The Funny Farm

09/20/2024

09/19/2024

Love my office view ❤️

09/17/2024

Not dinner time yet kiddos, go back out to pasture 😘

09/14/2024

‼️ Warning ‼️ Long read‼️
This past weekend, I watched an auction and what happened at this auction explained a lot as to why “regular rescues” are struggling financially. It is not because there is no donor money available since there are mass bailing rescues and killpen rescues that are bringing in millions of dollars (yes you read that correctly – Millions of Dollars!)

Yesterday, I read about a Texas rescue shutting down because of lack of donations. This morning, I spoke to another rescue director that’s closing their rescue because of lack of donations. Wherever I look, horse rescues are shutting their doors for lack of donor support. Heck, if our rescue did not have a private foundation helping us, we would have had to shut down last year already. We are the largest Arabian horse rescue in the United States. Let that sink in. We would have to have shut down!

Killpen fundraising and large scale mass bailing “the slaughter truck is coming” fundraising operations are what is suffocating the local “regular horse rescues” financially. There are only so many horse loving donors available, it is a finite number of donors. Regular horse rescues lose donors to the emergency fundraising schemes out there.

If donors have to choose between giving their $20 to a horse that is said to ship to "certain death" if a donation is not received immediately and an owner relinquished horse that a rescue is taking in, the donor will most likely choose the "certain death horse". It is the urgency of the situation, the dire position the horse is perceived to be in, the hard core online pleas that make the donor choose the ”certain death horse” rather than the owner relinquished horse from around the corner. After all, the feeling of “yes, I helped save a horse from death today” feels great to the donors.

And here is the problem! The "certain death horse" is not shipping to its death. It is a marketing ploy to get donations. How do I know this? Stay with me, I will explain.

Do horses ship to slaughter? Yes they do, no question about that. However, when a horse trader/slaughter shipper gets an order for 35-40 horses, they will ship 35-40 horses. They pick the healthy fat young horses to ship to slaughter. The horses that I have personally observed that were in actual ship to slaughter pens waiting on transport, were healthy, young, fat, big horses. This is also backed up by statistics of what horses ship to slaughter. Several years ago, it was fat young quarter horses that were discarded by breeders. Most recently, it has been unhandled young, fat reservation horses that have been rounded up by the thousands and sadly some branded mustangs. But, it was mostly unhandled feral horses that were shipped to slaughter.

They do not ship the skinny old broken horses. Those are fundraised for and sold to line the pockets of the horse traders who wants to make some extra cash. Plus these horses tug at the donors' heart strings and they will open their wallet, so they make an easy fundraising opportunity for killpen and mass bailing organizations.

Why are the slaughter shipping order for 35-40 horses? Because that is how many horses fit into the slaughter shipping trailer and that is how many horses fit on the slaughter manifest paper form. The process of putting a load of 35-40 horses together, requires the horses to be microchipped and listed on a slaughter shipment manifest with gender and age, line by line. This document must be signed off by a veterinarian, certifying that the horses do not have certain illnesses and that they are healthy. Once the veterinarian has signed off the manifest form, it is submitted to the USDA office with a processing fee of $56. The USDA office usually takes two to three business days to process the shipping manifest document and approves it. Once the USDA approval is received, the 35-40 horses can be loaded onto the trailer to be shipped to Presidio, TX or to El Paso, TX where they are dropped off, processed further, and then they are loaded onto another trailer to cross the border into Mexico.

It is a horrible process, no denying that and I break out in tears every time that I see a real manifest that has been processed by USDA and I know that these horses listed were slaughtered. It needs to stop! No question about it. But, I am telling you about this process because donors are duped when they see the fundraising posts that say things like, “donate so that we can get these horses because they ship tomorrow”.

The slaughter horse trader would be committing fraud if he pulled some horses off the slaughter trailer because his paperwork would be incorrect now. The microchip numbers would not match the horses. The signed veterinary certificate would be a falsified document now. And even if this kind of thing was possible, even if the horse trader and the veterinarian were willing to commit fraud, the shipment would now be two horses short and two other horses would have to be found to take the “rescued horses’” place.

And if the horse trader and veterinarian wanted to do things correctly, they would have to cancel the shipment of 35-40 horses and would have to redo the slaughter shipment manifest paperwork and start all over again. This would delay the shipment of the ordered slaughter horses by two to three days and would increase the horse trader’s operating cost.

Do these last minute “rescue the horses from the slaughter truck” fundraisers make sense in light of this information? Yet, donors frantically donate to these kinds of fundraisers.

