Cleanliness is next to…impossible for some folks?
Mar 23 2010
Yes, it’s another news story about horses being seized, but I think it’s going to be an interesting one. Why? Because from all reports, they weren’t seized for being thin.
Article that gives more background – she got divorced, the money dried up, blah blah blah, the usual pile of excuses. The author seems sympathetic but other than that, it’s actually a very good story with common sense advice about the work it takes to care for horses properly. She sounds like a very good horse mom herself.
73 horses and 53 cats and dogs were seized because the place was a damn pig sty, with a foot of manure in every stall and horses standing in their own excrement. Again, why does anyone need to have this many animals to begin with? To me, having 70 horses is a ticking time bomb — it’s a staggering money-sucker that you have to keep feeding cash into. Unless you are SUPER rich and invest very safely, it always makes a lot more sense to have 20 horses or so max. 20 is nowhere near as big of a mess to clean up if things go bad for you – and things can go bad fast, especially in this economy. I really want to know who thinks they genuinely need more than 20 horses? It’s an interesting question. What do you need more than that for? Let’s say you have 3 showing, 2 or 3 stallions and 15 mares, and you ride your mares for pleasure. Isn’t that enough? Why not?
Anyway, here is her web site, which of course is the typical unrealistic, fantasy-based silly nonsense I tend to see with people who do not view their breeding program realistically. I swear, you can predict things going bad based upon nothing else than the presence of any talk on one’s web site about dreams, beliefs, life, love, unicorns, winged horses and how the owner wanted a horse farm since she was a little girl. When I see a web site that sticks to the facts about the horses, their pedigrees and their show wins and other accomplishments, guess what, it is almost ALWAYS a well-run, clean and successful facility. Hmmm. Someone should do a study on that! Anyway, Beth Lynne Hoskins seems to have viewed her farm as the “Garden of Eden.” If it is, I guess God should have sent Adam and Eve down complete with waders to walk through that place! YUCK!
Of course, I say hooray to this seizure, but I am wondering how it will hold up in court and whether New York has the laws to support a seizure for unsanitary conditions? This reminds me of the much-blathered-about case a few years ago with the barrel horse farm. Nothing was dead there, either, and they claimed they were being unfairly persecuted but again – the place was just a damn sty. Nobody ever bothered to remove manure. It was piled up the sides of the run in sheds leaving a little ditch for the horses to stand in at the middle. Now, most of us know that it’s not good for a horse to stand in poo all day. We know that it is bad for their feet, causing thrush and scratches if it’s deep enough We know that it contributes heavily to worm infestation and we know (or should know) that worms alone can kill a horse. So, cleaning up manure is a fairly serious matter — and still, I meet people who cannot seem to master it, and frequently these people have high quality horses, which is just baffling to me. I have been at barns with lovely horses standing in stalls that clearly haven’t been done in a week. Or, the stalls are done but no one ever removes poo from the paddocks and run in shelters so the horses are fetlock deep in grossness out there. And these people don’t seem to realize this is a problem. They will post pictures of their mare who gave birth in the run-in shed and baby is lying on piles of poo. Gross! And most definitely unhealthy.
I have heard the rationalization that no one picks up after the horses in the wild. Well yeah, but horses in the wild don’t stand in one place, saying hey predators, this is where we hang out, come and get us! They move constantly so you don’t have the accumulation that you have when you put a fence around them and lock them into a small space. If you are going to do that, you need to pick up a manure fork. Yes, I know it is hard work! No, it is not any fun to do in the winter – I grew up in the Midwest and I have spent plenty of time kicking at those mountains of frozen poo with my boot tip trying to break them up so that I could pick them up. (One of many reasons I don’t live there anymore, ha ha). I am very familiar with the unpleasant sound of the alarm at 5:00 in the morning because I had to stalls before I showered and got ready for work — and I know many of you are, as well.
Bottom line, horses are hard work. I know, I know, news flash, right? But they are. They are a whole bunch of hard work. Having them live outside does not, in many cases, create appreciably less work! You still have to clean up after them. There is still feeding and watering and scrubbing out water tubs and troughs. One horse is quite a bit of work. Five to ten horses is enough work that you need to have a good solid hour to hour and a half on both ends of your work day to provide care. Get past ten and it either needs to be your full time job to do it right, or you need to be able to afford barn help, or you need a miraculous ability to motivate your teenagers (and if you can do the latter, please write a book, everybody will buy it!).
Horses need grooming and they need to have their feet picked. They have to be handled for the farrier. Sometimes they need the vet. You will need to deworm them and give them shots or pay the vet to do those things. Even if they don’t leave the property, you at least need to give tetanus so they don’t die a horrible death from stepping on a nail. I actually saw a horse dying with tetanus in my youth and you won’t forget it if you see it. The shot is literally about $1.50. Get it done.
