No room at the pen
Slim wallets and an end to U.S. slaughterhouses flood rescue centers with horses and few options for dealing with them.
By Michael Booth
A dying dog is 40 pounds of family sadness.
A dying horse is a physics problem, and 1,000 pounds of emotional debate over what we should do with the iconic Western companion at the end of its useful life.
"The bottom line is there are more horses than there are people with properties who can adequately care for them," said Keith Roehr, a veterinarian with the state of Colorado.
Overbreeding has saturated the horse market, driving down values, while feed-grain prices have tripled. At the same time, changing ethical standards have shut off a generations-old relief valve for ranchers — slaughtering horses for meat to be consumed in foreign countries.
The glut puts more horses in peril every month. More are being abandoned on public lands. Neglected horses crowd rescue shelters. The pool of farms willing to put Old Paint out to pasture is shrinking.
Strains in the horse world prompt ranchers to accuse city folk of a patronizing ignorance for opposing slaughter, animal-rights groups to accuse horse sellers of intolerable cruelty, and all "horse people" to argue about how an animal's life should conclude.
Is a horse a friend or a responsibility? A retired servant or a liability on the hoof? When it comes right down to it, pet or meat?
"Horses are starving," said Janiejill Tointon, a breeder-rancher in Boulder and Walden. "Shutting down the processing (slaughter) plants was probably the worst thing they've ever done for horses. It makes me crazy when animals are suffering."
Tointon has had to face the problem directly. She has shot her own horses, had them put down by vets, buried them on her own property. She is a vegetarian and a lifelong horse lover. But she sees it as a steward's duty to get the most from a well-treated horse, even as income from horse meat.
"We domesticated them, so we have to be brave enough to do what's right."
Even rescue centers fail
Overpopulation among horses has become a public problem. Officials seized neglected horses from a Larimer County rescue called Animal Angels late last year. Park County animal officers confiscated 44 horses from a rescue ranch early this year. Boulder County says three of its worst horse cases were in the past two years; vets and rescuers say they are facing record complaints and impoundments.
The growing herds of mistreated horses complicate an emotional issue Congress will debate again this year: shipping unwanted horses to slaughterhouses, where meat is prepared for France, Japan and other cultures where horseflesh is not taboo. The last U.S. "processing" facility closed in 2007 under legislative and court pressures, but horses from Colorado and other Western states are legally trucked to butchering plants in Mexico and Canada.
Congress will debate shutting off that route with the Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, favored by animal- rights groups who argue the processors are inhumane, but resented by ranchers who say passage would keep another 75,000 to 100,000 unwanted horses in the U.S. market.
"I don't think normal people living downtown in a city have a clue," said Vaughn Cook, a northern Colorado rancher who believes the processing option should remain open, even if he wouldn't use it himself.
Animals-rights proponents, he said, "spend their money on attack ads" — scandalizing alleged cruelties — "but ask them how many bales of hay they have bought for these horses. How many dollars have they given to horse-rescue operations? "
The Cooks take calls every week from horse owners trying to sell unwanted mares to the Cooks' breeding program. Horse people's homes are always crammed with magazines and newsletters, and the Cooks share doomsaying articles quoting tales of abandoned horses in Michigan and $5 prices for surplus stock. Some of the Cooks' callers even offer to pay to be done with the animals.
"Some of them we can use, many we can't," said Cook's wife, Jill, a veterinarian. "Talk to the horse rescues — they are full. It's always hard to say, 'I'm for slaughtering horses,' because you sound like a bad person. But I am in favor of slaughtering horses. It provided an end-of-life alternative for some of these horses that are no longer useful."
Animal-rights advocates, meanwhile, have had great success in defining more rights and protections. They don't apologize for their immovable anti-slaughter stance. There is a realistic, long-term solution for the problem: Breed fewer horses.
"Just like with cats and dogs, we need to get a handle on the overpopulation problem," said Stephanie Bell, a California-based cruelty caseworker for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
"We believe these animals deserve a humane end. A humane slaughterhouse is a contradiction in terms."
