Did you all know about this? How sad for the rescues.
http://www.pennsylvaniaequestrian.com/news2017/april/New-Holland-Auction-Bans-Photography.php#/
It takes a strong stomach to go to a sale barn in the first place. Iām not surprised the sale owners put a stop to video if a bunch of bleeding hearts were putting video all over facebook to much hand wringing and hysterics.
it like people who go on about the poor little stray cats and think they are helping by putting out food.
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They did that like over a decade ago when I was still going regularly. They didnāt enforce it as long as you werenāt being too obvious or photographing peopleās faces. They made me delete my pictures I took of a goat with another goatās 6 inch horn embedded in his stomach.
I donāt have the heart to go to those sales. Absolutely disgusting the way the animals are and have been treated. 
I put food and water out for the strays. I also trap, spay or neuter, and then release. Cat colonies arenāt the bane of city living.
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Yep, my local auctions ban photos of the horses. Rescues can drum up a lot of negative blowback on the auction when they let an army of well meaning but ignorant people descend. They do have a killer buyer present all the time and they donāt control what kind of horses come in. Biweekly I see 30 horses run through, most with no reserve. A surprisingly number of people are looking for riding horses but the killer gets a good bit of them.
I do take pictures on the down low if I see a specific horse I think I might be able to pull but I am very careful to not let anyone see me or to link my name with the sale. Iām known at the sale as someone who buys tack and occasionally horses but not as a rescuer.
On a side note, I have seen two local barns drop either lesson horses that werenāt working out or sale horses that they couldnāt sell off at the sale barns. Makes me sick.
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If there was nothing to photograph, they wouldnāt have to ban photos.
Maybe, JUST maybe if their Vet did his job, and insured animals consigned were fit to sellā¦ there wouldnāt be a problem?
I believe this stems from the Animal Angels investigations recently that saw very ill, lame animals there for sale, and when brought to Holts attention he chose NOT TO alert authorities.
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stray cats populations grow to the available food supply. You are only being effective with your āhelpā if none of the reproductive age animals slip through the cracks. Otherwise itās just feel-good measures.
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Well I have 9 years of life here to back up my care of the cats vs your story. If you read any of the studies done on feral cats you would know that keeping the colonies contained by spay and neuter is a humane and effective way to control them. And in the process my āhelpā makes me feel good about saving lives and preventing destructive practices.
Score for the feel-good measures. :encouragement:
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Awww bless your heart sweetie. Maybe you should try doing some research on feral cat communities, etc.
To the original point, I live pretty close to New Holland and have been there plenty of times. Iām not surprised theyāve banned photography- that has plenty of dirt to try and hideā¦dead horses, lame horses, diseased horses, horses with open woundsā¦ At least theyāve tightened a bit on coggins, etc. Used to be if you bought a horse, the guy in the office would open a big box and pick out a coggins that sort of matched the horse you bought and send that with you.
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Not true. Gestalt is saving some. You cannot save them all but you can save those that you can get fixed. I once took in, not released, but took in 20 cats that a neighbor let breed from one female cat they brought to the neighborhood. I owned 2 cats at the time. 20 more, yikes! My vet discounted all surgeries and shots. I know a lot of people who do catch and release, so I admire them all as most of the go feed the cats behind walmart and other places where cats live.
Best horse I ever owned was at an auction place, Iād seen her first elsewhere where they were trying to sell her before auction. I bought her for $1500 before the auction. Better than even my over 100,000 horse. I just cannot go to the auctions as some of those horses look at you and they know they are going to slaughter.
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I personally know many horses who have been thru the auction( New Holland) and are wonderful riding horses now, including one of my own. It just makes me sad to think this could slow the rescue process, or hinder good horses getting rescued.
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Actually, when you have multiple rescues at one auction they can actually drive up the bid trying to be the people who rescued the horse first. There have been several cases recently of this happening. When auction prices are high people are more likely to use it as a resource which then puts more horses in danger. In most cases if rescues organized better they would get horses for just above slaughter prices. When I organized a rescue my group got the horse for $150 because for a horse like that it was so unusual for a bid to come from the stands and not the floor the kill buyer knew what was happening and stopped bidding. A few years before that I was with another friend who got a horse for $50.
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Iām not sure why the Auction House is allowed to exist in the first place. And if it didnāt exist, should anyone be allowed to sell a horse to a slaughter house?
- That the Auction House exists is inhumane.
(yāall know itās just a stopping place before loading the horses, like holocaust prisoners, onto trucks headed for a Canadian slaughterhouse).
- In the absence of said Auction House, selling a horse to be transported to a slaughterhouse is inhumane.
IMO
Unforunately, there will always be a need for horse rescues. There needs to be more rescue themed facebook or etc. with people lined up to immediately take horses so they are not taken to auction in the first place. In other words, the middle man is eliminated. Advertise, advertise, advertise. Get the word out that there are other places to take horses with no questions asked. AND then donāt ask questions and donāt judge. Are there people out there that can organize such a ārescueā?
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No. At least not on a grand scale, it would be more along the starfish on the beach scale.
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Does anyone have large scale suggestions as to how to mitigate the need for these low end auctions/buyers who will ship and sell to slaughter?
I personally donāt blame the auction houses or the kill buyers.
I blame the people who allow or provide their horses no other option.
Even on these boards the people who decry auction houses and kill buyers are the same who breed āheart horsesā they have no business breeding. Who buy horses they have no business buying. Who canāt afford trainers or lessons, but also donāt have the skills to keep a horse from this terrible fate and pray the internet can somehow provide those skills. Who post their elderly horses in the giveaway section instead of humanely euthanizing.
Thereās a lot of passing the buck and a lot of hand wringing. And thatās just here, where everyone at least believes they are educated and responsible horsemen.
Ugh.
I would rather donate to a fund to euthanize these horses than place them again in unqualified hands.
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There are not unlimited funds to ārescueā all the horses that you are hoping to rescue. Unfortunate but true. Someone has to buy hay, pay vets and farriers, house/shelter all these horses, some probably indefinitely.
I am not fond of auctions like New Holland. I wish āexcessā horses didnāt have to go to the kill buyer. I donāt have a good solution that includes adequate funding.
My horses, if I was concerned about the fate of one, Iād rather euthanize it rather than send it on to an unclear future. Not everyone will feel as I do.
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If you canāt feed it, donāt breed it.
I donāt blame the auction houses or kill buyers either. They are just cleaning up other peopleās messes. I do blame irresponsible horse owners, especially the ones with questionable breeding practices.
Unfortunately I do not have any reasonable suggestions to stop the ignorant.
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Many of the New Holland auctions are sources for Amish driving horses, or for them to dump used up, lame, underfed ones that then need to be rescued. This is meant as a rebuttal of post number 13 from eclectic. Not all auctions exist for the purpose of selling to slaughter; unfortunately however, many ākill buyersā do go there.
New Holland is not a horse rescue. There are three horse rescues in my vicinity. They donāt advertise, they donāt hold auctions. They just rescue.
