Equine Crisis UK

irish_only

irish_only

Well-Known Member
Joined
5 January 2009
Messages
1,063
Location
Somewhere snowy in winter, lovely in summer
Visit site
This might end up being long, but I feel it is an important subject and needs talking about. For my sins I am a member of many fb pages on the lines of Beeston and York sales, Melton Mowbray sales, horses and ponies for sale an loan under £200 AND £100, plus many others. I joined these to see just how bad the market is for equines in the UK. For my sins it is driving me nuts. There are thousands of unwanted or very little worth equines. So I started digging around. In my quest for what the hell is going on I rang an equine knackerman that I know. It turns out that since the horsemeat scandal, the govt/defra insisted that all medication given to equines must be recorded so that they do not end up in the food chain. After talking to my vet today, unless this was agreed upon, bute was going to be withdrawn and would no longer be available. (For those of you who don't know this is a painkiller commonly used for horses) Hence when vets visit our horses they sign them out of the food chain on the passport. If they don't do this and one ends up in the food chain, and is tested positive for any drugs the buck stops with the vet and he is in serious bother. Until this legislation was brought in, the knackerman I spoke to would be killing approx. 250 per week. He now averages 15-20 a week. This is simply because the majority are signed out of the food chain. On a similar vein, if someone decides to take the sensible route because they have too many equines, it is not affordable, because, again, if they are signed out, then the owner has to pay the knackerman to dispose of them as they are worthless to him. Can he afford to do that? This is why we are seeing dead and dying horses/ponies around the country. At the last Melton sale, 3 small coloured foals were sold for a total of £10. Yes, for the three. Horse charities are full to bursting. At the moment there does not seem to be any way out, and ultimately it is the equines that will pay the price. I managed to get, through Bob Walker, Radio 4 You and Yours to cover this a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure that it had much effect at all. Your thoughts please on how we are ever going to resolve this.
 
Most of the poor quality animals being overbred are hairy coloured cobby things, you can bet the majority of the breeding is down to do-as-you-likeys who have no qualms about starving/dumping/fly grazing the excess animals to avoid having to pay for disposal. The breeding needs to be controlled but i'm sure everyone is aware how hard it is to hold a certain group accountable for anything, these animals all end up clogging up our rescues - no one really wants them and they take up the spaces that could be used for more desirable/rehomable horses e.g. Peel horses. I know it's mean to say that not all horses are equal, but if the less desirable ones were humanely PTS at rescue (perhaps after a suitable timeframe) to allow room for more desirable that can be quickly rehomed then that would mean more horses through the door into new homes and make a big difference to the equine crisis.
 
Last edited:
You breed one and it has to be passported and chipped before three months, not six months.
You pay a least £100 for the passport, to the horse equivalent of the DVLA, who also police the chipping and passport not the Trading Standards as they are not interested. Over stamping for breed paper is a separate issue.
If its found over six months without a chip or passport its destroyed the last known registered keeper gets the bill and a hefty fine.
Perhaps down the line chipping is linked to insurance.
It will never be solved until there is a massive accident on motorway, no one has no interest as there is little money involved.
We could all help by not buying 'rescues'.
 
Most of the quality, privately owned horses were already signed out of the food chain before the horsemeat scandal, the big difference that has now happened is that any horses without passports by the end of their first year will not be given a passport that allows them to remain in the food chain, if passported/ chipped while on the dam then they will have a full passport that allows them to remain in unless they are signed out by the owner/ vet either because they are given meds or the owner has no intention of them entering it.

The breeders who breed indiscriminately and don't bother with passports will have no option of sending straight for meat, a passport can be issued at the sales but it will take them out of the food chain so the animal is only worth whatever someone will bid, there is no meat value to hold the price up, it is a vicious circle as they just breed even more to keep the cash flow going, any that die in the field are a mere inconvenience.

The only way to resolve it would be to stop indiscriminate breeding and or for a charity to set up a cheap microchip/ passporting service to get the foals done early enough so they can go for meat, the best will still be bought privately the rest could be culled, it would not reduce the numbers bred but would make them more valuable so they may get better care.
 
I applaud your enthusiasm, I really do, but I'm almost 20 years in to being involved in equine welfare and there are some more experienced and knowledgeable people on here than me. The answer you are looking for just doesn't exist.
The welfare crisis is actually not as bad as it was just a couple of years ago...it's still there but it has been worse.

