“Found: Large Animal, Hooves, Mane, Long Tail…”
Posted by Mikki on Oct 08 2008 at 10:33 pm | Tagged as: Horse News
Funny title, not a funny subject. We recently received the following note here at Our First Horse:
“My sister lives in Cumberland City and recently found four horses left on her property. She is not familiar with the horses and does not recognize them as any of her neighbors’ horses. They appear to be in relatively good health with a few minor wounds and they haven’t been groomed in a long time. No one has come to look for them they have been there for four days now.”
The writer was looking for information on how to find the owner or legally keep the horses. I’m not really sure about either one but the situation brings up a timely subject: how horses are faring these days, with the current economic climate and the ban on slaughter. I have to say, things are not looking good.
In addition to the above letter, I personally know of two cases locally of abandoned horses. The first one is that of a neighbor of the vet clinic where I work. A woman called to ask us to post a notice on our board - like the writer above’s sister, she had found a horse on her property and had been unable to identify an owner. The consensus around our office, staff and visitor alike, was that the owner intentionally “lost” the horse. The second case supports that theory. One of our clients, who has cattle but not horses, brought a horse trailer to a stock auction to haul equipment home. He was inside for a while and when he came back out to his trailer, he found two horses inside with a note saying something along the lines of, “I can’t feed my horses - please take care of them.” They were thin, but otherwise in good condition. So sad.
I’m sure there are many more stories like this, here and everywhere else. I know Bill has written before about the horses being abandoned in the Arizona desert. It seems to us that things will get worse before they get better. We are blessed here in East Tennessee with a good hay crop this summer, so we’ve been able to get hay this year for decent prices. Others are not so lucky. Also, while hay was cheap and plentiful for us, everything else is going way up. We are literally paying twice as much for oats as we were a year ago. We’re fortunate to be able to absorb the extra costs, so far, but we know that there are a lot of people out there who can’t do so, at least not for long. We’re concerned about what will happen to those horses.
Just another reason to hope that things will get better very soon.
I just did a post on this, I got a similar email. More and more horses getting dumped. Very sad.
This is very sad.
I wish we could afford to take in more than our one horse, but we are aware that things are going to get worse before they get better, so we must focus on taking care of our lone horse for now.
The price of hay is shocking in our area: $9-$12 a bale.
And the cost of having to heat our home with propane is also shocking, especially if our temps drop down as cold as they were lasy year (-zero). We spent over $1600 for propane last year and we even kept our thermostat below 58 degrees.
I’m afriad people are going to be hurting this year…and the horses will be the first to be sarificed.
It’s all very sad. People should be glad they have horses. People who own horses are very fortunate that they can afford the services, unlike some people like me who long to actually get a farm in the first place. Unfortunately we can’t, since we are running behind rent and that the Australian drought is too terruble.
To all the folks who INSIST horses are not being turned loose and dumped in rural areas… time to see reality.
I agree, it’s extremely sad. Where are you from that hay is $9-$12 a bale? In New Jersey it’s anywhere from $5-$8 a bale. Thats way to expensive. I currently have 4 horses and believe me I wish i could take in more too, I actually feel terrible when I hear about people abandoning their horses because they can’t afford them. There’s definitely other and better solutions. I’ve heard about way to many cases of this happening.
I guess abandoning horses is one step ahead from taking them to the slaughter house. But just one. This is what makes me concerned when I see people breeding horses. I want to ask them if they know they are raising hamburger. There are so many without homes, headed to Mexico for a terrible end to their lives.
There was a story on this in our paper. It’s a tough read, but I wish everyone who thinks about placing their mare with a stallion would read it.
Seriously - it’s very hard to read. But we all should.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/Horse_slaughters_taking_place_on_the_border.html
This has been happening a lot in my state as well. I have heard of a number of “foreclosure dumpings” (homes foreclosed with horses still on property). I hate to hear this. I makes me very sad and almost sick.
We are in tough times and horses are victims as well as the people. I hope we as horse people can come up with a solution to the problem.