I don’t think this is the 2025 version of 52 homeless thoroughbreds; appears to be actual public notice from the local paper:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18n1r5Fyrh/
Have attempted to link to fb in case Morgan people are in a position to help.
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Yes, this does seem to be real. FB Morgan pages are all aflutter, and it’s fascinating to me how few people understand how a public auction to cover unpaid debts works.
Others here may have more direct experience with this owner/breeder over the years, but my casual understanding is that while the horses are very nicely bred, they are basically feral and the owner has a reputation for not registering them and being difficult to deal with. So it’s going to be a lot harder than well intentioned people on FB realize to deal with this herd. Of course hoping for a good outcome for the horses.
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52 tbs was real the first time, ca. 2011 I believe
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Right! And the auction is on the 9th of Jan and it was released yesterday. That is not a lot of time to organise a buyer. It should be interesting.
This makes me so sad. I’ve enjoyed watching Westwind Otto take on the Quarter Horses in the cow work. Also, I had some communication with the owner a few years ago when I was shopping for a new mount. I just love his old stallion Sweets Bayberry. I hope they all come to some good end.
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I’ve heard that the owner had a stroke. Chaos can ensue from that. One of my friends in the Morgan world helped take care of her former trainer’s mostly feral herd after the trainer broke a hip getting kicked by a mostly feral broodmare. It was a mess - lots of horses, and the trainer favored plain bays with minimal white markings, so figuring out who was who wasn’t easy. The trainer returned home eventually and started selling a few horses here and there, but she was not realistic about pricing semi-feral horses. Ultimately she had to give up her farm, and the remaining horses got distributed among various Morgan people. It’s a testament to the Morgan breed that many of these horses are now doing well in the show world, despite a less than ideal start.
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I agree, it’s all very sad and I’m especially sorry to hear that this is potentially connected to a major health event for the owner.
I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but to get to the point of a public notice of sale doesn’t just happen after you accidentally fail to pay a bill once. There are plenty of threads on here with frustrated barn owners who have begged, prodded, asked nicely, asked not-so-nicely, to try get paid for services delivered, and the advice is often to go this formal route of using the stableman’s lien. This is the process in Montana: https://archive.legmt.gov/bills/mca/title_0710/chapter_0030/part_0120/section_0130/0710-0030-0120-0130.html
Selling a single registered Morgan with these bloodlines could have easily cleared a $10K debt, especially with the connection to the well-known stallion Westwind Otto, who people have rightfully fallen in love with.
It sounds like so many will essentially sell as grade because he hasn’t registered many of them, and these incredible bloodlines could be at risk for being lost to the breed. I truly hope that the people who are trying to get organized to get to the sale are successful and get as many papers as they can to sort out afterwards. I worry about our breed, knowing how many well-bred horses are out there with minimal handling/training, and not much of a plan for what happens to them if tragedy strikes for their owners. I have one in my pasture right now that came from that sort of situation - the owner refused extensive offers of help long before health problems took away her ability to care for the horses. Poor mare could barely be touched when she came to me after so many years of being feral. She’s much happier now, but it didn’t need to be that way. Sometimes I watch her move at liberty in the pasture and am reminded that she came from a World Champion; things just went off the rails for her herd at the wrong time. At the end of the day, I really just hope for a good outcome for these horses.
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It’s actually for not paying the landowner for leasing land for the horses.
It gets worse; the sheriff has seized the horses for neglect and there may be a criminal case, in which case a quick dispersal of the horses will not be possible. Some of the horses haven’t been registered, though they should DNA type to registered parents. There’s also rumors that some of the breeding horses don’t even belong to Bryan but he leased them from other breeders.
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And now Bryan himself has surfaced on FB, saying that neither he nor his breeding program have met their demise. I’m going to read that as perhaps meaning he has even more Morgans stashed somewhere else. As noted above, he’s a difficult man. And he’s bumped heads with the AMHA enough that he’s not registering his horses with them anymore.
We have an old-timey breeder here in New England who may be getting into a similar situation.
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Sort of ridiculous how this is being handled. I mean you could do online bidding, and sell them individually like the BLM auctions and have people bid from all over and arrange their own transport. That makes way more sense then the way this is being handled. No one is equipped to buy 86 horses at one time… anyone know any billionaires?
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There is a Morgan ranch that has said it will bid for the lot, but wants people to donate up front (obviously refunding money if they don’t get the horses.) That will give them preference later when the horses are in good enough shape to be sold. They’re in the same state, which would help with paperwork.
ETA: there are actually 2 Morgan ranches, and some of the Foundation Morgan breeders are trying to form a syndicate.