There are things that can be done, but in order for them to work effectively, the horse community as a whole needs to open their eyes and accept that we are the biggest part of the problem for a number of reasons. Until that happens, the crisis will still be with us.

Simple, immediate solution is a nationwide cull. I would never support that as it is is though, because we, the horse "loving" community will stand by and let it happen all over again.
 
When we leave the EU, do you think that farmers will be allowed to use blood and bonemeal products? This would at least give these poor unwanted scrub horses a value.
 
There needs to be a proper system that links the microchip to the owner. And when horses are sold ownership legally should be changed. And the equine premises registration like in Ireland needs to be implemented properly. If they policed that heavily in just a few areas they could cut down on a lot of the worst cases. Horses should be removed (and culled or rehomed), owners fined if animals are not on a registered premises or field, and if they are not linked to the correct owner. If they went hell for leather on this it might make some of the worst undesirable settled offenders in the worst areas think twice if horses were being immediately removed. Then hopefully the culture might change if people were losing money and getting nothing but grief. If the fines could be linked to social services payments ect then that would be good. Thats an extremely optimistic scenario though.

Ideally some kind of breeding licence and control on breeding needs to be implemented, but i havent a clue how that could be enforced?

The only way to discourage people is if it hits their pocket through fines that ARE implemented, and a system is set up that gives them so much grief that it's not worth the hassle to them.
 
I think there is an equine crisis currently but don't necessarily think it's a new thing, it's just that social media make people more aware of it.

I remember going to Newark horse sales over 20 years ago and seeing a small herd of terrified New Forest foals being sold for £21 (not each, £21 for the whole lot). I'd gone to the sale with a friend who used to pick up horse feed from one of the stands outside and made the mistake of going into the auction area to have a look around. It wasn't a pleasant place to be.
 
The horse crisis is the same as the dog crisis, as any non-commercial companion animal crisis - there is not a sufficient market for the number of animals being produced. The reason we're not seeing a sheep crisis, or a cow or chicken crisis is that any over supply is quickly reflected by the market, prices drop and suppliers reduce the numbers as it is not viable to continue producing. Horses are hardly ever a profit-making concern for their breeders, and there are always people to "rescue" those that have no value. A massive cull is what's needed.

Ireland, which has a rather more robust, market-driven attitude towards it's horse production sector, saw a sharp drop in foal numbers after the collapse of our economy and subsequent fall in demand for leisure horses. We still have too many low-end horses, but the option of slaughter is taken up perhaps more often than in the UK?
 
As a potential buyer I've unfortunately come across a few horses/ponies which fall into the "seedy" category.

The problem is that people think that all they have to do if they've got a scrubby little inbred mare with a plethora of conformation faults that the way to a quick buck is to breed from her, and then they can't even be bothered to do anything with the unfortunate offspring, which no-one wants.

Or you have a situation like the ponies on Dartmoor and/or Bodmin moor - again (with the Dartmoor hill ponies) interbreeding with inferior types rather than the true "Dartmoor" pony has resulted in poor little creatures which no-one wants. And this didn't happen yesterday, its been going on since at least the 1960's :( Result? A welfare crisis and a lot of ponies who, because of their conformation faults look awful; and wouldn't be any use to anyone even if they were big enough to ride - and which no-one therefore wants.

But - if you go out there and try to find something even half decent to use as a hunter/hack, you'll struggle. All you'll get shown is runty coloured cobs with massive conformation issues and yet people are still asking truly stupid, nay insulting, prices for these types. They can be seen everywhere unfortunately. I know, I've been looking for my next mount since the beginning of the year.......... :(
 
Last edited:
If an owner is "responsible" enough to have them signed out of the food chain, and therefore has a vet attending to their animals, which are passported, then they ought to be able to use a by products disposal service and have their horse pts at home. It costs about 200 quid and if they haven't got that then there are clearly other issues to contend with. So I don't really think bute is the main issue here. Overbreeding and the need for a cull of the poor little rough cobs being fly grazed everywhere, yes. £10 foals have been going at the likes of Beeston since time immemorial, sadly. It's not a recent thing.

Thanks for letting us know what bute is though 😉
 
What people need to do is to stop responding to the "if you don't buy within a week they will go to the meat man" with campaigns to save the poor wee souls. Fine. Someone needs to send the meat man in and shoot the whole lot of them there and then.

Rehoming charities need to cull anything which can't be rehomed, be it due to age, infirmity or behaviour.

