PTS: InjectVsShooting


DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE NATURED



Alec Swan said:
Your second paragraph, and just out of interest, if your slaughterman didn't use a free bullet of a captive bolt pistol, what did he use?

Alec.
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He stunned him Alec. He brought a pistol with him but the horse was being put down for behavioural reasons and he would not keep his head still for long enough to get a safe shot. The stunner had a captive bolt but it didn't make a hole in his head. He dropped immediately, but was not deeply enough stunned so he was done again. How they actually killed him I don't know, I left at that point, but the blood on the yard would suggest that they shot him because although there was one in the lorry with its throat cut, there wasn't enough trail of blood from where they winched him in for them to have done him that way.




SAFE AGAIN NOW





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Unfortunately yes, it was my rehab :( I cured his feet, but his behaviour got more erratic the longer he was with me. So with the agreement of the person who gave him to me, I had him put down before he hurt someone.


Thankfully I had not had him long enough to be too deeply attached to him emotionally, but he was the first physically healthy horse I have ever had killed, and he was only ten, so it was a tough call that I agonised over for quite a while.
 
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cptrayes,

I'm so sorry. I've no wish to question you over an event which you obviously and understandably found distressing. There are several questions, but perhaps they should wait for another occasion.

Alec.
 
Shoot them here by preference, but sometimes liveries have insisted on them being euthanased by the vet. Personally I've found the shootings less stressful than the jabs, the knackery man is excellent and the body is removed straight away, much better all round.
 
Working for an equine vets, Ive held many a horse while its been pts. We only use injection and I have never seen any problems. Its quiet, quick and painless. We have had 2 that the knackerman came to shoot and it was horrible.
I have had 2 of my own put to sleep in the last few years and injection was my first and only choice and always will be.
I have been told that it takes a good vet to do it right!
 
I've had two done by injection that we're peaceful, but I've seen one fight it. I've also seen some shot and found that more traumatic (although I see how it is probably cleaner for the horse) myself.

I think with the injection the knack is the correct amount of sedation beforehand.

My first was a 14.3hh stocky chap. The vets usually take hold of them once they've been initially sedated to avoid them landing on you. He went down very gently like he was going for a roll and was unconscious quite quickly, although it took a while for his heart to stop, and he did snore at one point, which convinced me he was totally unaware of what was going on, and gave us a little light relief. He was 32, and had an obstruction colic. He also had copd so wasn't a suitable surgery candidate.

The other was a 9.1hh Shetland pony. He was was sedated, but the vet didn't even get time to take him off me and he went down very quickly and his heart stopped almost straight away. I took that as a sign he was definitely ready to go. He was 27 and had cushings.
 
DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU ARE OF A SENSITIVE DISPOSITION


Alec Swan said:
cptrayes,

I'm so sorry. I've no wish to question you over an event which you obviously and understandably found distressing. There are several questions, but perhaps they should wait for another occasion.

Alec.
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I'm fine thanks Alec, a body is just a body to me. The horse is gone, I can't bring him back and I had a lot of support in making what I'm sure was the right decision for a sad and disturbed horse. My other two horses rejected him from the herd six weeks earlier. I'd love to know what they knew......

So feel free to ask whatever you want; maybe warn people like I did if the questions are going to upset someone nervous. I was surprised by the stunner. It made almost no noise, and he didn't appear to load a charge into it so I have no idea how it was powered. But it knocked him out cold even though it was slightly off target. He was down for a few seconds and then his head came up before the slaughterman got a second attempt right on target and he was down and out of it. I'm reasonably sure that the raising of the head was a visceral/nervous response and that he was nowhere near conscious of what was happening to him.

The stunner itself was like one of those things they used to put money in a the supermarket before they put it into a tube and it got sucked away into a back office to be counted. I've had a horse done with a very similar looking device that had a free bullet in it. That's what I thought it was, so I was surprised at first to see him go down but have no hole in his head.

In retrospect, an injection would probably have been a quieter end for him and me, but given how he fought so hard to get out of a lorry that he ended up on his back waving his feet in the air while I was on the phone to the Fire Brigade, it's entirely possible that would have been ghastly too.




DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU ARE OF A SENSITIVE DISPOSITION
 
"IF THE HUMANE SLAUGHTER OF HORSES IS LIKELY TO UPSET YOU, THEN PLEASE DON'T READ THIS POST."

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cpt, at your suggestion, a warning!

