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When helicopters fly into a herd during foaling season, the danger to heavily pregnant mares and newborn foals is obvious on the ground but easy for BLM to ignore on paper. Our Antelope HMA reports, show the roundup running into late February with mares already close to foaling (and it is possible newborns could have been left behind). BLM is fighting us in court over Herd Management Area Plans (HMAP) that would require herd‑specific, data‑based foaling seasons instead of a one‑size‑fits‑all calendar line, and would apply the same standard to other fundamentals of management, from habitat needs to preserving each herd’s genetic health. (In other words, BLM is fighting against data-driven management plans.)

Why “foaling season” prohibitions matter: Helicopters are supposed to stay grounded during foaling season for a reason. Running heavily pregnant mares and brand‑new foals is dangerous. Now, when BLM piles on varied fertility control(s) without specific plans with analysis and required tracking of real foaling seasons, it can push births into brutal winter weather—putting both mares and babies at even greater risk. 

The last days in July, new foals

What BLM says

BLM claims peak foaling “falls within about a two‑week period” but then defines that period as running from mid‑April to mid‑May, a roughly four‑week span, illustrating how imprecise and un‑data‑driven the designation is. In IM 2010‑183 and repeated in multiple EAs and Q&A documents, BLM’s sentence is: “The peak of foaling for wild horse herds on public lands in the West falls within about a two week period, from mid‑April to mid‑May.” If you take “mid‑April” and “mid‑May” literally (for example, April 15–May 15), that span is roughly four weeks, so their “two week” description does not even match the dates they chose. More recent BLM public‑facing language softens this to “late April and early May” for peak foaling, again without clarifying whether they mean a 2‑week or 4‑week window.

BLM claims that peak foaling occurs in ‘about a two‑week period, from mid‑April to mid‑May,’ a 4 week period, and the March 1–June 30 helicopter prohibition window does not reflect actual foaling on the range.

BLM’s core rule is that helicopters to capture wild horses may be used only from July 1 through February 28, and are prohibited from March 1 through June 30 except in defined “emergency”  (and cannot be used to include an entire HMA, only a the well-defined area of “emergency” after our litigation at Jackson Mountains).

BLM describes this prohibition window as covering “the six weeks before and the six weeks that follow the peak of foaling.” 

BLM refuses to collect a single shred of site-specific data to define any actual foaling peak(s) or season. 

Burro Reality

BLM’s claim that burros “do not exhibit a specific foaling season” is a policy position, not a biological fact. In reality, wild burros are also seasonal breeders, with foaling clustered in the milder months when forage and temperatures better support lactation and foal survival, even if their season is broader and more variable than most horse herds.

Because BLM has never defined herd‑specific burro foaling seasons, it treats burros as fair game for helicopter roundups year‑round, despite acknowledging a defined foaling‑season prohibition for horses. (BLM is also fighting us on what needs to be included in burro HMAPs, including defining foaling season.) The risk of illness and death to burros from a helicopter capture is simply greater than for horses at any time of year. The risks to burro foals is incalculable.

Peak foaling is now peaks (plural)

Our data demonstrates there are two peaks for foaling season in wild herds today. In unmanaged, truly wild systems at temperate latitudes, most mares are strongly seasonal, so foaling tends to cluster in late spring/early summer with one dominant peak. Where temperatures have become unstable (i.e. earlier or extended seasons) we are noting two equal peaks with one in March and one late May or early June. We have noted what appear to be more than 2 peaks in herds where fertility control is used (these can include peaks in September and even mid winter).

We are not the only ones trying to create a “data-based look at the issue.” If you note the use of the word “feral” to reference horses in places like Sand Wash Basin (where the legal term is “wild horse”) you can see even those outside of the advocate community are recognizing that numerous peaks exist and do not fall in the BLM parameters. Exploring the Reproductive Phenology of Feral Horses in North America Mattie Budine, 2025.

The only ones refusing to create a site-specific data-set are the federal employees getting paid to manage wild herds. 

Foal Age Is Not a “Baby Horse” Side Issue

Foal age cuts through the heart of management. It dictates when helicopters can fly safely—if at all—what kind of handling is appropriate in holding facilities, and when and how foals are weaned. Forced early weaning, especially at the very young ages we see in some BLM facilities, can create lifelong physical, behavioral, and immune‑system problems. In wild bands, foals are typically weaned gradually around 8–10 months as they shift naturally to forage and the mare prepares to foal again. In holding, foals can be abruptly separated at just a few months old, with some later labeled “colic” or “failure to thrive” in government records after death. Changes in foaling season time and the number of “peaks” can indicate environmental change or other stressors.

