
 The few hundred people huddled in the bleachers show little interest in horses older than four or five years, or horses that don't exhibit the Kiger markings. Prices hover around the minimum $125 until a grulla filly comes up on the block. The bidding jumps to $3,400. Another grulla filly goes for $3,600. Later, a 2-year-old grulla mare fetches $7,400, and then a grulla stallion brings $7,800. It's the most anyone can remember someone paying for a Kiger since a man spent $19,000 on a dun filly several years ago.
And during all the excitement, a pet stylist from Eugene gets carried away.
Sydney Buys Her First Kiger
Sydney Brooks, 56, saved for three years to buy a Kiger. A woman who always thought she should have come in a covered wagon and felt at home in the West as soon as she stepped off the airplane, Brooks moved from Missouri to Oregon in 1978.
When she first heard of the Kiger legend, she was hooked. She loved everything about them, from their romantic backstory to their shaggy manes and rugged good looks.
She saved $1,000 and headed for the adoption, where she sat in the second row. When horses went for more than $3,000, she was disheartened. And then her favorite, a grulla filly, came up for bidding. The price quickly jumped to $600, and Brooks, sensing an opportunity, jumped in.
But the price climbed past her savings.
Swept up in the moment, she decided to spend more than planned.
At $2,200, the bidding stopped. Brooks had won.
After she ran from the grandstand, jumped up and down and dropped to her haunches because her knees felt weak, she recovered enough to walk through the pens and find her horse. She lay on the ground and draped her scarf across the fence for the horse to sniff. This was a wild animal, she knew, and any sudden movement would scare it off.
Brooks lay patiently on the ground waiting for the filly to come to her. She'd waited many years for this moment. She saw no reason to rush it now.
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