I'll admit to being a little confused by your post. Unless technology has taken over and there's a new stunning system on the market, every single Captive Bolt Pistol which I've ever seen, has a steel rod, it's hollow at the tip, and I've just measured mine, and it's .425" in diameter. Again all those which I've seen are propelled by a .22 blank cartridge, which when it's fired, drives the rod forward. The blank cartridges have different coloured tips, and they are simply there for different charges, which are for different thicknesses of skull. Horses have a very thin skull, so green would do, or to be safe, pink. They progress up to black which are supposed to be good enough for senior bulls, though I wouldn't risk one.

Once discharged, the rod comes out of the barrel for about 3.5". The casing or chamber is as you've described. They don't actually make much noise, more of a loud pop, so that how you heard nothing, and the horse dropped, is a mystery. If the horse dropped, then obviously something must have entered the horses skull. Is it possible that the rod entered the skull, and leaving such a small hole you didn't notice?

I'm a little surprised that with a horse which wouldn't standstill, your knackerman risked a cbp. They have to be held against the head, whilst a free bullet can be discharged from a distance of a few inches, and with safety. That said, I'm sure that your man was competent, and knew what he was doing. I've only ever once used a cbp, I've always thought a free bullet to be best, and for future reference, I've often found that with a horse which has its head in the air, and is making life difficult, a scoop of food generally brings their head down to the correct position.

One popular misconception about "Stunning"; when a captive bolt is used, it enters the brain, within a nanosecond, the horse starts to fall and as the rod, for a VERY short while is still within the brain, so catastrophic damage is done. The modern CB pistols have a reverse spring on the bolt, so that the cartridge is discharged, the bolt reaches its full length, hits a buffer, and then the contained spring puts the bolt back in to the chamber. The danger with using a cbp on a horse is that they will very often plunge forward, wrenching the gun from the user's hand, and taking it down with the horse. There are those who've suffered broken wrists using a cbp on a horse.

There's further misconception, I've never used a cbp, placed the bolt in the correct place, and had an animal recover. We hear so often that the cbp is used to "stun" an animal, and so it is. The reason why we want the heart to continue beating is so that the animal can be bled out, and the blood will leave the body, whilst the heart still pumps. When it runs out, it stops. The word "Stun" is something of a misnomer, in that whilst the animal is indeed stunned, massive and catastrophic brain injury, means that regaining consciousness is not possible. I'm going to add the words though, "Within my experience".

I reckon that hindsight is the most useless of human assets. However, in the case of a horse such as yours, and if it was as unbalanced and so as dangerous as it sounds, then I would either have it subdued by an immobilising injection, first (and when done, so the lethal barbiturates may just as well be administered), or as I was planning to do, for a yearling of ours which was hypoxic at birth, and thought to be un-handelable, I'd use a rifle and shoot it whilst standing in a paddock. As a matter of fact, the yearling which my OH has refused to give up on, though hardly normal, has actually made remarkable progress, she's now rising two, she's a monster, and she's on an ongoing reprieve, but that's another story!

One thing of which I'm certain; at times such as these, when we have a horse to put down, if we go about the job as though we had all day, it'll only take a few minutes, but if we go about it like we've only a few minutes, then......

Alec.
 
Just a little reminder of the content of the thread here so you may choose not to read the following text. :)








So from that Alec, would you use a CBP to stun, then a live round to PTS?

Or does the CBP "stun" brain injury leave the animal dead?

Sounds to me from that post as if the CBP is used as a temporary measure so bleeding can be used say, in a slaughterhouse, to finish the job. Or do the horses get bled in the lorry after a CBP?
 
warning post contains explicit description of horse death

First I feel I need to say that 99.9% of the time this horse was sweetness itself, but he had a mad switch that would suddenly come on and render him dangerous to handle or ride. I had no expectation that he would need sedating , but in retrospect I would certainly have had him sedated, though more for me than for him.

Alec when I saw the footage from Red Lion/Turners which has been in the news lately I was puzzled because they stunned three horses in one pen and one started to come round and none of them had holes in the head. Then Woody was stunned with an identical device and there was definitely no hole in his head I was only feet away when he dropped, and he started to come round in exactly the same way. The second shot was most definitely directly on his forehead in exactly the right spot and he dropped and never twitched again. But there was no hole in the head and I don't think that there was supposed to be a hole in the head. The horse had a white forehead, any blood around a bolt hole would have been very clearly visible from where I was.

I think they shot him with the pistol after I had left. Either that, or they cut his throat after winching him into the lorry, there was simply not enough blood to account for him bleeding onto the yard. I have no problem with either of those methods for actually killing him as long as he did not know about it.