I just think this case is a classic example of someone who had WAY too many horses, probably didn’t have enough help, and was too lazy to do the job herself. While there are former models who do clean stalls (Kelly LeBrock springs to mind and I’d bet money Bo Derek isn’t afraid of picking up a wheelbarrow), I can also see a former model thinking she is a princess who can’t possibly break a nail working in the barn. We’ll see what people have to say about her. The Morgan world is pretty small so I’m sure one or more of my readers will have some insider information to offer, but I’ll say right now that I’m in favor of horses being confiscated for no reason other than filthy conditions, as long as the ACO’s are properly trained. Obviously there is nothing wrong with a horse having mud on his coat. There is something wrong with horses standing in deep mud – get some geotextile fabric or old pieces of carpet or used conveyor belting and gravel and fix your high traffic areas. There is something wrong with stalls that don’t get cleaned at least a few times a week. There is something wrong with water buckets and troughs that are growing green slime or smell funky.
I’d love if we had sanitation standards for horse farms that were nationwide. Heck, then maybe someone could do something about that freak Darlene Wilson in Roy, who has been featured on this blog before. I just heard she got a church group out there to “volunteer” and they had to pick-axe a foot of manure out of her stalls. GROSS! Darlene, news flash, you shouldn’t have had horses when I blogged about you before, and you still should not have horses. You have been incapable of taking care of them for years and one of these days someone is going to light a sufficient fire under Pierce County’s butt to prosecute you. I’d give them up now, if I were you.
And back to Beth:Â Beth, when you suffer financial misfortune and cannot afford barn help anymore and have 73 horses, there is a way to fix the problem for $16:
You aren’t crippled from any of the accounts of this story so put your horses up for sale and pick up a damn manure fork and get to work! My guess is that if you take those two simple actions, the judge is a lot more likely to go easy on you – and you know, so would I.
P.S. Morgan people: Beth is not making you all look bad or Morgans look bad. Beth is making Beth look bad. Please don’t have a cow like the Arabian people do every time I pick on an Arab person. Every single breed has bad seeds and it does not reflect upon your breed as a whole. I do know that most of you take great care of your horses! 
If you’re looking for a young horse to work with, here is a cutie at Shiloh Horse Rescue in Nevada to check out!
180 comments to “Cleanliness is next to…impossible for some folks?”
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Erm…why is her personal modeling page linked to her horse website? Can we say….”inappropriate”? Yuck.
This idiot reeks of narcissism.
Who was that one halter horse chick I put on the blog, whose site was just PLASTERED with sexy pictures of her lounging around? I can’t remember her name.
Seriously. It’s nice that you’re hot, but that would be a whole different web site.
Just for the record, my friend has strict instructions to SHOOT ME if I have more than 20 ponies on my property. The closest I have been to that number is 16 and I was looking over my shoulder to see if she was hiding behind the next grassy knoll. Right now, I have seven. Six are at home (four of which are for sale), one is at the trainer’s barn (who is definitely NOT for sale) and I have not put any foals on the ground for two years.
Ugh. If animal protection laws don’t exist to protect horses and other animals from standing around waist high in excrement, maybe clean water laws could be used to force her to clean the place up. All that fecal matter is washing straight into the water supply of everyone downstream from “Eden.” This reminds me of those hoarder TV shows. The animal hoarders just have NO grasp of reality.
I don’t know much about the Clean Water Act, but the people downstream from her probably have an action for common law trespass (if it works for copper dust, it probably works for poop. Heck, there’s probably a poop case out there, I just don’t feel like finding it). They might even get injunctive relief for that (the judge telling her she has to clean up the property).
There is a perfectly good, perfectly workable solution to getting municipalities and local governments to step in to these situations. That solution is entitled ZONING ORDINANCES. No municipality ever formed has been without these and they are a wonderful and extremely effective means of getting the local governmental entity to step in at their own expense (well, taxpayers’ expense but you know what I mean, you aren’t fronting the local Bar shysters the cost of their youngest child’s private school education for 12 years). Not only zoning ordinances but HEALTH DEPARTMENT regulations.
That doesn’t mean they are going to step in and rescue the horses, they are more likely to call local animal control or humane organizations. It does mean they can with police power and seizure authority back up their demand for cleanup or abatement.
That was how the disaster of 40 plus Arabians on 6 acres in Maple Valley, King County, Washington finally resolved after literally decades of attempting to get help for the horses. The neighbors finally banded together and insisted King County start abatement proceedings for zoning violations. It took the County eight years to do so but finally the deed was completed. As a final note the evil old man half of that couple kicked the bucket (thank Epona), after all those horse deaths he was responsible for it was widely hoped that he suffered mightily in the process; the widow took up residence in senior assisted living where she has been, ah, forcibly relocated at least once for hoarding – but at least no animals are involved any more.
“That solution is entitled ZONING ORDINANCES. No municipality ever formed has been without these…”
You’d be surprised. Until quite recently, Houston, Texas had no zoning ordinances at all. What a mess. Vail, Colorado tried to accomplish zoning regulations with private covenants. Just imagine, trying to run a city with 200 homeowners associations with overlying and conflicting covenants. Yay!
