Living in a Dream: Too Many Horses

Yesterday was a cool rainy day in our area, so we decided to spend the day at the horse auction. Nothing like making the day a little more depressing, right!? Actually I have always enjoyed visiting the auctions because it was something my grandfather and I did every summer when I visited.

Now of course they aren't nearly as fun as when I was a small child running around just enjoying the all the horses. Now I see more. I see the hurt and fear in some of the horses eyes. I see just how bad the market is. I see just how many horses we are breeding only to send to slaughter. (Again my disclaimer on slaughter. I am for slaughter, but I feel we should have slaughter in the US so it can be regulated.) Speaking of breeding, I feel that is where the problem is at. Too many back yard breeders thinking they can make money off the babies. When the truth of the matter is we have too many horses! There are not enough homes even for the good ones. I saw some extremely well broke nice looking horses go for around 1,000 dollars. There were weanlings and yearlings going for 50 to 70 dollars. Now of course there are the exceptions. A few extremely well bred weanlings went for around 400-700 dollars, and some really nice adult horses that could work cows went for around 5-6,000 dollars. The average seemed to fall in the 1,400 dollar range for a trained horse. I suppose the market is slowly getting better since last year most babies went for 1-25 dollars. Regardless of price, the fact that they had around 500 horses to sale in a one day sale is a lot especially when they will have another sale in 4 weeks. Once a month nearly a thousand horses are sold in a two day period right here in my town. Now lots of people do come from out of state to sale horses here. However, them traveling all the way here tells me our market must be better than theirs to make it worth the time and fuel.
All this combined tells me the horse market is flooded just like dogs,cats, and other small critters. Too many horses, not enough homes. They have become throw away animals like cats and dogs. If you don't want it any more just loose sale through the ring and go buy another one. Now obviously not every horse that goes through the loose sale goes to slaughter. Some go to great homes, other goes to just okay homes, and some go to slaughter. Just as not every horse that is consigned to the main sale goes to a great home, some of those go to slaughter. Some times slaughter is the most humane option for them. Well actually just being humanely euthanized would be the best option, but people are too cold hearted for that.

This horse should have been euthanized long before making it to the yard. Shame on its owners for allowing this! Now it must endure the long trip to Canada for slaughter.

Hopefully one day people will stop breeding indiscriminately so just maybe there will be less horses neglected, abused, and thrown away.

Here are some pictures from my day. We left around 3pm and it was far from over.