Feds, horse advocates at odds over pigeon fever outbreak in captured Nevada mustangs

After a new report of disease, wild horse advocates are angered about what they say is poor care of horses in federal custody at a private holding facility in Fallon. Pigeon fever comes from a bacteria in soil that is picked up by flies and transmitted when they bite horses. "The name comes from the large chest abscesses that some horses get, which can look like the large breast of a pigeon," said Heather Emmons of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. She said the BLM estimated that 2 percent of the wild horses gathered December through February from the Calico Complex north of Reno recently showed "clinical signs of healed abscesses from pigeon fever." "It was not something acquired through the soil at the Indian Lakes Road facility," she said. Ginger Kathrens of the Cloud Foundation wild horse advocacy group disputes that statement...more