The sheriff is not set up to do an online auction. She’s pretty overwhelmed. Remember that this is also a criminal neglect case; I doubt Bryan will get any of these horses back - but he probably has others. Whoever gets these horses is going to have to keep them in-state until the case is settled.
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I will say as someone who can get involved and has been, with different sales, not necessarily horses, the lien just needs to be satisfied. $9,967 satisfies what they want. “We” always try and suggest loans or private sales before we get involved in a sale. It’s never in the current owners best interest.
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For the uneducated Morgan folks (like me!) I scoped out the Westwind Otto stallion this post mentions. Check out this hunk of horseflesh!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrGKSOHw6yw
I do hope all the best for this herd and that they can find homes promptly. Even if feral or unregistered I hope they can become good citizens in good homes.
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Argh, so confusing! Bryan has resurfaced saying he’s lawyering up. Apparently a lawyer himself, he’s filed an injunction to stop the auction Thursday. At the same time, the Sheriff is working with a local-ish rescue group that says they will facilitate getting the horses resituated and paying the bills the sheriff has run up keeping them.
BTW it’s not just the lien amount that’s needed, but reimbursing the sheriff’s office for the cost of caring for the horses since they were seized.
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It can be surprising how little money someone can owe and have property taken away. A neighbor that was close to my next door neighbor was having his house taken away for owing money - now here’s the thing, he didn’t owe mortgage as this was his childhood home and it was paid for. He owed property taxes. Property tax for that house is roughly $1500/year so either he owed for a LOT of years or he just really didn’t have the money…it was likely just a year or two so for about $3K his house was being seized.
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Can the lien be paid off to stop the auction?
If that’s possible, I think the sale is off and the current owner keeps the horses. If it is like a property auction. The lender/forecloser may not care who pays, as long as someone does.
BUT – these situations are never simple and always unique. There is always a tangled back story to how it all came to this. If an auction sale is completed and title transfers to a buyer, it tends to cut the cord on whatever the problems were with the previous owner. The previous owner still has their problems. But the property is out from under those problems.
Yet a further complication is if the property is auctioned, but the reserve isn’t met. I’m guessing that if that happens that ownership will transfer to whoever forced it to auction. But I’m not sure about livestock.
I’ll hazard a wild guess that whoever is forcing this herd to auction – let’s say, a landowner where the horses are residing or have resided – will not be satisfied with simply paying what is owed. As has been mentioned, if that were the case, one or a few horse sales would cover it.
Guessing that they want this herd in other hands. A new owner who will be easier to deal with. Just speculation, because it seems it would be simpler to do something other than seizing 86 horses to get the money owed.
It’s gotten messier over the past couple of days as more info has emerged. This is really a case study in the good and bad of social media…certainly the Morgan community has been activated and there is a lot of attention on this herd.
Cutting through all the noise, what seems clear is that the auction will proceed with all horses offered as one lot. The herd has been seized and criminal animal cruelty charges have been filed. There are several large in-state animal welfare agencies involved providing current care (sounds like off the property of the person who initiated the lien).
There is talk that another prominent Morgan family in the state plans to bid and take the herd, with an eye toward registering as many as possible, rehabbing, and eventually offering them for sale. But since I am a random no one on the other side of the country, I’ll just say that is internet speculation at this point.
The criminal charges and auction announcement can be confirmed via public databases.
Everything else flying around FB is likely somewhere in between wild heresay and reality. But boy there is a lot of it! Let’s just keep fingers and toes crossed it works out in favor of the horses.
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The “one-lot” thing is crazy to me, with 86 horses. I don’t know enough about situations where someone’s numerous assets are combined into a one-lot sale, rather than being auctioned separately.
Combining multiples into one lot usually brings far less total proceeds than selling them individually. There won’t be many bidders who can afford the entire set of assets, so that reduces bidding competition (although sometimes that depends more on who is bidding, how deep are their pockets, and how much they want the lot).
On the other hand, ‘one lot’ means that there won’t be any unsold spares and leftovers, as often happens when many items are sold individually. Some just aren’t as desirable.
The more items at issue when selling individually, the more likely there are to be some left unsold. Then someone has to take on that burden, especially with living creatures.
Maybe the seller of these horses wants to be absolutely sure that they don’t have any left on their hands after the sale. Although after a one-lot sale there is the problem of getting the buyer to pick up and take all of them, even the undesirables.
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I hope the horses get a soft landing in a place that can make proper use of the bloodlines - there is a lot of angst that the rescue(s) expressing interest in the horses will geld anything male and require no breeding contracts for adopters of the mares.
Having ridden a Westwind horse, I think it would surely be a shame to lose the genetics.
Westwind ElDorado:
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