I did have the impression that the free bullet pistol failed to fire twice, which I was unhappy about, but in any case the horse was very twitchy and would not hold his head still. So in the end, the stunning was the best thing that could have been done, I think. I would not use that company again, I don't think that their pistol was working properly and the slaughterman himself seemed a little nervous, which will not have helped an already nervous horse.

A captive bolt, with this horse, would definitely have risked a broken wrist for the operator. He kicked off two or three yards across the yard. A free bullet would, by the time the gun was made to work, have also been quite risky and where it hit might have taken out his eye and the right hand side of his forehead without quite killing him, which would have been horrific.

All in all, I'm happy that he knew nothing about it, but it wasn't a good experience for me. Sod's law that it had to be the first 'healthy' young horse I have ever had to have killed.


warning post contains explicit description of horse death
 
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JackAT said:
Just a little reminder of the content of the thread here so you may choose not to read the following text. :)








So from that Alec, would you use a CBP to stun, then a live round to PTS? No, just a live round. CBPs are generally used when working in a building. The risk of a free bullet exiting the head, and whizzing about, is real. Potters use a .22 rifle, and within a room. There'd be very little chance of a .22 bullet leaving the head, but a large bore handgun could, and that would be dangerous.

Or does the CBP "stun" brain injury leave the animal dead? Brain dead. The heart will still pump for anything up to a minute.

Sounds to me from that post as if the CBP is used as a temporary measure so bleeding can be used say, in a slaughterhouse, to finish the job. Correct. A still heart doesn't pump. Or do the horses get bled in the lorry after a CBP? That I can't answer. There wouldn't be much point, I wouldn't think, as they wouldn't be going for human consumption, hopefully!
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Alec.
 
cptrayes said:
warning post contains explicit description of horse death



I did have the impression that the free bullet pistol failed to fire twice, which I was unhappy about, but in any case the horse was very twitchy and would not hold his head still. So in the end, the stunning was the best thing that could have been done, I think. I would not use that company again, I don't think that their pistol was working properly and the slaughterman himself seemed a little nervous, which will not have helped an already nervous horse.

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I wasn't going to say anything, but you are right to be unhappy about the service which you received. A gun which doesn't function, at an event such as yours, is a sorry state of affairs.

In a previous post, you said that there was another horse already on the lorry which had had its throat cut. A couple of questions, as you had left when the horse was down, presumably the lorry was in your yard with the ramp down when your horse was still standing. Was your horse close to the wagon that held the already dead horse? Presumably if you could see the other dead horse, clearly, then as the ramp would have been down, so your boy would also have seen it. And if the guy had already been out and shot one horse, how come his gun suddenly didn't work?

One word of advice to others. Most sensible knackermen will keep their vehicle well away from the animal to be put down, and only reverse up to a dead body. I've known of those who want the horse standing at the back of the lorry, and they wonder why the horse wont stand still! For those who are having horses put down, at home, NEVER allow the lorry anywhere near the animal until life is extinguished. Some say that the horse doesn't know, but I'm not so certain.

Alec.
 
weebarney said:
so why can they not GA then make heart stop?
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I *think* (have yet to revise this topic, lecture on euthanasia was a while ago and cannot find my notes atm!) that this is essentially what *should* happen if the injection is carried out properly. Normally a combination of drugs is given (in one syringe) and should be administered at a rate so that cardiac arrest occurs AFTER the horse/dog/cat has lost consciousness.

If the injection is given too quickly (I think anything less that 10 secs is too quick?) then the heart will stop before the horse is unconscious, which is when you tend to get the jerky, panicky reactions. In the past the drugs used for the lethal injection were different and resulted in death before unconsciousness, which I think is the reason why the more 'old school' (sorry! :p) of you are more inclined to choose shooting as a method of euthanasia, due to witnessing bad reactions in the past.
 
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POST CONTAINS EXPLICIT DESCRIPTION OF HORSE DEATH


Alec Swan said:
I wasn't going to say anything, but you are right to be unhappy about the service which you received. A gun which doesn't function, at an event such as yours, is a sorry state of affairs.

In a previous post, you said that there was another horse already on the lorry which had had its throat cut. A couple of questions, as you had left when the horse was down, presumably the lorry was in your yard with the ramp down when your horse was still standing. Was your horse close to the wagon that held the already dead horse? Presumably if you could see the other dead horse, clearly, then as the ramp would have been down, so your boy would also have seen it. And if the guy had already been out and shot one horse, how come his gun suddenly didn't work?

