Reply #14: I think the premise of this article is irresponsible [View All]

High hay prices and the closing of the slaughter houses? Give me a break! I'm sorry, but people who would abandon an animal like this was already not feeding or caring for it properly. The closing of the slaughter houses cannot be used as an excuse for anything other than the final termination of an inhumane practice.

Unfortunately, there are always irresponsible animal owners, that have no business owning animals. This definitely includes livestock. We have several of them around our ranch. They think they should be able to just turn them out to forage for themselves, so the owner doesn't have any expenses. Typically the horses/cattle have already eaten down everything on the owner's property to bare dirt. So they come over to my property and eat/trample my grass, or go into my hay barn and devour my $15 a bale orchard grass hay. These are also the owners that never provide any veterinary care, so their animals are often contagious. We lost our pet brahma steer to this type of trespass a few years ago.

Bottom line is that people cannot continue to see animals as disposable commodities that should not be any trouble to themselves. This goes for horses, cattle, dogs, cats, you name it. These are not toys, and require just as much care and expense as a human baby. As we all know, there are a ton of people out there that should not be allowed to breed either.

I think the long-term answer, is not to allow just anyone who happens to have a female animal to breed it. That's simply not acceptable. A foal (baby horse) is cute as hell, but unless you know something about genetics, ie, what you may get if you're lucky, or how to properly break and train a young one, and are financially able to house, feed, and care for another adult horse--DON'T breed that mare. We have two very nice older, well-trained and well-bred warmblood mares. Not about to breed them. No matter how well you plan, it's always a crap shoot.

In the short term..........we're probably going to have to set up animal control systems similar to what's in place for small animals until the population is under control, and try like hell to educate the public.