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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I’m not sure why the Auction House is allowed to exist in the first place. And if it didn’t exist, should anyone be allowed to sell a horse to a slaughter house?
- That the Auction House exists is inhumane.
(y’all know it’s 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 don’t ask questions and don’t judge. Are there people out there that can organize such a “rescue”?
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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 don’t 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 “heart horses” they have no business breeding. Who buy horses they have no business buying. Who can’t afford trainers or lessons, but also don’t 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.
There’s a lot of passing the buck and a lot of hand wringing. And that’s 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 “rescue” 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 “excess” horses didn’t have to go to the kill buyer. I don’t have a good solution that includes adequate funding.
My horses, if I was concerned about the fate of one, I’d 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 can’t feed it, don’t breed it.
I don’t blame the auction houses or kill buyers either. They are just cleaning up other people’s 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 ‘kill buyers’ do go there.
New Holland is not a horse rescue. There are three horse rescues in my vicinity. They don’t advertise, they don’t hold auctions. They just rescue.
Did you read @Sistersiouxz 's post as saying New Holland was a rescue? I read it as saying horse rescues are needed to hopefully cut out the auction middleman.
Sadly, there simply aren’t enough rescues to deal with the terrible terrible choices many horse owners make. Some fall on hard times, but many rush right into a disaster–often with full warning. Just read some of the threads on this site.
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New Holland is a place where horses end up for either rescue or slaughter. IT IS NOT, ITSELF, ANYTHING APPROACHING A RESCUE.
It’s the end of the line. The lesson stable that has horses it can’t use ends up selling them, on the cheap, to an un-researched buyer, who then takes them to New Holland to hopefully flip for a higher price. Maybe kill buyer is there because the prices are low. At any rate, it’s always been known as the last ditch before slaughter.
-----MY THOUGHTS ON AN ALTERNATIVE TO NEW HOLLAND----------------
Instead of selling one’s horse cheap to “anybody,” and instead of having an auction location like New Holland, I’d suggest people list their horses online for, say, $1,000 and put in big letters that the horse will be euthanized in such and such many days if he does not sell.
Maybe these listings can be all together on one website, organized by the same people who man the New Holland Facebook page.
For farmers who don’t use internet or can’t take the time, there can be a well-advertised phone number to call. Hopefully farmer can at least take a picture of the horse and send to these people who are “Agents” for the New Holland Page. If not, someone living near them can be entreated, also via the online site, to go get a picture.
If owners want to give their horses a chance to be rescued, this is the way to do it.
As stated before, the ones who are now acting as animal activists/agents can do the legwork of posting pictures on the website and specifying how long the horses have before being euthanized.
Also – euthanization services need to be made available to the owners. It’s possible some of these owners can’t afford the cost or inconvenience of euthanization, and this is why they send the horse away.
(Provided by volunteers like the one who did it at New Holland. And there may be veterinarians local to the animal who can be enlisted).
This way there is no needless suffering* for the horses in danger.
[INDENT]There’s no question the horses know as soon as they’re loaded into a truck from their last workplace that it’s the end of the line for them.
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Add on top of this they then need to stand in shame in the “Place Full of Sickness and Fear” called New Holland Auction while people decide whether or not they should be rescued.
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Add to this that when they are not rescued, they get loaded into a truck, again, for a horrifyingly long trip from southeast PA to CANADA.
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Can we possibly think of any MORE ways to torture horses?
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]I know, once they get to Canada, we can have ANOTHER auction barn. Or a gas chamber they get herded into. Oh yeah, that’s probably what does happen.
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]OMG. :no: :no:[/INDENT]
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Again, where do you think anyone is saying New Holland is a rescue? Can you quote the post(s) you are referring to? Because I think you may be confused or misunderstanding.
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Don’t individuals and groups do this all the time? I don’t think it has served as a solution thus far. And when it does, the horses in question are often sold to people utterly and completely unequipped to deal with horses who require emotional blackmail to rehome.
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Sorry if I wasn’t clear on my post. New Holland is not a rescue. What I was suggesting is advertise for people willing to take a horse at a moments notice so these horses do not go to slaughter auctions. It would take a fair bit of coordinating. It would be the last stop before slaughter auction, so people would realize the urgency. Horses would need to be culled unforunately, only healthy adoptible animals and eliminating the middleman, would make them more affordable. Price would need to be on the hoof prices for obvious reasons. I am in a hurry right now so I hope I make sense.
I don’t suppose that it has occurred to anyone that many of these auction houses serve the Amish community, and members of said community do not believe in graven images and therefore don’t want THEIR pictures taken. Every time I go to Amish country there is always at least one uninformed “English” who wants to take pictures of the Amish. The auction is going to go to some lengths to satisfy their regulars’ opinions.
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Sounds like Craigslist to me. Oh… woe is me, I have to sell my horse fast for $$ or he’ll be euthanized (or at least so it says).
Again, good idea but someone has to eat the cost of the euthanasia and disposal of said bodies. Who is stepping up to do that? I’m not even sure if all the zoos in the country would be prepared to take in and humanely euthanize all the equines and use them for food for their big cats and other predators.
I suspect many who let their horses go to kill buyers, regardless of how the horses end up there, don’t want to deal with much other than getting the horse off their property and out of their checkbooks. Dealing with some internet listing site may be more than some are interested in.
I don’t like New Holland, kill buyers, transportation to slaughterhouses and slaughterhouses. I also don’t have a cost effective solution either. At least if it was a slaughterhouse designed by Temple Grandin for horses it might be humane and less stressful than most.
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I don’t think this extends to their animals though? I assume the photos that were causing a stir were of the LIVESTOCK not the sellers?
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Unfortunately there were both. One of the videos that most likely caused the final ban was of an Amishman’s horse that had died at the hitch rail. The person videotaping even taped the Amish man and the veterinarian going to attend the animal.
Certain groups trying to assist with sales were careful and one only filmed horses with permission of the seller, but many others were not and were filming general scenes of the auction and the barns, including the horses and their opinion of the animal and the owner. Then they’d post to Facebook.
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That’s a shame. I think there’s some public interest in what goes on there, but I do think filming a person who has expressly told you it’s against his/her religion is pretty over-the-line.
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