You’re right, though they work well when in place.
Could also use nuisance actions… the nice thing about basic common law property actions is they tend to be pretty consistent, whereas zoning is all over the place. Trespass is especially convenient because when it’s applicable, it’s very easy to prove, unlike nuisance, which has a lot of factors and defenses, or zoning ordinances, which can be open to interpretation or fought on a couple of grounds.
The only problem would be finding someone who actually had property downstream and was willing to pay an attorney, at least to front the money before damages were paid out. Since this lady had the money to feed 70 horses, I’m assuming she’s not judgment proof yet.
And actually, you’d be surprised how often citizens have to pay private lawyers to sue the city to force them to enforce their own zoning ordinances. Writing angry letters usually doesn’t get things done.
It”s really great to see so many fuglies that seem to have Planning/Land use law backgrounds! A big part getting animals cared for and properties cleaned up is perisitance. A city or county can write x number of citations, but at some point, if the owner of the property is blowing them off, the local government will need to go to court to get an injunction. The legal expenses associated with this type of action can be pretty high, and everyone is hurting for money right now. Therefore, the persistent neighbor, or group of concerned people, is much less likely to see their complaint fall through the cracks.
Sorry not 100% today, rather than an injunction, would be a warrant to go on the property and get everyone out of the pool- depends on the situation…
In America, it’s also harder for the government to use its police powers than for private citizens to seek remedies for their own harm. The Constitution has a lot to say about the government stepping onto your property, but a lot less about another citizen making you quit mucking up theirs!
Planning/land use background is a strong word… I happily took my C in property and got out, thankyouverymuch! But that’s basic horn book stuff. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a judge granting neighbors permission to go on someone else’s property, but I’m sure if the owner is facing heavy fines and possible imprisonment from contempt of court for not obeying an injunction she’d be more likely to open the gates herself.
I can’t read a darn thing on that website but her “modeling” photos makes the girls on Americas Next Top Model look like freaking Cathy Ireland…
How could you deal with that every day? The smell, the uncomfortable horses… I went nuts this winter when I went a week without cleaning my boys corral (manure was frozen before it made it to the ground). I’m short on funds too but somehow I can manage the cost to have my pile picked up this April! I’m sorry, but anyone who has enough money to keep that many horses fed has no excuse – even if they don’t have hands, they can afford to pile it up themsleves and pay someone to haul it off.
I really hope this holds up. It would send a message that there’s more to humane treatment of animals then just making sure they have a little food and water.
And this is a good time to make another point I’d like to make:
Ladies! If you want equality, you have to live it!
Stop using “my husband left me” as an excuse for why your horses are starving/standing in shit!
Would a man use the excuse that his wife left him? NO!
If you want equality and fair treatment, START BY NOT BEING LOSERS WHO FALL APART WHEN A MAN LEAVES YOU.
Good Lord. MOST of us have been dumped. Our horses’ standard of living did not change one iota due to our romantic problems. Grow UP. You’re embarrassing the rest of us.
Amen to that! I got totally sandbagged financially by my ex last year during our divorce – and hey, my horses have yet to miss a meal and have definitely not suffered one bit due to lack of care. No way would I let that SOB have the satisfaction of watching me crumble because he took all “his” money and slithered away – I work too, and have found a gazillion ways to save in order to get by on a fraction of my former married income. The independence that comes with being single is well worth it, and there is no way I`d let the animals in my care suffer because of another person. Suck it up ladies!
Two thumbs up to you!
This should be a facebook group: Ditched the Ass and Kept My Horses!
(No offense to donkeys, naturally!)
Heck, you don’t even have to pay to have the manure pile hauled off. We put a CL ad out for free manure evey spring. Local landscaping companies show up, people show up with pickup trucks, we even had a lady show up in a new Lexus and fill up garbage bags full of manure and haul them off in her trunk. Doesn’t cost a dime, and you can even earn a few buck helping them load it. All you have to do is take five minutes to type the ad and commit a few days to be there to escort people on the property. Poof! Pile gone!
I board at a barn that offers self-care (i.e. clean your own stall), and yeah, it’s pretty frustrating to see some stalls then go without cleaning for days at a time because people are LAZY. Some owners are better than others. Most horses have a paddock and/or get turned out during the day so at least they’re not standing in it 24/7, but it’s still gross. Thankfully the BO still step in and have a worker clean the stall if the owners are really slacking off. But since it’s really not a WHOLE lot more money to pay for stall cleaning at this place, I don’t get why some folks don’t suck it up and pay for the service if they’re too busy or too lazy to come out AT LEAST every other day to clean the stall themselves. I don’t understand letting your horse suffer because you’re too cheap and too lazy/”busy”. Either sell the horse if you can’t afford to pay for proper care, pay for stall cleaning if you’re too busy, or get your butt out there and pick up a fork.