One word of advice to others. Most sensible knackermen will keep their vehicle well away from the animal to be put down, and only reverse up to a dead body. I've known of those who want the horse standing at the back of the lorry, and they wonder why the horse wont stand still! For those who are having horses put down, at home, NEVER allow the lorry anywhere near the animal until life is extinguished. Some say that the horse doesn't know, but I'm not so certain.

Alec.
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They won't be coming here again. I use the hunt usually but he let me down.

You are quite right, they backed the lorry right up to where we were having him done, and opened the ramp and to my astonishment there was a piebald cob inside with its throat cut. If I hadn't be a fairly untypically unemotional woman, it would have been incredibly upsetting. My horse was tall and the guy actually tried standing on the ramp to get above his head - that was one of the times the free bullet gun appeared to misfire. I'd be having nightmares about the whole experience if I had had a long relationship with the horse and was not quite such a stoic person myself.

As it is, I can understand the the horse did not know what the pistol was or that anyone was attempting to kill him, so it was only me that had a problem with that. And he was certainly knocked unconscious, and not just off his feet, by the first stun even though it did not hold properly.


POST CONTAINS EXPLICIT DESCRIPTION OF HORSE DEATH
 
Alec Swan said:
"IF THE HUMANE SLAUGHTER OF HORSES IS LIKELY TO UPSET YOU, THEN PLEASE DON'T READ THIS POST."

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One thing of which I'm certain; at times such as these, when we have a horse to put down, if we go about the job as though we had all day, it'll only take a few minutes, but if we go about it like we've only a few minutes, then......

Alec.
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I so agree with this and it is true of so much we do with horses and other animals.
Thank you for your very informative posts Alec Swan. May I ask the reasons for bleeding or not bleeding?
 
cpt,

I'm only sorry that you had to witness such incompetence. The process used was wrong, on every level, and in every way imaginable, except that eventually, the horse died.

Again, I can only underline my previous statement, and I'd encourage others, for future reference; NEVER allow the collection vehicle anywhere near the horse, until the animal is on the floor, and dead. Just about every time that I've seen it done, horses will throw their heads up, and make life difficult, adding to an already stressful situation.

It's you who I'm angry for. I'd imagine that everyone's thoroughly bored with this rather macabre conversation, so I'm off.

Alec.
 
Alec Swan said:
cpt,

I'm only sorry that you had to witness such incompetence. The process used was wrong, on every level, and in every way imaginable, except that eventually, the horse died.

Again, I can only underline my previous statement, and I'd encourage others, for future reference; NEVER allow the collection vehicle anywhere near the horse, until the animal is on the floor, and dead. Just about every time that I've seen it done, horses will throw their heads up, and make life difficult, adding to an already stressful situation.

It's you who I'm angry for. I'd imagine that everyone's thoroughly bored with this rather macabre conversation, so I'm off.

Alec.
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I really, strongly agree with this as well.
 
I would go for shooting every time if possible. For starters its cheaper, and then the body can at least go into dog food (I don't like wasting things!)

I have had two shot. The first didnt have any choice between knackerman or vet. Horse had managed to pull his leg off in a gate, so wasnt in the best frames of mind anyway. Couple this of his hatred of vets and needles, the knackerman that lived 5 mins away was the obvious option.

Second one was planned, as had some medical problems. It was far cheaper to have the local hunt do her, and she was taken away to feed the hounds. I had planned on taking her hunting, unfortunately never got to do this, so by hunt having her, got to fuel the hounds at least.
 
having read the last couple of pages about Woody and heard many similar stories about shooting I am just relieved that I only use my extremely capable and even more experienced vet who is without doubt, an expert in PTS by injection. We have now had about 7 PTS by injection with no problems. (this is over about 30 years I hasten to add)
I cannot believe that anyone would take a horse anywhere near a slaughter lorry especially with a dead horse already inside and not expect it to be upset. .
 
cptrayes said:
They are sedated and then given a drug which stops their heart. Some vets don't sedate. Whichever way, it's difficult to know how it must feel to them to have their heart stop.

In a general anaesthetic they are just made to sleep. But I hate the loss of feeling as I fall asleep under a GA, so some horses probably hate that too, but it usually can't be avoided.

The horse I did yesterday was on its feet for more than a minute, but with a GA they are asleep in a few seconds. That's why I'll go for a bullet again next time I do one of my own, it's over in a fraction of a second.
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The vet who did mine was very careful to explain everything stage by stage (although I knew it anyway) and what may or may not happen. That the injection consisted of a barbiturate to knock her out and a local anaesthetic to stop the hart. He stressed that my (sedated) horse would only fall because she was completely unconscious so be unaware of the fall and landing. He then listened to her heart for several sessions, reported that it was slowing down, and finally that it had stopped and she was gone. She never flinched or sighed or breathed out once she was down. As far as I'm concerned it was the perfect, gentle end that she deserved. As for how many horses have I seen put down by injection - half a dozen and none of them were any trouble either.
 
