Horses abandoned in West as feed prices rise
Tue May 13, 2008 7:16am EDT
By Laura Zuckerman
SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - In the classic Hollywood western, a cowboy portrayed by John Wayne gallops across the sagebrush steppe and rocky ridges of the American West with only his horse for a companion.
What the films don't show is the cowboy buying and hauling hay for his horse, or what happens to the horse when it is too aged, infirm or irascible to ride.
Those more mundane details are at the heart of a debate about growing cases of mistreatment of horses in the United States, at a time when hay and grain prices are skyrocketing and when options for disposing of unwanted horses are dwindling.
"What concerns me is a fate worse than slaughter," said Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and an authority on the handling of livestock such as horses. "We've got people turning horses loose in fields, dropping horses off in the night -- my worst nightmares are coming true." Read More
The problems arising from the shut down of the horse harvesting facilities in the United States continue to mount. Dealing with unwanted horses is becoming an issue all across the country. The solution to the problem is to once again allow us to utilize this resource rather than them suffering their current fates.
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