I also see people make the mistake of cleaning less often because they’re trying to save money on bedding. I’ve experimented–I’ve looked at the amount of shavings I put in when I clean every day and the amount of shavings when I clean every other day, and you use way more shavings cleaning every OTHER day, because by then the horse has stomped around and mixed everything up, forcing you to get rid of more dirty shavings. If you attack the stall every day, you can clean out the isolated pee spots and manure before they have a chance to spread around. Basically what it worked out to was that if I cleaned daily, I would need to put in a small (regular sized) wheelbarrow of fresh shavings every other day. If I cleaned every other day, I would have to strip like half the stall and dump in two loads of shavings or one BIG cart of shavings every other day.
Work more, spend less!
Absolutely true. If you want to go through nearly NO bedding, clean 2x a day. I used to pick morning and night and only bed the stalls once a week with wood bedding pellets and they maintained just fine.
Exactly. Every 12 hours is ideal. If I wasn’t an hour’s drive from the barn, I would totally clean twice a day. It’s just better all-around. For a horse that doesn’t get turn-out, after 24 hours the stall definitely NEEDS to be cleaned.
I SO have to agree on this one: Clean more often, remove MUCH less! Works for stalls AND litter boxes. I’ve proven it to my husband many a time.
I live in NY (long island, not upstate) and a similar situation occurred last year near me. This barn had about 30 or so horses on their property (called Majestic Farms or something similar), which I imagine was only a few acres, and the horses were living in similar conditions to the ones described in Eden Farm; mud, manure, a falling apart barn, ect… However, the horses were not underweight, and no ‘sick or injured’ animals were found on the property. Because of this the owner argued that she had done nothing wrong (except violate the allowed # of horses/acre six or seven times over) and should be allowed to keep the horses with no punishment. Luckily the local SPCA just laughed in her face, and within a few days all 30 or so of her horses were seized and placed in local shelters/rescues.
I am not exactly sure what the NY state laws on animal abuse are, but at least where I’m from the SPCA will investigate and prosecute any person/organization believed to be responsible to animal abuse/neglect. I hope this is the case for Eden Farm, 70 horses is a disgusting amount to care for, and even if you had enough money for their upkeep, it does no good if you don’t have enough people to help. It is impossible to take care of 70 horses by yourself, or even with the help of one or two others.
Wouldn’t it be fun to have an annual awards banquet and award prizes to well-run organizations and people who do a great job? It sounds like that branch of the SPCA would be a contender!
The Pony Awards.
Categories:
Outstanding SPCA
Best-Run Small Rescue (less than 20 horses)
Best-Run Large Rescue (more than 20 horses)
Best Ad promoting humane treatment of horses
Trainer of the Year
Humanitarian Award to Breeder (who provides retirement for stallion’s progeny)
Any other ideas?
As an Arab owner, I take NO offense when an Arabian asshat is pointed out. It’s better for the breed, not wanting to talk about a bad situation just breeds mistrust for the community as a whole. Arab people should be particularly vested in how Arabs are treated. I can’t imagine why anyone would be pissed off at pointing out a bad owner/breeder, and I’m frankly disappointed that they are. Tsk, that’s all I can say.
Amazing how you can buy 30 mares and a few stallions and in a few years you’ve doubled the number! I suppose it’s lucky she ONLY doubled (+ some) the number. I do not understand people. I have no desire to have that many (non rescue/retired) horses even if I were filthy rich. If I were filthy rich I would have a retirement farm for the oldies and the lame. But as for breeding I’d much rather have quality than quantity.
However one thing she did have was good and expensive taste, these are for the most part NICE horses and shows how even NICE high dollar horses can end up under the truck. Should these horses be excluded from breeding now because they were rescued from a moron? I hope not, it just allows more inferior animals (not rescued) to breed in their place. I hope they let her sell off the herd and reimburse the SPCA so they won’t be lost to the Morgan world.
What I would be worried about is 50 cats! How many want to bet they are mostly feral? How many bet that rather than arrange spay/neuter and return to the farm they will be put down? I hope not but that is usually the way it goes with cats. I hope she wasn’t running some kind of kitty mill but I think they’d have mentioned it if she was???
“However one thing she did have was good and expensive taste, these are for the most part NICE horses and shows how even NICE high dollar horses can end up under the truck. Should these horses be excluded from breeding now because they were rescued from a moron? I hope not, it just allows more inferior animals (not rescued) to breed in their place. I hope they let her sell off the herd and reimburse the SPCA so they won’t be lost to the Morgan world. ”
AGREE COMPLETELY – Great example of animals that should not necessarily be out of the gene pool JUST because their owner was irresponsible.
OTOH it is often the breed societies that help enable these morons by standing by them.
Perhaps if a few more nice horses were lost to the breed, because the SPCA societies step in, more breed societies would be quicker, in future, to step in and do something to help (the horses) instead of defending the owners?