On range, during and after capture, onsite and through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, our team has worked for over a decade to collect a record. The record is vital to create deep reforms. “Foaling season” is a baseline of management that cannot be ignored.

Why We Built a Foal‑Age Guide

Many of you have asked us for a simple guide to help you estimate foal age when you visit a range or a holding facility. We went looking for one. We searched veterinary texts, extension publications, and academic papers and could not find any visual, field‑ready “pocket guide” that pulled together skull shape, hoof changes, tail development, and behavior in a way a supporter could use from a distance. So we built one.

In no way do we assert this is “perfect.” The sketches, article and guide were all created in the last 12 hours. But it is a good start.

Our new Foal Age Guide offers a rough set of visual and behavioral cues to help you bracket pre-weaning age from very young to several months old—using features you can see with a camera lens or binoculars.Remember: size, tail and mane length can vary greatly and are not “stand alone” age indicators. You need to take both physical and behavioral observations into account.

You can read the entire guide and download to print to take into the field:
https://wildhorseeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2026_WHE_FoalAgeGuide.pdf

click image to reach downloadable pdf of the guide (that is more than the illustration)

Watching a wild foal grow inside a free‑roaming herd is like watching time‑lapse nature art. In just a few months, a wobbly newborn becomes a confident young horse, and you can see that transformation (even from a far off observation point with a long lens or binoculars).

If you can get really close the feet can tell an additional amazing story of age from “rubbery feathers” that protect the birth canal that fall off and leave a slight soft sort of dome appearance. That cone‑like “baby” foot starts changing very quickly, but the full transition to a more classic hoof shape takes several months. In the first few days, the soft “slippers” wear off and the capsule hardens, so the foot already looks less like a cone and more like a tiny, weight‑bearing hoof. Over the first one to two months the hoof will widen the base so the bottom of the hoof is clearly broader than at birth, though the overall outline is still quite tapered. Between about four and six months, the hoof wall has expanded and the fetal capsule has been fully replaced, so the foot now resembles a scaled‑down young‑horse hoof rather than an inverted cone. By roughly six to eight months, the capsule has the obliquely truncated cone shape and proportions we recognize as a normal hoof, with the wall angle and width much closer to adult form.

How You Can Help Build the Record

If you visit the range or a holding facility, we would love to see your field notes and photos, especially careful observations on foal age, condition, and mare status. You can send them to: whefoals@gmail.com. Even a small number of well‑documented observations—date, HMA, approximate foal age, photos—can help us refine herd‑specific foaling calendars over time.

All Of Us Together Are The Power of Change

While we continue to press these issues in court and in Congress, the real leverage will come from informed, coordinated public pressure.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll be rolling out specific action items—focused on enforceable welfare standards, data‑driven HMAPs, and real foaling‑season protections—for you to take to your members of Congress and key decision‑makers. For now, please stay tuned, make sure you’re subscribed to our updates, and be ready to add your voice when those targeted actions go live.

Why write and publish this now?

Look really close at the shape of the head of the foal in the foreground compared to the ones in the background

From Laura: One photograph stopped me cold. A single foal from the Antelope HMA roundup, maybe 6 weeks to (at a stretch) three months old (I could only see 3 pictures), standing in a pen at the Palomino Valley Center facility, is the reason this entire article exists right now. I have documented “the foal pens” literally hundreds of different times over the years. When Marie sent the image and told me, after asking on‑site, that “all of these foals were weaned,” I knew exactly what had happened.

At the trap, BLM tells observers that foals will be reunited with their mothers at the facility; at the facility, they tell anyone worried enough to ask that the foals were weaned at the trap. In reality, foals are pulled off adults for transport so they are not trampled, only the tiniest are kept with their moms on the semi or separated, and once they reach the pens it is “too hard” to untangle who belongs to whom—so very young foals who should naturally stay with their mothers until eight to ten months old are simply left weaned at (as young as) two‑and‑a‑half or three months old.

Soon we will  see the inevitable “orphan” pen, the place where some of those foals who never quite recover from early separation end up, labeled as failures to thrive instead of victims of the process. That one small, bewildered youngster in a photo made all of that brutally clear, and even with an impossible briefing schedule for our court cases, I could not put off writing this article a moment longer. The metrics in the field guide can be learned over time “mouth-to-mouth” and I simply never put them into a guide. I simply felt compelled to do it now. 

For anyone who insists this doesn’t wound “the public interest,” I can only say: to watch this play out, year after year, and feel nothing, you would have to set aside not just science and law, but any real human heart.

Every mile we travel to cover roundups or assess a herd, every court case we bring, every win, every action we take is only possible because of your support.