If it has conformational defects that are going to prohibit a productive working life, it needs to be culled.

People need to realize that where you have livestock you also have deadstock, and you can't save every "cute wittle ponee"

No it isn't pleasant, and yes it is a hard way of looking at things.
 
Non of this is news .
Horses are given drugs that make them unable to enter the food chain .
I don't want anything to stop me being able to use whatever I need to keep my horses quality of life good .
That those breeding these useless sad little horses is madness and sad it defies logic but I think we are powerless to stop them.
MJR2BT is spot on decent horses of the type that's just below the sport horse market are harder to find .
 
sorry to say but our rescue pony has turned out to be utterly stunning and looks like having a great future, he will be schooled to compete and will become a valuable little horse, he has a nice head and a huge rear end, even the vet who thought he could be put down says how much they like him.

its not just coloureds that are the problem, so many are bred by people from flashy stallions and then can`t cope with them and have`nt a clue about the time and knowledge needed to actually train the thing when it grows up.

horses are needing to be bred from stock with more suitable attitudes to work, and from bloodlines that stay sound because their conformation is right, also not too big, 15.2hh 16.1hh many of the fashionable comp bloodlines do not breed what people really need, you only have to look on here at the number of people having problems when it comes, not necessarily schooling, but when it comes to facing up to the outside world also.

stats show that in 2006 in germany the average age of a horse send for slaughter was 8 -10 years, this was one of the factors considered by the fei when banning rollkur from comps, many must have been unsuitable or untrainable and or unsound, bearing in mind german horses are bred professionally what does this say about the true competance of the people who are breeding and training these horses, there may other factors but its not a pretty picture, here or there
 
agree with tristar, it isn't just cobs.

Theres a field where horses get dumped and we end up getting rescues from it at times. At the moment there are more sport horse types than cob types. Most are poor doers, have breeding somewhere down the line but slightly too sharp but not talented enough to make someone keep perserving with them. Or else have re-occuring medical issues like tendons and the owners just gave up on. I like taking projects to reschool, but its actually harder to rehome these. You can reschool them to have some kind of functional job, but they aren't quality enough for good riders, and way too much/hard to keep for more novice riders. It's extra annoying because you know somewhere down the line someone bread because of supposed 'breeding' a horse had somewhere.

At least with the cobs they are hardier and theres a range of jobs they could do.
 
Our experience is ponies are not just drugged they are swapped for drugs this is how bad it is at the moment. There needs to be a Minister for Animal Welfare to start with, somebody who knows what they are talking about and has done their time within the welfare industry to make sure laws are up to date, understood and acted upon. No Auction should accept anything that has not been chipped and passported. The Auctions have a lot to answer to making it cheap to sell, no other animals unless those being sold should be allowed on the premises too many are sold in the car park.
 
I can see a growth in unwanted sport horse market in ireland definitely. People seem to have more money and are interested in buying 'flashier' horses. You see more coming through the pound in ireland now and i always wonder how they fell so far.

From looking at recent riding club jumping shows i've been volunteering at, the people struggling are the ones with (for some reason always!) rangy chestnut sport horse types, who are sharp and very unforgiving. In contrast, there were a handful of very unflashy, normal connamara/cobby mixes who were an absolute pleasure to watch people riding on, even novices. They rebalanced wobbley riders, guessed the correct jump at times on a bad line, and just did their job happily and with no fuss. Probably no breeding, but someone down the line with a good head who had a good solid mare and bred a sensible type to her.

It sounds mad, but the danger now i see is that people at lowel levels are getting preoccupied with equipment and matchy matchy, but feel they need a flashier horse to not look ridiculous with it. So they buy a flashier looking horse with the best intentions in the world and the hope it will bring their riding on. I've seen it a few times that they realise down the line after a few bad experiences that they are overhorsed, and either sell at a loss or swap with a dealer. I alwasy worry about where these horses go. A decent rider who can handle it arent the type to look in some dealers, and by that stage the horse is a bit older maybe and will be past its best by the time its re-schooled to compete. Theres a definite level of sports horse who aren't talented enough to justify the personality/health issues they have. And people go in blindly just buying a horse because its flashy and has a 'name' somewhere down the line.

I know the worst of the horse crisis is travellers and back end breeders, but there's definitely a problem developing at riding club style levels too.
 
