horse slaughter

It's no secret that I love horses. I've loved them as long as I can remember. So it might come as a surprise that I am against the prohibition of horse slaughter.

First, this doesn't mean I am pro-slaughter. I think owner education would go a long way toward reducing the number of healthy horses that go to slaughter every year, currently estimated at 100,000.

My concern lies in what happens to those animals if slaughter is banned in the U.S.

Are they shipped to Canada or Mexico to be rendered? The demand is not going to simply disappear. Other countries would be glad to collect that revenue, have those jobs, and could have far less humane treatment regulations than what we enforce in American-based rendering plants.

Are they left neglected in backyards, forgotten in pastures, turned loose when their owners can't afford to feed them? I've seen horses 200-300 pounds underweight, when owners fall on hard times and can't afford to care for them. The photo below is from a now-defunct rescue organization. Horse rescues are continuously begging for money to help feed the animals they have, often turning away horses in need of care due to lack of funding. There are too many to save them all.

Will the animal rights terrorists come after cows next, or pigs? After all, how is it okay to slaughter Bessie or Wilbur if it is unconscionable to kill ol' Tex? Baby steps. What you may find as unrealistic and radical as an end to the livestock industry, special interest groups like PeTA and HSUS lobby for every day. Other cultures kill and eat cats and dogs, who are we to say that Pierre cannot have a Flicka burger or Black Beauty steak for din-din?

Recently, the federal appeals court effectively shut down two of the three horse slaughterhouses in the US with a ban on slaughtering horses for human consumption in Texas. Now, any horse destined for slaughter in this country has to be shipped by truck for as long as several days to reach Illinois.

It would have been more humane to enforce the many current regulations concerning the treatment of ALL slaughter-bound animals during shipment and in holding pens, and more oversight of the killing procedure itself. If there are errors being made resulting in suffering, fix them.

A ban on horse slaughter does not equal an end to horse suffering. Truly, it may have just increased the number of neglect cases to staggering proportions. There are 100,000 too few loving homes for horses that for various reasons end up in "kill pens" across the nation. Horses are disposable to many, and the current overpopulation combined with the economy has reduced many gentle, young horses to values below what "meat prices" traditionally have been. Untrained and older horses often run through auction for less than a hundred bucks. I have many friends selling horses due to financial hardship, some even offering to give them away if a suitable home can be found. No one wants ol' Fury to go to slaughter, but so few are willing to keep their once noble steed after he gets old or lame and can't be ridden 10 miles a day, or bucks once in 10 years of service.

chickens can't skate

They can't. I cannot express in words how funny it is to see a chicken attempt to fly rather than walk on ice. They can't fly, either. The only thing less graceful than a flying chicken, is one attempting to walk across ice.

I spent the first part of my day off work cleaning out horse stalls. A dreadful job any day of the week, but particularly foul when it is cold and wet, and stalls are flooded, and the scraping of the shovel against the rubber floor mats creates this brown sludge that cannot be defined. To make it even more pleasant, the stalls had not been fully stripped and cleaned in weeks, as we haven't shut the horses in the barn due to the unseasonably warm weather. That is, until Ma Nature dumped a few inches of rain on the existing deep mud, and topped it off with a solid half inch or better of ice.

When you walk across this, you can see water moving below the ice and above the dead brown grass. It is treacherous walking. It is even more difficult pulling a giant dump cart meant to be attached to and hauled by a garden tractor, full to the top with cold manure slop. Did I mention the two flat tires? That is why I married a big strong man. I shoveled, he dumped. It is a good partnership.

Three clean stalls later, I realized that the chickens weren't coming in from the coop to the horse barn for treats. I went out to the coop to add another layer of wood shavings to their bedding, and couldn't even get them out of my way to do that. It was then that I got to watch my first "chicken meets ice" incident.

One hen hopped right out of the coop onto the ice and went skidding and flopping like a fish out of water. She may have not turned visibly red, but I know an embarrassed chicken when I see one. The rest of the hens were a bit more wary. One tried very unsuccessfully to fly straight to the horse barn. Remember: chickens can't fly. What they can do, is flap miserably for a few seconds, just above the ground, and then crash viciously to the unforgiving ice below, slide skidding and flopping (again, like a fish) and attempt take-off once again into the slightly more graceful act of "flying" ... it took about three cycles of this before the hen made it to the ice-free barn aisle. The others looked around at each other and me like, we really don't need the extra chicken candy, thanks anyway.

So my next half hour was spent making a chicken sidewalk. I raked and scraped and shoveled the dirty hay and manure dust and various dry litter from the barn aisle and hay storage area floors, and sprinkled it along the quickest route from the barn to the coop. A skid-safe path for my little friends. Then I tossed out their candy (scratch grains) and let them enjoy picking through the wood shavings in the newly cleaned stalls. They do a great job of spreading out the horses' bedding for me.

I'm sorry, this blog really needed video, and I didn't get any. I hope I did a good enough job of painting the visual for you.

(Chicken photo above is our bantam silkie cockerel, Fluffy.)

had a GREAT weekend!

We camped with horses at Ionia for the second time. It was our new horse's second trail ride and he did great. ONE good spook, at a deer just off the trail so he's excused... my old horse would have done the same. (We didn't see it... hmmm)

Saturday we rode out in the morning for a good 12-14 mile route. Once we got out a ways, Westley kept saying, let's stop here, or look at that meadow ... I chewed him out about leaving the marked trail. That's bad. ;)

Finally we got to the "outlook" just past marker 8. The trail was completely closed at the top of the hill, with new wood posts and caution tape blocking the way. I was trying to refigure our route when he said something about stopping and taking a break, something about his knee. I'm thinking okay (whatever you big wuss) and got down and looked around at the view.

Well he came over to me and pinned me up against one of the posts. He was fiddling around with something in his pocket. I said "What are you doing?" (thinking he was doing something else altogether) and he said "Proposing."

One of my very best friends in the whole wide world (I have been blessed to have no less than four people I'd call a BEST friend, most of whom I've known since before high school, and still talk to regularly) asked me to marry him! I hugged him and kissed him and he said "Is that a yes?" and I said YES and cried a little tiny bit but don't tell anyone because no one saw it. *grin*

Anyway he pulled out a ring and I was shocked ... amazed really ... he's been complaining about not having the money for a ring and a wedding (we've been talking about getting married for 2 years but he'd not officially asked) and so for a temporary ring he made a braided horsehair ring with hair from all three of our horses and also a little from his own ponytail. It could not have been more perfect. Fits right and everything. HE HAD NO IDEA that I've been talking to someone about horsehair bracelets, and getting a gift for him made from some tail hair from his first horse... JUST this past week! That's just the funny connection we have.

You couldn't have smacked the smile off my face all weekend long. :D

xpButtercup
aka Westley's FIANCE!

P.S. Next summer!