To be honest the horror stories of injections going wrong and horses fighting the drugs are very rare these days. I think with the new drugs they have these days a dignified end is nearly always guaranteed.

It certainly would be my preference for my horse, I have had a horse that had to be shot twice, there was a gap of at least 15 seconds in between each shot, and although I was in the area I did not witness this as I had walked around the corner. To compound matters the vet told me that they have to shoot big horses twice as a precaution although I did not really believe him at the time, I kind of shook it out of my mind. Miki was only six at the time, although we had reason to believe he was at least a year younger than this and he had a compound fracture of his tibia. He wasn't in pain when I left him with the yard owner holding him waiting for the vet, and he actually whinnied at me when he saw me, but he certainly was when the vet did his deed.

Many, many years later when and friend and I went to see another livery yard the woman running it had been at the first yard where the shooting incident had happened. She said "terrible business about your Miki". When I asked her what she meant she said that the shooting had gone wrong, so she just confirmed what I had already known really.

I'd never take the risk of that happening again. To this day I don't really know what happened, nor do I want to. All I know is my horse probably more than likely suffered terribly until the second shot.

My last horse was pts at liverpool university but sadly the vet did not tell me about agonal gasping which is a noise they make following death (by injection in this case). This grunting is called agonal gasping and is nothing to do with 'agony' in the sense we know it. It is merely a reflex action of the body shutting down and the air releasing from the lungs and vocal cords. The horse is unconscious and out of pain and totally unaware of what has happened to it.

It freaked me out and upset me a huge amount and was very unprofessional for the vet not to have warned me this could happen before I insisted on seeing the horse after he had been pts.
 
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applecart14 said:
To be honest the horror stories of injections going wrong and horses fighting the drugs are very rare these days. I think with the new drugs they have these days a dignified end is nearly always guaranteed.

It certainly would be my preference for my horse, I have had a horse that had to be shot twice, there was a gap of at least 15 seconds in between each shot, and although I was in the area I did not witness this as I had walked around the corner. To compound matters the vet told me that they have to shoot big horses twice as a precaution although I did not really believe him at the time, I kind of shook it out of my mind. Miki was only six at the time, although we had reason to believe he was at least a year younger than this and he had a compound fracture of his tibia. He wasn't in pain when I left him with the yard owner holding him waiting for the vet, and he actually whinnied at me when he saw me, but he certainly was when the vet did his deed.

Many, many years later when and friend and I went to see another livery yard the woman running it had been at the first yard where the shooting incident had happened. She said "terrible business about your Miki". When I asked her what she meant she said that the shooting had gone wrong, so she just confirmed what I had already known really.

I'd never take the risk of that happening again. To this day I don't really know what happened, nor do I want to. All I know is my horse probably more than likely suffered terribly until the second shot.
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I have never ever seen a horse shot twice and I have seen many many horses PTS.
I do however always use a vet I trust for my own and lightly sedate the horse if I feel the need on the day.
 
Alec Swan said:
I've shot all of those horses which I've put down, and it's the method which I prefer. If I never shoot another horse, that will suit me just fine. I hate the job, but take a strange sort of pride in never having had to use a second cartridge, and I've always taken a pride in doing it properly.
Alec.
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You never answered my question last time. Are you a licensed slaughterman then? How can you pts your own livestock? I thought it was illegal to slaughter livestock unless it was at a licensed premises as I remember Hugh Fearnely Whittingstall saying he couldn't slaughter his own pigs as it wasn't allowed anymore.

And as for horses if you are a registered slaughterman are you allowed to slaughter your own beasts, equine or livestock??

Not criticising Alec, just very curious.
 
HFW can't slaughter his own at home for sale or feeding to other people surely? Not sure that would fit here (well, I suppose there has been a recent meat scandal ;-)

As for experienced vets and drug reactions and all that, don't believe it.
The VERY senior vet at the old practice made a complete bodge job of my little old mare. Said her failing system would give the best chance of the drug working. It didn't and it took an hour and a half for her to die - I don't mean agonal breaths, I mean consciousness. He then said her failing system was probably why she fought it.
What?

The only time I ever used the injection and I won't again. An experienced knackerman is by far the best option in my experience/opinion.
 
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