I know it wont be a popular idea but I think charity money should be used to cull these poor souls. If a person in distress and financial difficulties cannot afford to PTS their horse they have very little option but to either let them starve or dump them somewhere to take their chance Not the solution a true horse lover would chose. If they could apply for a grant for PTS it would take the pressure off.
The poorly bred ones could be controlled by going back to licences for stalions a hefty fee and annual renewal and vetting. Only top quality stalions of any type to be allowed any others gelded or removed for disposal. The fees could be recouped by making stud fees higher and used to pay for enforcement of the licence rules.
What is needed is a much broader base for the horse market. We need more family, low level competition horses not highly strung olympic horses there are plenty of those for the number of people who can manage them.
The scrubby cob, ponies and horses could be culled or live out their days on conservation grazing in the case of feral/semiferal ponies from the forests and moors. With every stallion licenced and stud fees high, breeding would slow down. Every Foal would be wanted or have a purpose, The system would eventually pay for itself and the people who fall suddenly on hard times will have a way out
 
There are good reasons why bute shouldn't be consumed second-hand by humans and the EU is right to crackdown on it. I personally think it's nuts to have a meat industry based on the "waste products" of another industry altogether. Everything that happens to cattle raised for beef is recorded pretty much from their conception onwards –*can't really say the same for horses that might end up in the food chain.

Ages ago (1999?) Temple Grandin was commissioned by the US agricultural authorites to look at their horsemeat industry and work out where the welfare problems lay. Her conclusion, which I think also applies to the UK, was that there were probably abuses by meat men/slaughterers but the main problem lay with the owners.

But a tremendous amount of infrastructure and tax money would be needed to monitor all horse owners and ensure they weren't abusing their horses or giving them unrecorded medications. Something like that would be more feasible in the UK than America, but it still wouldn't be a popular undertaking for any "austerity" government to undertake.

I don't feel hugely positive about easier solutions! For what it's worth, I've found panicky newspaper articles about the falling value of native ponies on Dartmoor and the New Forest dating back to the 1920s. We stopped using horse power and ran out of uses for many of them...
 
maybe instead of charities (who i don't think COULD do it as they would lose support), there should just be a surrender policy to whatever agriculture department is in charge of each area. so you can surrender a horse if you don't have the money.

on the minus side of that would be you could get a system of people getting a pony for xmas etc and surrendering them if they knew it was a free hassle free process.
 
I am at present reading a novel, where one of the strands of the story involves horses being driven off a cliff to die. Reason being
person of a certain minority being paid to transport unwanted horses to the knackerman but doesn't want to pay anyone to do the job. so keeps the cash.
Its a novel but who's to say. I did not know about this part of the book before I started it I hasten to say
 
Snuffles said:
I am at present reading a novel, where one of the strands of the story involves horses being driven off a cliff to die. Reason being
person of a certain minority being paid to transport unwanted horses to the knackerman but doesn't want to pay anyone to do the job. so keeps the cash.
Its a novel but who's to say. I did not know about this part of the book before I started it I hasten to say
Click to expand...

Not always in the realm of fiction. Do you remember a load of horses killed on a level crossing just outside Cambridge a year or two back well for cliff read level crossing.
 
SusannaF said:
There are good reasons why bute shouldn't be consumed second-hand by humans and the EU is right to crackdown on it. I personally think it's nuts to have a meat industry based on the "waste products" of another industry altogether. Everything that happens to cattle raised for beef is recorded pretty much from their conception onwards –*can't really say the same for horses that might end up in the food chain.

Ages ago (1999?) Temple Grandin was commissioned by the US agricultural authorites to look at their horsemeat industry and work out where the welfare problems lay. Her conclusion, which I think also applies to the UK, was that there were probably abuses by meat men/slaughterers but the main problem lay with the owners.

But a tremendous amount of infrastructure and tax money would be needed to monitor all horse owners and ensure they weren't abusing their horses or giving them unrecorded medications. Something like that would be more feasible in the UK than America, but it still wouldn't be a popular undertaking for any "austerity" government to undertake.

I don't feel hugely positive about easier solutions! For what it's worth, I've found panicky newspaper articles about the falling value of native ponies on Dartmoor and the New Forest dating back to the 1920s. We stopped using horse power and ran out of uses for many of them...
Click to expand...

So what did the USA do banned horses for meat and it has caused a much larger welfare problem. Horses are being shipped thousands of miles to die in mexico.

