Following up on MSNBC’s pet food banks see 50% demand increase, Time Magazine has a story on other animal victims of the recession in An Epidemic of Abandoned Horses.
The global food and fuel crisis is resulting in more than just people going hungry. Rising grain and gas prices, as well as the closure of American slaughterhouses, have contributed to a virtual stampede of horses being abandoned — some starving — and turned loose into the deserts and plains of the West to die cruel and lonesome deaths.
Rescue projects, which are mostly small and rely on volunteers , have a hard time keeping up with the influx of abandoned horses as they too feel the pinch of the recession. One rescue project saw its hay bill almost tripled from $28,000 to $80,000. That’s excluding the cost of transportation and grains…
With discretionary spending down, way down, horse breeders find it increasingly impossible to sell their horses and are falling back on trading horses for cattle.
Longtime Montana horse breeder Kathy Thornton says she will cut back on the number of her brood mares producing offspring every year, because of high costs of feed and transportation, plus the sudden drop in value of her well-tempered colts. A three-year-old trained ranch horse that traditionally would bring upwards of $1,500 fetched only $525 at a sale 175 miles away, a transaction that cost her $200 in truck fuel. “I’m open for barter,” says Ms. Thornton. “I’m now trading horses for cattle.”
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