The PTS society

Yes, lovely to hear about Carl Hester having Escapado back for retirement.

Incidentally, recall seeing a rather cute little grey pony amongst some very smart horses at JP Sheffields ultra smart yard. It was his childhood pony enjoying a rather lovely retirement.
 
horserider said:
Yes, lovely to hear about Carl Hester having Escapado back for retirement.

Incidentally, recall seeing a rather cute little grey pony amongst some very smart horses at JP Sheffields ultra smart yard. It was his childhood pony enjoying a rather lovely retirement.
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Heartwarming and something that ponies get more rarely than horses too I feel xxxx
 
cptrayes said:
He does the job he was bought to do. He makes me smile. Hell, he makes EVERYONE smile :)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i1hZIT26RY8/Tc15ow3ZerI/AAAAAAAAAsI/ds0Sf62Y8lU/s1600/PICT0040.JPG
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... we all have one
filth5.jpg
 
skewby said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wagtail View Post
Exactly. Also, the more people who PTS horses so that they can get a shiney new one, the higher the demand and threfore the more horses are bred. The whole cycle goes round again.

If more people kept their horses until they needed to be PTS for humane reasons then far fewer animals would be bred and therefore suffer at the hands of unscrupulous owners or go for meat.

End quote.


That's a very good point too and one I hadn't considered.That's a very good point too and one I hadn't considered.
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It's a nonsense point. If the market was ever going to self balance it would do it now. Some more people keeping paddock ornaments will not change overbreeding as long as there is a meat market for the ones at the bottom of the pile. There are people who deliberately breed knowing that if they cannot sell them as riding stock they can get a few quid profit for meat. While that continues, so will overbreeding. Whether you personally keep your horse alive or not, it will have no impact on stopping people overbreeding, the numbers of paddock ornaments are too small compared to the hundreds of horses going for meat every week.
 
cptrayes said:
It's a nonsense point. If the market was ever going to self balance it would do it now. Some more people keeping paddock ornaments will not change overbreeding as long as there is a meat market for the ones at the bottom of the pile. There are people who deliberately breed knowing that if they cannot sell them as riding stock they can get a few quid profit for meat. .
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Most of us wouldn't buy horses from that sort of production though. Many people only buy quality horses who do tend to be bred by responsible breeders who do assess the market before breeding and who do adjust their breeding numbers according to changes in demand. Yes there will always be divs prepared to breed just for meat money and potentially a bit more if the odd horse sells as a riding horse, but those horses are not, generally speaking, the ones people on here buy when their horse is destroyed.

Breeders do have some responsibility here in that they should only be breeding horses likely to produces foals who will be conformationally sound and healthy, so less likely to need early retirement.
 
Yes Flame, you buy the best you can afford. That leaves the next person down buying the next best, and so on down the chain until the last person at the bottom is buying a horse which would otherwise go for meat.

It does not matter where you personally buy from. Somewhere at the bottom of the chain, a dealer who operates at the bottom end of the market, or a person who likes to take on rescue cases, will buy a horse at auction which otherwise would go for meat.

It's like house-buying. There's a chain with the lowest value house at the end of the chain.

Breeders do NOT have a responsibility to produce good riding horses. There is a perfectly legitimate business to be made out of breeding horses for the meat market. It may be distasteful to many people on this forum but it is a) legal and b) no different from breeding cows pigs and sheep for the same purpose.

If you have a cat or a dog, you depend on that trade for its food.
 
cptrayes said:
Somewhere at the bottom of the chain, a dealer who operates at the bottom end of the market... will buy a horse at auction which otherwise would go for meat.
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...treat it appaullingly, drag it around another few markets, starve it half to death and then charge some poor unsespecting fool money to 'rescue' it...

...All the more reason to keep horses into their retirement, if you ask me...
 
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