Cassoday ? Rancher Bob Vestring leaned on the roof of his BMW sedan and watched as a galloping herd of 290 wild horses veered off a Greenwood County blacktop road and into his pasture.

Two four-wheelers and a pickup truck in hot pursuit were driving the mares to holding pens on the Vestring Ranch, about 40 miles south of Emporia.

After a five-mile run through tall grass pastures, the wild mares looked like well-muscled athletes, coats dark with sweat but still eating up large chunks of ground in long graceful strides. The sound of a thousand galloping hoofbeats was surround-sound material, right out of the movies. The earth moved.

When the last horse hit the pasture, the rancher turned away from the herd looking like a proud father.

“That was quite a sight, wasn’t it?” he asked, smiling.

Today, in a 7-mile area, there are 6,000 wild horses grazing the Flint Hills in Butler and Greenwood counties. They are in three “long-term” holding facilities.

Two of them are on the Shadow 7 Ranch, which has land in both counties. The other is on the Vestring Ranch in Greenwood County. Parts of both are near Cassoday, the little town that until the 1950s was the biggest Kansas cattle shipping facility on the Santa Fe Railroad.

Shipped from out West

The wild horses were shipped to Kansas from public land in Western states by the Bureau of Land Management, an arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Low vegetation and water resources, plus extremely dry weather conditions on wild horse sanctuaries, have made living conditions in the West difficult for many of the horses. This year, in some of the drier areas, horses make 50-mile round trips each day from their grazing land to water.

Nevada, with 19,000 head, has half the wild horses in the country managed by the bureau. Other states, in order of their wild horse populations are: Wyoming, Utah, California, Oregon, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, Montana and New Mexico, which has less than a hundred head.

Overall, the bureau manages 38,000 wild horses and burros on public rangelands. These animals compete with wildlife and domestic livestock for food and water.

“There are many other wild horses on other public lands that are not managed by BLM,” said Chris Tincher, a bureau spokesman. “That includes Forest Service and state land.”

The Vestring Ranch is the long-term home to 2,000 wild mares, some with colts. They began arriving at the ranch in February 2001, and the last were unloaded three months ago.

There are 8,500 wild horses in four BLM long-term facilities: the two ranches near Cassoday plus rangeland near Bartlesville, Okla., and Catoosa, Okla. There are 5,300 horses, in transit or being prepared for adoption, in temporary quarters around the United States.

The air around the pens holding the 290 mares, bunched tightly together, is dusty and filled with horse sounds. They range from high-pitched whinnies to low, growl-like rumbles. At the slightest noise, all ears pop up and flared nostrils sample the air. When someone touches the fence, all the horses run as one, like a living wave, to the other side. They either run or stand still, there’s no walking. Some paw the ground but most are pressed firmly against one another. They are hyper, skittish, fidgety, anxious and ready.

A natural resource

“Out of this group we’ll sort out 150 of the younger mares that will be put up for adoption,” said Rod Coleman, a bureau wild horse and burro manager working out of El Dorado.

After the horses are sorted by the Vestrings, Coleman and his staff will check a mare’s original tattoos for birth date information. If the horse is in good shape and between 2 and 6 years old, it will be given four preventive shots that include rabies, tetanus and encephalomyelitis.

Sorting out 150 wild horses is no easy matter. It takes the better part of two days.

The bureau considers America’s wild horse population a natural resource. Since 1971, it has found homes for nearly 186,000 wild horses and burros.

The wild horse inventory increases by nearly 18 percent every year.

“In an ideal world we’d be able to place all the animals, but it’s difficult to catch up with the numbers,” bureau spokesman Tincher said. “Many may end up their lives in these long-term facilities. We have to make sure their new homes are as good or better than the area they came from.”

The bureau pays ranchers in Kansas and Oklahoma $1.20 per day per head to feed and care for wild horses. It requires an average of 7.25 acres of space for each horse.

“Kansas and Oklahoma has been able to put in lower bids than others because they have the natural vegetation available and don’t have to buy hay,” Tincher said.

Bob Vestring, 82, is a big fan of the “natural vegetation” on the family ranch that his father started more than a hundred years ago.

“Bluestem,” he said as he waded through the waving knee-high grass in his pasture, “Look at this bluestem. Â It’s the greatest grass almighty God made.”