The Hutchinson Correctional Facility (HCF) along with Kansas Correctional Industries and the Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro program, held its annual Wild Horse Open House last weekend at the HCF Wild Horse facility. The Open House has been held at HCF since 2002, when the first group of trained horses was made available to the public.
This year’s open house was greeted by an unusually wet and cold weekend for August. The Cross Point Church who provided the concessions listed chili on its menu. Not an item that is usually found in Kansas in August. The weather did hold down the number of visitors to the event. It is estimated that between 60 and 70 people came out to see the horses and the demonstrations.
During the open house there were adoption requests for six trained and two untrained horses. One person adopted an untrained burro. Due to the demand for trained horses from HCF, those wanting to adopt were added to a waiting list. Untrained horses, however, were available the day of the open house. Prior to the event the waiting list had grown to 27 single horses, with five waiting for trained two horse teams.
The showcase to this year’s open house was Jessie, a mustang that HCF adopted to enter the “Mustang Million” in Fort Worth, Texas – a competition held each year, in which mustangs only compete for a million dollar purse. The horses are scored by their ability to perform many different obstacle skills, demonstrating their training level. Each horse was adopted from the Bureau of Land Management 100 days prior to the event. The owner must use that time to train the horse. Inmate Josh Hull, who has worked with the horses for several years at HCF, trained Jessie for this event.
However because he is an inmate, he will not be able to travel to Texas, so the horse will be ridden by Cindy Branham of Topeka.
Any funds won in this competition will go to help fund the mustang program at HCF.