Most of the posts that you see on social media with “will ship to slaughter” fundraisers are for horses that the horse trader wants to sell to make extra money, these horses were never meant to ship to slaughter. The “last minute ships to slaughter” fundraisers of horses that may look sad, but were never part of the slaughter pipeline either, they are meant to make some extra money for somebody.

But, donors give their money to these types of fundraisers and their local rescues that desperately need donors support go without, even though these rescues keep horses out of harms way in the first place.

I watched videos last weekend of pleas for the horses to be kept off the slaughter truck at a large auction. Thousands of Dollars rolled in. One rescue director walked through the pens saying. “I am here at the killpen auction…” when the first part of the auction is for catalog horses with horses selling for as much as $20,000 and the second part of the auction is for less expensive riding horses. Does the auction house have a slaughter shipping contract? Yes, they do. Do any of the rescues bid against the auction owner when he buys horses in the loose auction portion of the auction weekend? No, they do not. So no matter what, the slaughter shipper/auction owner gets the number of horses for shipping to slaughter and none of the rescues bid against him.

Another rescue director was at the auction buying donkeys for up to $1,000 per donkey. Normally one donkey sells for $50 to $200. Word spread and everyone and their grandmother went looking for donkeys to bring to the sale. Easy money for donkey owners willing to sell their donkeys! But it was donors who funded all of this. This artificially created a supply of donkeys at way above market price. I do not know how many $1,000 donkeys they purchased, but I can tell you that these donkeys had not been in danger of shipping to slaughter in the first place.

Another rescue director featured skinny broken horses to prevent them from shipping to slaughter. As discussed above, they were not slaughter bound horses in the first place. Does a skinny medical type case horse need help. Yes, of course, the horse needs help, but it is done with “ships to slaughter” type fundraising.

Also, when rescues attend auctions to buy skinny sickly horses, word spreads and horse owners and horse traders looking to make a quick profit will find those skinny horses to bring to auction.

We had a case of this in Southern California when a local mass bailing rescue sought out the skinny horses to fundraise for them to keep them from being “shipped to slaughter”. They always attended the same auction and the director was caught making deals with a horse trader to starve a certain horse, so that the horse would be even skinnier the next week. She told him to bring the horse back skinnier because she knew that people would donate more. Fortunately, this rescue was shut down.

But, these practices are reminiscent of the fundraiser videos and posts that I saw last weekend. I am not claiming that this particular rescue at the auction is doing what this Southern California mass bailing director was doing. But it does raise eyebrows.

It is training donors to only give when a horse is presented as in danger of slaughter or at the brink of death.

It trains the donor to ignore the “boring” pleas of regular rescues who want to support an elderly owners, owners in need, law enforcement seizures, and from small local auctions.

I have had someone tell me that taking in an owner relinquished horse was not rescue work. I wonder how many other donors believe the same? Yet, the regular rescues are the ones preventing horses from ending up in the hands of horse traders and so called killpens in the first place.

As time goes on, with more local regular rescues closing their doors because of lack of donations and the few multi-million mass bailing operations being the only ones left, there won’t be safe havens for local horses anymore. Let that sink in.

Yet these mega-mass bailing rescues’ actions are doing nothing to stop horses from shipping to slaughter. They use emotional videos of horses as they are loaded into trailers to squeeze the last dollars out of donors.

The shipments continue. Fortunately, in recent years, slaughter export numbers are down because demand drives supply. But if the Mexican or Canadian slaughter house wants 100 horses, these traders will ship the 100 horses, no matter how much money is paid in donations to “stop the slaughter truck”. The only way to change this and to stop horses being exported to Canada and Mexico is to pass legislation to outlaw it. Period!

09/10/2024

Because the good has to outweigh the bad. This is Arthur, our new foster from 1 Horse At A Time Draft Horse Rescue ... Peanut (also from 1horse) has decided that Arthur is his buddy and has been hanging out with him for hours.... only being mildly Peanut-ty.

Arthur has some neurological issues and will probably never get better but he reminds me so much of my first horse Keetaal, from the first time I saw his picture. I am glad we can give him a home and some love. He's a sweet boy. Welcome home Arthur 👑🗡️🪨

09/08/2024

This has always baffled me...my crew gets done every eight weeks, year around. That schedule works for my guys (although I've had some that need 4–6-week trims). We have a lot of ppl around here that only trim/shoe in the summer when they are "using" their horses, I have never understood this. Their hoofs grow year around, they need care year around!!

Pasture horses - retirees, broodmares, horses recuperating from an injury, horses you only use to lead little kids around on - still all need hoof trims every 6 to 8 weeks.