The SPCA that siezed the animals will probably find a way to rehome the cats. They are almost a no-kill shelter, only euthanizing the animals that are too injured or dangerous to adopt. If the cats are truly feral (not likely – they wouldn’t have caught that many with all the strangers around), there are also several groups in Erie County that take in ferals and rehome them – the BO where I keep 1 horse has taken in several as barn cats.
I also KNOW one of the vets that was at the seizure and they would not endorse the seizure without GOOD reason. I also know people that were involved in getting the horses out and it was a trying process.
I’ll tell you what, every time I look into a neglect case where someone is screaming they were unjustly persecuted…
it turns out they weren’t.
A lot of people have an unrealistically high opinion of their own horse care.
OT but of concern to all (or should be): with the passage of the so-called “health reform” which is really a falsely named “insurance reform” legislation (false because as the insurance companies crafted most of the language and donated heavily to both parties to help maintain their interests) there is a mandate that all Americans must buy health insurance. Although subsidies are said to be “in the works” so far those subsidies are in the still-being-debated “fixit” legislation. Current requirements of the bill just passed would require individuals to spend nearly ten percent of their gross income on health insurance premiums before they qualify for any of those nebulous “subsidies.” I cannot help but wonder, and all of you should too, what this will do to the budgets of people who are trying to survive financially while still keeping a horse (or a dog, or a cat, or more than one critter). There are so many unintended (and intended) consequences of forcing people to purchase a product from an already obscenely wealthy industry that looking a few years down the road I believe I can safely opine that the financial consequences are going to be dire for folks who don’t have employer-paid insurance (and some who do but whose employers will drop it due to this federal legislation). Dire finances mean ever more horses will be released, euthanized, unable to be sold (where are the buyers? oh yeah – all broke), surrendered to rescues. Ditto companion animals. Has anyone else REALLY looked at what this mandate REALLY means to the average American? I can tell you this – as most middle-aged-plus Americans do I have “pre-existing” conditions (and even if you had minor acne as a teen an insurance company can refuse to insure you because you have “pre-existing conditions”) and I have learned that like most middle-aged-plus uninsured Americans I will have to go into the state-run high risk pools and even with those mystikal magikal so-far-nonexistent “subsidies” it will take more than my farm rent and monthly gas and grocery budget for myself just to buy the required insurance. And do you all know what happens if you cannot/will not pay? The IRS is the appointed enforcer. Anyone interested in going up against the IRS? No? Didn’t think so!!!
So with several hundred extra dollars every month going to the already bloated insur-o-cracy where is the budget for maintaining horses/dogs/cats going to go?
Don’t get me started, seriously, or the Fugly blog will be abandoned while I start a blog on President Obama and everything I dislike about his administration.
Wow guys, I think this really inappropriate. I know this is your blog Cathy, but ya gotta figure a good half of us are on the other side of the fence. This country is deeply and passionately divided, I don’t want politics to overshadow what you do here.
I’ve commented on my politics before. You’re welcome to disagree, of course, as with anything here
, but I’ve never been shy about the fact that I’m a Republican and hate the current administration with a passion.
What she said.
Strange we have something in common, I hated everything about the last disasterous administration.
Yup, it’s your blog and you can cry if you want to. But I can find ‘way too much about politics (and ranting and passionate hatred) pretty much everywhere. You blog interested me because I’m interested in horses and conformation and training and the treatment of animals. Sniping about politics kinda ruins it for me.
arabmum: Last I checked, this is America and people’s opinion is still allowed. One of the few things we have left!
Ya know we might not be in this boat if we had better choices for the presidental race. Maybe if people weren’t afraid to elect a woman and if McCain had picked a decent running partner we would have had a real election with a quality result.
I totally agree, if Sarah Palin didn’t absolutely terrify me I ‘d have voted for McCain.
I’m just saying this blog is about horses, not politics, I don’t think this is the place for political discussion. We’re all here for a common goal, which is why I come here. Politics has a way of polarizing a group of people, particularly now, I just wish we would stick to horses (dogs, cats, donkeys, meerkats). That’s my opinion, and I have the right to express it, because I’m an American.
Sure. I don’t hold the blog strictly to topic, though, never have.
I mean, if someone said arabmum is stoopid because she’s a Democrat or fugly is an idiot because she’s a Republican, I would moderate it out. But as long as people can discuss issues without attacking each other, I’m pretty good with it Mere disagreement should not scare anybody off who is reading THIS blog in the first place.
I’m agreeing to disagree…stats are not showing that half the country is on Obama’s side. Me personally, I wouldn’t look at him to begin with because he rhymed with “Osama”…that alone was enough to turn me off. He did absolutely nothing for us here in Illinois, I don’t know why everyone thinks he’s going to do something for the country. Fugs, if you start an anti-Obama blog, I will plug it any which way I can. I’ve seen his type of speaking before…usually accompanied by a flattened hand stuck out at arm’s length in front and featured in film footage from 30s-40s Germany. And while I don’t think we’ll have an Auschwitz here in the US, I sure do see signs of this type of socialism happening. Support your local Tea Party.
