This is from Euro dressage https://eurodressage.com/2023/11/25/window-dressing?fbclid=IwAR2hlJtCnKRl_ZDDvTYqI7VPUqFl0t8noqc5ClH7L1zXAxcRcjRnin1MbeY
And I really smiled a bit reading it because I remember how everybody jumped on me when I had some little doubts about Judges……
Thank you! Better said than I.
Capitalism. It’s a rabbit hole one could go down for days if you wanted to philosophize how it relates to any industry where the product is an animal.
Van Olst does not breed 110 horses a year. They breed 20-30. He does buy a LOT of young horses from breeders that use their stallions. He raises them, culls the ones that don’t make the grade, and sells the rest. There are several videos online where they are interviewed and explain their operation.
I have been there twice and bought a young horse from them.
Edited to add- after reading the posts here I probably misused the word culling. Perhaps it was screening? Once again, some interviews online explain his program and are worth searching for.
Just saying in 2020 Schockemöhle produced 1000 foals….
What does “cull” mean in this scenario? Just curious as it’s contrasted with selling the ones that aren’t culled. Just sells them cheaper right away and keeps the others to train/compete and sell for the big money?
I’m hoping that’s what it means.
I don’t know what it means for sure. I imagine the ones with poor X-rays, gaits, etc are priced to sell. Some are sold as two year olds ( Valegro), others are started under saddle at three, then I am assuming priced at what their gaits, trainability, breeding, and the market will pay. Look up the interviews- interesting and informative.
I know at the KWPN stallion show I asked and was told that some of the prospects had been started, some not. None of the three year olds there for approval were shown under saddle.
Meat market. Horse meat is commonly eaten in many countries in Europe and Asia . It is not a generally available food in some English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, Ireland, the United States, and English Canada. It is also taboo in Brazil, Poland and Israel and among the Romani.*
*Wikipedia
Just saying in Germany they slaughtered 3600 horses last year, in the EU 160.000 and worldwide 5000000….
So I am really not sure why this argument is always brought up….
Canada is probably slaughtering more horses than the EU….
And adding 22.6 Million cattle was slaughtered in the EU last year so I don’t think horse meat is common food in the EU…. I also suspect most of it is used as dogfood…
‘And who’s accountable for this? They buyers who keep buying from him? The trainers who keep sending their clients there to strike up commission fees? Or the judges who keep rewarding famous riders on spectacular horses even though the tension and sweat are dripping off the horses, the mouths are dead or so wide open you can see the letter A from C? Another major issue is that activists who believe dressage should be about neck rings, bitless bridles, and lots of patting, call everything hyperflexion as soon as the nose comes behind the vertical. Rollkur, hyperflexion and LDR (Low Deep Round) have been wrongfully heaped together and equalised as animal abuse. This minority group is growing and their voice gets louder. Watch out or equestrian sport will completely lose its social licence to operate and then we’re all broke.’
Astrid wrote it better then I could. I’ve been thinking the same since I read and saw the digusting and horrid animal abuse being done to
Not an argument. It’s a reality that excess horses are sent to slaughter for human consumption. Not all the culls end up being bought to be riding horses. In 2022, 54,000 horses were slaughtered in Canada for human consumption. In 2022, 2600 horses, who were to be slaughtered for human consumption, were live exported.
Edited to add. Canadian horse meat is mainly exported to France and Japan. Very little is consumed in Quebec.
Well to me at seems that every time people here use the magic word “culling” they shiver and think how bad European horse breeders are.
Of the 5 Mio horses slaughtered every year most of them are consumed in China, followed by Kazakhstan…
And if France needs to import horse meat from Canada, obviously they don’t cull enough horses from their Warmblood breeding programs. I know that there are horsebreeds in France which are used for horse meat. I believe they are culled immediately if their legs are not totally straight. and I know for sure that this is not happening in Germany…
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=7660825900599393
Well, the majority of North Americans, whether horse owners or not, don’t see horses as livestock like cattle, pigs, chickens or sheep as very few North Americans eat horse meat. It is like eating your dog or cat.
Just saying, same in Germany……
Culling animal stock means slaughtering it. Rehoming or selling out of the program is different.
That was my immediate reaction but I’ve heard it to also include options like selling without papers, or selling with explicit denial of breeding rights.
I imagine that if Hegelstrand or any of the others were shipping thousands of foals to slaughter that would be an even bigger controversy than the brutal riding videos and mouth/spur sores.
I personally don’t know any breeders that slaughter foals because they’re not UL prospects. If they have some freakish abnormality that would preclude soundness as a basic riding horse, then yes, humane euthanasia. But nobody is sending them out for Alpo.
However, most of the people I know are small fry compared to the big euro operations, and do it for love of the animals and sport. Nobody is making billions with a B off of this, or even millions.
Some of the big Arabian breeders in the US would breed dozens, then drop anything that wasn’t show quality off without papers at auctions where they were bound for slaughter so even if you got one you couldn’t trace it back to an undesirable trait from a stallion.
Didn’t she get the ride on Mount St John Freestyle? All the anti-CdJ crowd were crowing about how Charlotte “broke” the mare and how good it was she was going to a “better” rider.
Not long ago Helgstrand has an auction where many of the horses had shivers or other physical / medical issues. And the sale prices reflected that for the mort part. So it seems they do keep some of the less than desirable offspring and sell them cheap, rather than slaughtering them.
Culling from a breeding or training program doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as say culling deer in the suburbs.
Just think about price. You have a well bred on paper horse that isn’t on a fast track to Grand Prix. He’s still going to be a better dressage horse for someone with lower ambitions than some other random breed. Likely still has more talent and big trot than your average OTTB or QH or Arab.
The Euro breeders can still sell these “pet quality” horses for a lot of money compared to slaughter sales. And buyers will want them, even to import them to North America.
It’s different if the horse is neurologically compromised or suffered a pasture accident young and can’t be ridden.
However, what’s being offloaded as healthy and sound but just not FEI quality from a structured European breeding program is going to be a lot higher quality than the low end QH and wildies and draft crosses that get culled at meat auctions in North America. Just like virtually any OTTB even one that flunked out of basic training is going to be the fastest horse in the barn even if they were a dud on the track.
Yes I suppose the US’s shame is overbreeding our lovely Arabians, QH’s and TB/STB’s. Maybe gaited breeds as well, to a lesser extent. If there’s to be any upside to horses getting astronomically expensive, I hope it’s to dissuade this foal mill breeding.
I just don’t see it in domestic sport horse breeding. It’s too expensive to get foals on the ground in the coastal markets.
What ends up in the slaughter pipeline varies geographically. In my neck of the woods, it’s used up Amish horses, obviously unsound OTTB and OTSB, and a whole spectrum of backyard “oopsie” grades in various states of neglect.
Anything remotely rideable ends up in low end sales barns. A lot of world weary stock types for sale as beginner safe trail horses here.
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