Princess Anne totally hit the nail on the head with the comments for which she got so much abuse. The loss of a thriving meat market is the worse thing that could happen for horse welfare!!
 
The solution is quite simple.
Anyone breeding a horse would have to deposit £1,000 when they have the horse passported for the first time.
This would make it uneconomical to over breed horses.
The £1,000 would go towards the enforcement of the legislation.
 
Kaylum said:
Our experience is ponies are not just drugged they are swapped for drugs this is how bad it is at the moment. There needs to be a Minister for Animal Welfare to start with, somebody who knows what they are talking about and has done their time within the welfare industry to make sure laws are up to date, understood and acted upon. No Auction should accept anything that has not been chipped and passported. The Auctions have a lot to answer to making it cheap to sell, no other animals unless those being sold should be allowed on the premises too many are sold in the car park.
Click to expand...



I agree with this.
Where i live, there are still poor quality cobs being bred all over the place, and this is just adding to the problem. There needs to be some way of stopping these unfortunate horses being bred in the first place. But while most people have their horses micro chipped and passported, these are the ones who dont care what the law is.
The poor quality stock on Dartmoor has been an issue for many years, until the quality is improved, no one is going to buy them.
I do think horses are being dummped on Bodmin, adding to the problem.
While people insist on breeding from poor quality stock the problem will just grow.
Even some of the ones i have seen on the Welsh hills are a long way from being a good example.
 
OWLIE185 said:
The solution is quite simple.
Anyone breeding a horse would have to deposit £1,000 when they have the horse passported for the first time.
This would make it uneconomical to over breed horses.
The £1,000 would go towards the enforcement of the legislation.
Click to expand...

It doesnt need that as its uneconomic already!
 
Horses were already being shipped to Mexico and Canada from the US long before the ban.

The US horsemeat business was nightmarish and that was why it was effectively banned. The towns that hosted the last three horse abattoirs shut them down by using legislation at state level because the abattoirs were doing things like flooding the sewage system with horse blood and other waste and disposing of corpses so poorly that there were literally vultures hanging around. That and paying very little local tax and refusing inspections.

I've been to US auctions where horses go for meat and the damage has already been done to them, thanks to the owners. I saw starved horses, a horse with bone literally sticking out of its leg... There wasn't much official oversight before the effective ban either.
 
The problem with increasing legislation whether it be breeding control, certification of stallions, registration....in fact just about anything..is that the people hit hardest in the pocket and by the red tape will always be those that are already law abiding. In fact, the more legislation that is brought in ...the more people cross over to the other side.
You will never stop travellers breeding horses, it is part of their culture....it may not be something that you understand and you may not agree with their methods. Even if a massive cull were to take place...and I'm not sure who would be willing to undertake that!...they would just replace them.
But the problem isn't just cobs...or even native ponies..although some of you on here would like to think it is. Some of the 'quality' horse owners are pretty unscrupulous....we went to a local sale where there was a hunter, beautiful horse, all clipped and immaculately groomed. OH spoke to the owner who admitted that he couldn't be ridden because of a back injury. She obviously wanted to offload her broken horse at not pay for it to be PTS, even though she didn't lookin need of a bob or two....I had to drag OH away before he told her what to do.
Then there are the owners that buy themselves a tb or warmblood, or a sports horse because they don't want to be seen riding a 'common' animal. Whether they can ride well enough doesn't occur to them because they are influenced by what others think....I've seen this end in disaster and in one case I heard years later that the owner abandoned the horse on grass livery and it broke its leg in the field.
The vast majority of riders in this country are ok-ish, a very few are excellent, most are part time and constrained by working hours. Very, very few will ever represent their country or make a long term successful career in horses. Given that population perhaps there should be a greater restriction on the breeding of performance horses and a greater promotion of our native types...of which there are many.
 
There's much mention of poorly bred cobs and the travelling community, but the horse racing industry has an awful lot to answer for with the 1000's of thoroughbreds which come out of racing each year with very uncertain futures and no comprehensive system in place for rehabilitation and training to make them marketable.
 
There are awful neglect cases across all areas. But percentagewise on the ground here it IS small cobs, minis and sulkieracers that come into the charity the most. They are the ones that are impounded, taken away by charities, dumped in forests and injured on housing estates. Of course there is neglect of ex racers and other types but it forms a much smaller percentage compared to what actually ends up being found dead or rescued around these parts anyway. Obviously other places vary in what they get in.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top