Unless you’re talking about someone who is about to kill several million people on a whim, you automatically lose any and all arguments when you play the Hitler card. I don’t care whose side you are on. It’s a pedestrian, facile accusation to make and no situation in the US of A today even begins to approach Nazi Germany.
In politics, animal rights/welfare and horse slaughter discussions or any debate really, outlandish, emotional accusations get us all exactly nowhere.
What barnyard punch said…… THIS kind of opining gets us nowhere.
Oh, really? And just how do you think Nazi Germany got started? Do you think Hitler started out by pulling people off the streets because they disagreed with his idea of “change”? No…he started out small, with things like the same sort of finger-wagging brainwashery about how the country is going to be “improved” by his idea of “change”. And then comes the taking away of lots of individual freedoms, like the right to bear arms. And then the government being in everyone’s business about every little thing.
Too bad if you think this idea is pedestrian, facile or emotional. You’re damned right I’m emotional about it, because those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, and i sure see a pattern here. I’m going to hold my opinion unless and until someone decides they can jail me for it, which would not surprise me with where we are headed. Not sorry if my “pedestrian” argument doesn’t hold with your idea of what we “should” be talking about, because I’m pretty sick of being told what we should be thinking and saying, like we get every day in every media outlet nowadays. I am not the original author of the above argument, though I’d love to claim the comparison as my original idea. No, it was first voiced by the people who were most persecuted and who would know the pattern best, and who know all too well what “going along with the program” brings, so that is good enough for me.
BarnyardPunch, this is an excellent reply to a completely asinine comment from PotionsMage.
When it is an issue that will widely affect horse owners who do not have health insurance or whose small employers pay and maybe will stop paying, it is not inappropriate.
The question is posed as to what will happen to budgets which currently accommodate pet or horse ownership and may well not in the future as an unintended consequence of this national legislation.
Fugly, feel free to not let this one go through since it’s seriously OT, but seriously, why has this been couched as health CARE reform when it has nothing to do with CARE at all? It’s health INSURANCE ACCESS reform. There’s no CARE guaranteed to anyone. All we have now is a mandate that we buy a product from companies who are notorious for telling people to “bend over” every chance they get. Granted, it will force the insurance industry to offer coverage to people with “pre-existing” conditions who previously would have been denied, but at what cost? Offering insurance at a $1,000 a month premium is just the same as not offering it at all.
The administration is doing an OK job on other things in my book, I just don’t understand why so many people got behind this bill when yeah, they’ll be able to buy insurance now, but at what cost?!?
I personally don’t know anyone who is standing behind this “health care reform”…people who can’t afford to buy insurance do not want to be forced to buy what they already can’t afford. And if you think you have to go through red tape and waiting to see a doctor now, just wait.
If it’s anything like the health care reform we had in Massachusetts a few years ago (that mandated everyone have insurance and if you couldn’t get it, the state provides it for you) … then seeing a doctor or getting coverage will be a breeze.
Seriously, things work great in Massachusetts. I was put on the state health insurance briefly during a summer between college semesters. I went to a spanish speaking clinic for a simple thing because I was tired of my hoity toity private practice doctor talking down to me. I fully expected to pay out of pocket. When they asked if I had insurance and I said no, they ushered me over to a desk to apply for state insurance. They asked a few simple questions. It literally took five minutes or less. Then they treated me right there and didn’t ask for a dime upfront, even though I was not ‘approved’ as far as they knew. AND i was treated with respect, unlike at my doctor’s office in the more ritzy part of town. I was amazed at how easy it all was.
My fiance has state-supplied insurance because he is self employed. It was easy to get. It is cheap. Premiums are set by how much you make. Even those who make a lot of money can still buy state insurance cheap. If you are dirt poor, it costs you nothing. It is great. There is no red tape, because the state insurance is accepted everywhere. There is no one to tell you which doctors you can see. You can go to any doctor you choose to.
Seriously people…. every other first world country has nationalized healthcare. Massachusetts has had a form of health care reform for a few years now and it is working great. The sky has not fallen. I’m not sure what exactly everyone is so afraid of.
Now THAT is good to know – being self employed and having to pay for my own health insurance, I`ve been hopeful that the health care reform will will allow me to have better coverage etc. than what I currently have, hopefully it will be similar to the Massachusetts plan.
MA healthcare and Obamacare cannot be compared, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5E9dneMm4U&NR=1
Whitewolfe001, the health care system that was set up in MA can not even be remotely compared to the government takeover that Obama is doing! Romney set up that program with the intention of it being a STATE-RUN program, and believed that each state should have the liberty to decide what is best for its citizens’ health care needs. Obama’s one-size-fits-all program gives no choice to the consumer. Romney says the difference is this:
“It raises taxes, slashes the more private side of Medicare, installs price controls, and puts a new federal bureaucracy in charge of health care. It will create a new entitlement even as the ones we already have are bankrupt”
You cant the IRS overseeing and enfording your health care? Did you know the bill mandates all public drinking water contans flouride for “optimum oral health”. You want the government dictating whether you deserve treatment or not if your illness is deemed terminal? I know I have a problem with my tax dollars paying for people to have abortions! We don’t have the money for this! It’s going to take FOUR years of paying taxes on this program before anyone can even access any of these “benefits”.