Think about it - would you want to be walking around with your feet hurting 24/7 when you were elderly or pregnant or injured? Of course not. This is just common sense. You can economize on a lot of things with horses - but never feed and never feet. Ignoring feet on pasture horses is entirely too normalized and it needs to change.

09/03/2024

Happy Labor Day! As we celebrate and honor the hardworking men and women who fought tirelessly for workers rights, let’s not forget the many draft horses who worked alongside them, helping to build our country.

Learn more about the ways draft horses have played a huge role in the history of our country and why we must continue the fight to protect them today:

(excerpt from the Gentle Giants July 2024 Newsletter)

09/01/2024

Morning drive and some chores

Very smokey 🔥

08/31/2024

Dinner, grooming and lots of scratches for everyone. Justin usually goes to the end of the line after his grooming, looking for a second round of attention (which he usually gets)

Very smokey 🔥

08/30/2024

Yesterday after we posted the two senior horses at auction we did make an assumption that they were dumped at the sale for profit after being given to "good homes". I need to clarify that while we shouldn't always think the worst, we have come to these conclusions after more than a decade pulling senior auction horses. We all hope they are there by some tragic misfortune and that the people didn't know what they were doing. Usually though we find out that they are victims of the same story over and over. It takes away that part of you that wants to give people "the benefit of the doubt".

Unfortunately, we were right in our assumptions. Again. Because old horses given to "good homes" simply DO NOT get happily ever afters a vast majority of the time. Of the last 6 horses over 20 we bought at auction, 5 were given to a family for their kids. The horse ended up needing senior horse care they were not willing to provide and they wanted that last dollar instead of just euthanizing.

Cody is a registered paint 25 years old. He was given to a Rodeo family for their kids to ride. They admitted that he wasn't sound enough and needed too much feed. Also they said they wanted the money and knew he wasn't worth anything to sell privately.

Nugget is also 25+. Given to a family for their daughter to run barrels on. He also found himself dumped when he wasn't able to do it anymore.

How do we know? The owners who gave these horses to those families reached out to us. Both completely shocked. Both thought these homes were amazing and would be great loving families. Both told me they cried when they saw what happened. These weren't seniors with no options, these weren't broke single moms. The family that dumped Cody even kept the other horse they got with him since he doesn't have the care needs he does.

I won't soapbox again with a chapter book. I write on this often enough... but in the future please understand why we think the way we do. It's because nearly every senior horse we meet has this same story.

DON'T GIVE AWAY YOUR OLD HORSES. If you must, try a rescue, do contracts, hold brand inspections or just let them pass on at home where they are loved.

08/23/2024

Could have been worse... Our neighbors to the north and south lost their barns. Another neighbor lost their garage that was under construction (all the people and animals are okay).. we lost one of our shelters and it took out our neighbors fence and wheel line.... fun times, glad everyone is safe.

08/22/2024

No more wall....now it can fit our carts🥳🥳

08/21/2024

When you are 18.1hh (Justin), it helps to have a tall buddy. I haven't measured peanut in about 9 months....my guess is he's almost as tall, but not as wide

08/19/2024

Pretty night after the storm rolled through

08/18/2024

08/16/2024

First time hooking up the cart solo 💪... It's a heavy 🤬 but I got it done and Justin was a saint of course ❤️

08/15/2024

Dealing with irrigation generally sucks, but I have good company ❤️

08/14/2024

Finn is getting a little TLC and getting used to the new barn

08/12/2024

Nice cool day for a drive.

08/11/2024

I have the best farrier Derek Walter McKay

My horses aren't always easy but he always keeps his cool (even when I want to kill all of them). We had a surprisingly good farrier day, everyone behaved, even the baby was on good behavior. He still thinks the power cord is going to eat him....but he did better this time.

Justin got his first time in his own stocks. He's always been done in stocks and doesn't know how to hold up his feet very well so we bought him stocks to keep him comfortable and our Farrier safe.

While I can pick out his feet without the stocks he has a hard time balancing for the trim and shoe fitting. The stocks give him something to lean against that can actually hold him up.

08/09/2024

Evening scratches

08/08/2024

Peanut has been in training for the last three weeks, he is back for his Farrier Day tomorrow, and then he'll go back for one more week. I am lucky he's been in training 10 minutes up the road..... Everyone was happy to see him.

01/10/2024

Sometimes I think Peant is really smart. And then he tries to reach the water trough from the wrong side of the fence 🤣🤦🥜

01/07/2024

Not a bad view, even from the manure pile

12/29/2023

Voss Plowing and Skid Steer did an excellent job getting the dry lot cleaned up and looking good 🧹

12/20/2023

🥜

12/17/2023

Had to take advantage of the sun being out... everyone got to go out for a walk around the neighborhood