Walk in ranchers' shoes
Go live on a ranch and figure out what to do with a half-ton of ailing horse, respond Westerners like Tointon. Last fall, she had a 5-month-old foal named Peaberry who pulled up with a broken leg after ramming a telephone pole. "She was my prize baby. I knew it couldn't be fixed. I shot her. It was awful, but I couldn't stand to see her suffer for one second."
As shocking as a pistol shot may sound to city slickers, euthanizing can be harder to watch, Tointon said. Drugged horses may flail around even if they're not feeling pain, and the convulsions are disturbing.
At the Tointon family's larger horse spread near Walden, they can bury shot or euthanized horses on their own property, but not in Boulder. She pays about $125 to a renderer who will pick up a dead horse and break it down to useful materials.
Some of Tointon's aging horses get put to pasture at the Walden ranch. It's simply not realistic, though, to imagine a Shangri-La where all good horses stand and graze until their last natural second.
She urged protesters to "spend their energy making the processing plants into good places."
Options narrowing
Colorado's oldest horse shelter, Colorado Horse Rescue in Longmont, is neutral on the slaughter question. When any of the shelter's 50-odd horses must be put down for health reasons, a vet euthanizes the animal with drugs and a hauler takes the carcass to a composting landfill, said director Hildy Armour. But removing the slaughter option nationwide adds to the pressure on rescuers — Armour has seen consecutive high years for impounds of neglected horses, and she is running out of options for placing them.
Armour's ranch, tucked in between rolling homes and ranchettes west of suburban Longmont, features neat rows of bridles and meticulous stacks of hay laid nearby for months of backup supply. Armour and her crew stand in conscious contrast to the failing rescues and bankrupt boarders who made news in the past year with starving horses.
Her research identified about 6,000 legitimate spots for rescued horses across the nation. The 100,000 horses that used to be slaughtered in the U.S. every year are now lingering on the market. "The math is pretty compelling," she said.
Ranchers, horse advocates and law officers all fear current economic pressures. The roughly $3,000 annual cost of horse care may be out of reach for many marginal owners. Wrenching choices about the value of a life will be made and veterinarians or sheriff's departments left to clean up the results.
"Someone's not willing to pay $100 to suture a wound when the horse is only worth $300," said Jill Cook. "That horse used to be worth $2,000."
The U.S. slaughter market used to provide what ranchers call a "floor" value for horses — unwanted or surplus horses were worth up to $750. Many Americans with a casual relationship to horses find that abhorrent, but buyers in other nations enjoy horse meat as leaner and sweeter than beef.
"I know horses are considered pets by many, but for many other people, it's still a business with economics that have to work,"said Gary Baxter, equine section head at Colorado State University's veterinary school.
But the technicalities of that business worry some. Animal-rights lobbyists highlight videos of alleged abuses at Mexican slaughterhouses — the Humane Society website features video of a Colorado auction barn where "kill-buyers" supposedly stock up on horses for shipping.
Ranchers and horse associations who support a slaughter option say processors can and should use humane kill methods, including the same pneumatic bolt used on cattle. On the other side of the debate — the side with momentum — animal-rights activists counter that the bolts shouldn't be used on cattle, either: There's no humane way to butcher meat.
More neutering a goal
Some rescuers, as individuals or organizations, buy the cheapest animals at auction barns to keep them away from slaughter buyers. Ranchers scoff at such tactics, saying those bargain-basement horses will only overtax rescue shelters and are unlikely adoption candidates.
Armour's rescue always has more requests to take on horses than it can handle. She plans to step up her grant-writing efforts this year to find money to bolster her own finances.
Shelters and rescue ranches want to organize, set care standards and make gelding and spaying of horses more common.
Horse advocates who feel a humane processing option should still be available in the States know they are on the hard side of the debate. Given the political and legal climate, operators have not stepped forward to reopen a U.S. plant. Instead, horse associations are emphasizing restraint in breeding, and education of marginal horse owners about options for an unwanted animal.
"Can the industry declare this an emergency?" asked Katy Cater of the American Horse Council in Washington, D.C. "We don't know, but there are signs. And overbreeding is a big problem. People breed a foal and then realize, uh oh, I can't afford to feed it."