I’m curious what people plan to do when they retire. Aren’t you going to use Medicare?
Medicare is government run. It is universally accepted and no one is determing when you get to live or die. Trust me, I’ve worked in hospitals and I personally found it eye-opening, to witness the extreme measures and expense taken to slightly prolong the lives of very old people who were suffering and not going to make it much longer no matter what. And they were all on Medicare. I’m not saying that kind of care is wrong, obviously that is a whole other subject. What I mean is that in my experience, the government does not appear to deny care to anyone even if it’s expensive and pointless. Private insurance companies, on the other hand, love to drop sick people like a rock.
If government funded insurance is good enough for our troops, our veterans and our seniors, why can’t it be good enough for the rest of us?
Medicare is being drastically cut, thanks to the new Obamacare health care reform signed in to law yesterday. So me having an opinion on that one way or the other is null at this point.
Exactly–I’d be more apt to be described as a socialist than a tea partier
but I do not see how this is a socialist program. It is a fascist program, in the most explicit sense of the word ‘fascist’–state supported private industry. The worst of both worlds. You’re right, nowhere is ‘care’ mandated–just buying insurance. It reeks!
Its ridiculous. Almost all, if not all, of the western world has universal healthcare. Its not like there wasn’t a model. This bill does not thing, it just makes it worse. If you’re going to change something at least make it a change for the better.
The bill isn’t perfect, I agree, but I havn’t heard a single workable solution from any “conservative” out there. Currently, my insurance costs about $10,000.00 a year for two people- for a crappy HMO. I am paying about $4000.00 per year out of my own pocket. I know that about $1000.00 per year of my insurance goes to cover the uninsured. Sor what are the other options?
1. You can’t pay, you die- health care is “rationed” based on your income and ablility to pay
2. Single payer, can’t have that, it’s socialism (be interested to hear from our European freinds how they like the system)
3. Tort reform (Will eliminate about1% of the cost)
4. Allow people to buy insurance in any state they want (this still prices people with pre-existing/expensive condtions out of the market.
I am concerned about money to pay for my animals too, I’m just tired of paying through the nose because other people can’t /wont’ get insurance, and I would really like to hear some actual solution from my fellow fugly animal lovers. And by the way, I’m not a flaming liberal, just someone who’s watched my insurance go up and up and up for crappy care- and all I hear from my conservative friends is screams of “Socialism”!
Here in Australia its not called ‘socialsim,’ its called living in a nation where our people aren’t fearful of doctor visits because of costs. Basic care for everybody, you can see a doctor its all good, and for people who can afford it, more insurance ontop of that for better hospitals, less wait etc. Hey, out taxes are a bit higher but we don’t have sky rocketing insurance bills or college bills — all paid for by the government.
Quote “I’m just tired of paying through the nose because other people can’t /wont’ get insurance”
Did you ever stop to think that there might be a REASON some people do not have health insurance? Even though your insurance plan may be crappy, you are at least in the position to be able to afford one and you have the ability to CHOOSE what you are paying for. As another person commented, FORCING people to purchase something they already CAN’T afford is completely ridiculous.
As you may have gathered from my comments, I do not have health insurance. Why? Because there is no way I can afford it. I have two college degrees and could not get a job for two years because I was either over-qualified for the position or didn’t have enough on-the-job-experience for the position. I finally found a job and currently work for minimum wage at a movie theater. They obviously do not have any health insurance benefits and on minimum wage it’s a challenge to buy gas/food/pay rent every month.
Exactly what money do you propose I use to purchase health insurance? Although I can empathise with your frustration at “paying through the nose” because others don’t have insurance, how does that make it okay to force me to go into debt to purchase something I don’t have the money for? If this bill is in any way dependant on tax money, where do you think that comes from? Oh yeah – the tax money you and I pay.
My opinion? Stop all these ludicrous lawsuits doctors get stuck with, which means their malpractice insurance goes down, which means their prices would go down, which means more people could afford it. Or, going back to my Economics 101 class, if taxes were lowered, people would have more money in their budget to spend and might just spend some of it on health insurance. I know I would.
Amen. With so Americans in financial distress, the last thing they need is another bill to pay.
I feel the need to respond, took me a while ‘cuse I wanted to go through the bill first.
“the insurance companies … donated heavily to both parties to help maintain their interests” YES!, but they wanted the bill killed out right… I’m not sure about the “written by” comment, tho.
