In the United States, horses have gone from asset to liability. In the last three years, American horse owners have been hit with the closure of meat processing plants, skyrocketing feed prices and a worldwide recession, said Juli Thorson, horse owner and editor ofHorse and Ridermagazine.
The result is an increasing number of unwanted horses linked partly to a changing demographic where baby boomers and their children are less interested in riding.
“Baby boomers have been the primary horse owner group in the United States for a long time,” Thorson said from her Idaho ranch where she also raises horses.
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As this generation retires, they have less income and their physical ability to keep and ride horses has declined. The replacement generation is half the size and they do not want their parents’ horses.
There were 20 million horses in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century. By 1930, there were less than two million. Today the American Horse Council estimates there are about 9.2 million in the U.S.
Thorson said there is no way to measure the American horse population because there is no nationwide registry, but she knows the number of horse breeders has declined.
For example, among Quarter horses, the number of breeding mares dropped to 100,000 from 170,000 in the last three years. Horse show entries are down across the country.
One of the most disappointing changes is the loss of the $1,500-$3,000 market. Instead people are giving horses away. It is easy to find free horses on the internet on sites like Craig’s List or Equine. com, she said. “I have bought and sold horses all my life and I have never seen the free horse phenomenon as it exists now.”
Without a meat market and without new owners, some have resorted to dumping horses or sending them to rescue facilities.
“Rescue places have become like Goodwill for horses,” Thorson said.
She has first-hand knowledge of the problem of abandonment, because she operates a short-term boarding facility. Recently, she received cash for two nights board for two horses and the owner never returned.
Nadine Hoy operates a registered non-profit refuge in eastern Oregon. She started taking intensive care horses from the humane society 21 years ago and accepted a couple per year.
These days her facility is chronically overcrowded and now she has 18 horses. When the U.S. slaughterhouses closed at the end of 2007, she ended up with 95 horses that year.
“When the slaughterhouses shut down, all hell broke loose,” she said.
Hoy was opposed to horse slaughter because she thought animals were handled cruelly.
She has changed her mind since seeing starved and abandoned animals dropped off at her shelter. She has received horses that are so emaciated they have lost the will to eat.
“Everybody who says they don’t want them (slaughter plants) opened again doesn’t have a clue. I am picking (horses) up by the boat load and I am being the slaughterhouse,” she said.
In the course of eight weeks she euthanized seven horses.
Hoy attempts to rehabilitate horses and places as many as possible through word of mouth and the internet.
“There are still people out there who want horses but they are few and far between,” she said.
