With new laws making it difficult to send horses off to the slaughterhouse when they are no longer suitable for racing or work, auction houses are glutted with horses they can barely sell, and rescue organizations have run out of room.
Some owners who cannot get rid of their horses are letting them starve; others are turning them loose in the countryside. Link
You already know what I’m going to say about this, don’t you?
Bridlepath 
What can we do? My husband and I have been racking our brains but just seem to be coming up with band aid solutions. I wish people would start taking responsibility for horses. That’s all it is. People want the pleasure and profit that horses provide but without the responsibility. It’s the kind of thing that makes me think public hangings weren’t such a bad thing…..perhaps a little extreme.
It’s as easy as it ever was to send horses to the slaughterhouse. It’s just harder to get 65 cents a pound for them when you do. This is greed, pure and simple.
One thing people could do to help these horses is to find a local (legitimate) horse rescue and make a dontaion, offer to sponsor a horse or two, offer to foster horse(s), or adopt. Blair’s horse rescue in ky is very small, and I don’t think she is a 501(c)3, but she knows people that can help if the funds are available, we are in southern Indiana, but are willing to help. We (Equine Rescue League of Southern Indiana, Inc.) too are small, but have other resources. You could probably contact Kentucky or Indiana Horse Council for a list of organizations you could donate to that could help these horses. This isn’t a permanent solution, and may not help all of these horses, but it’s a start. We definately advocate gelding stallions and breeding less. And by all means, no matter how good you believe the horse is, or how life is so much better than death, if the horse is starved, or suffering in some way, euthanazia is definately a better solution than turning it loose, or letting it continue to slowly starve to death. I can tell you from the horses that we have rescued, starvation is a long, slow, painful death!
[…] Humane Society of the United States says that recent claims that thousands of horses have been abandoned in Kentucky are […]
I think it is a sham that these horses are missing out on the love that a true home has to offer. More important it is ashamed that there are children this world that is missing out on receiving love from these beautiful creatures. If I knew where to pick some of these horses up I would leave tomorrow and pick them up. They all have purpose in this world.
People, let’s look at the real bad guys, the breeders who continue to breed indiscriminately when there are too many horses as it is. Breeders need to be regulated, and should show good reason for breeding an animal before it can happen. There should be compulsory castration of all non breeding male horses, and chemical carstration of mares except for those required for selected breeding programs. Thoroughbred/standardbreds are the worst, so until we can get breeders licensed and regulated, the problem will never go away, only get worse.
I agree that people are overbreeding without asking themselves “Is there going to be a market out there for this foal?” See my earlier post on people breeding mares before offering them for sale, as if all the horse would be good for would be making babies. Then there are the owners who breed Ol’ Nellie to the stallion down the road without much regard for the foal’s future or even how the cross would work; they just want to have a baby. Then what? I’m not sure that compulsory gelding would work, but people need to think of it in the same light as they do with cats and dogs: unless there’s a compelling reason and you know what you’re doing, don’t breed. Extra horses are so much harder to find homes for than dogs or cats.
Am also having second thoughts about the counterpoint to this which I posted; I hadn’t realized the HSUS was allied with PETA, which makes them a rather dubious source in my eyes.
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