“there is a mandate that all Americans must buy health insurance” no. there is a mandate that every American have heath coverage, the payment amount is set on a sliding scale, currently based on the Federal poverty level. For one person it is $10,830. In CA, last I checked, min wage at full time was $17,680 a year (I don’t know if that is net or gross… I can never remember the difference.) There is also a provision for states/regions to set different monetary guidelines. (That would be you San Francisco, land of the $1200 a month studio apartment in a less than scary area of town.)
“Although subsidies are said to be “in the works†so far those subsidies are in the still-being-debated “fixit†legislation.”
The subsidies of which you write of are affordability offsets. From what I read these ‘level the playing field’ for those with employers that do not offer coverage (for whatever reason i.e. size). The amount of these subsidies is pending a report from the yet unnamed head of the unformed program.
“Current requirements of the bill just passed would require individuals to spend nearly ten percent of their gross income on health insurance premiums before they qualify for any of those nebulous “subsidies.†I did the math…360ish dollars a month for a a person is less than what I pay for coverage now (and my premiums will go up 20 percent in 3 months). And this amount is before employer contribution or offsets.
“forcing people to purchase a product from an already obscenely wealthy industry” Oh yeah… health insurance companies are obscenely wealthy. Hence the inclusion of the public option and health care co-ops.
“I can tell you this – as most middle-aged-plus Americans do I have “pre-existing†conditions (and even if you had minor acne as a teen an insurance company can refuse to insure you because you have “pre-existing conditionsâ€) and I have learned that like most middle-aged-plus uninsured Americans I will have to go into the state-run high risk pools and even with those mystikal magikal so-far-nonexistent “subsidies†it will take more than my farm rent and monthly gas and grocery budget for myself just to buy the required insurance.”
You want to know what my pre-existing condition is? I participate in unsafe events. I ride horses. My sister has knee issues. Which, with this new legislation, she might be able to get the knee replacement surgery her doctors said she needed 4 years ago. Her insurance turned down her treatment due to ‘pre-existing condition.’ My neighbor would’t have needed 2 brain surgeries if this was in force last year. One to remove a tumor, the second for an implant so she could hear again. The bill sets a limit on how long companies can take to approve these things.
Let’s keep something else in mind: If a horse was hurt and not taken to the vet for treatment, we all would be screaming our heads off. So why do we have such a big issue with making sure that people get the same minimum standard of care as our animals? My animals see the vets more often than I go to the doctor. But, I can go if I need to. Isn’t that minimum standard the way it is supposed to be?
If I were asking other people to pay my vet bills, I would expect them to scream, too!
even if they are illegal…people will say they can’t but they are not correct. If they have children that are born here they can get cash welfare payments, food stamps and medical care for their kids. They are also eligible for a large amount of federal programs that don’t require residency. Will medical insurance be another program offered to folks that are in our country illegally? Illegal aliens make up almost 10% of our nation’s population and this number will continue to rise if something isn’t done. To all of you who say they work and pay into a system for which they don’t benefit, this is truly not the case. For the most part, employers know they are hiring illegals and they don’t pay taxes, unemployment, social security, etc, etc on these folks so the rest of us pay a higher % of our incomes to cover them yet have a harder time being paid a living wage because unscrupulous employers are competing with their low paid illegal workers. Whew, I guess I had to get that off my chest.
Randian Social Darwinists really bother me. So do people who throw around the terms socialist and facist like they mean the same thing, and actually have no idea what either one of those things mean. For instance…it would be philosophically impossible to be both a socialist and a facist, I don’t care what the teabagger’s signs say.
Anyway…I work part time. No insurance, of course. I’m 51, and also have a pre-existing condition, MS. This health insurance reform act is certainly not going to help someone like me get health CARE. It’ll sure help the insurance industry, though. Look at how their stocks have performed the last couple of days.
I’ll just wait unti i get real sick and go to the local ER. Since there is no way in hell I can pay more than a percentage of the cost, guess who’ll be paying the rest. Of course, it would have cost so much less if I could have just gone to my regular doctor and paid a small fee up front. But no….that would be socialism, and we can’t be having that!
I held my nose and voted for OBama, knowing full well that he was a center right corporatist. Couldn’t deal with Caribou Barbie being a heartbeat away, though.
This bill was all about the money. This was all about protecting corporate interests and profits, and the Republicans do the same dang thing, so spare me. There is so little difference between the democrats and republicans these days it’s not even worth having elections anymore.
For the person worried about funding for abortions in this bill….have you heard of the Hyde amendment? Well, that’s still in force in this bill. And the president added a signing statement to the bill re-inforcing the Hyde amendment.
Me, I’m from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party, to paraphrase Howard Dean.
Anyway, god bless y’all and your horses.
This insurance mandate hugely pissed me off. I’m a lefty, but I did not support this bill, it was baldly just a windfall for the insurance companies. By 2014 I’ll be out of school and hopefully already in a better job than I was recently laid off from, so this might not effect me as much as it would today, but it was wrong to include in the bill. Choosing between mandated health insurance and a future horse–that would blow. I’m young and healthy and never used my insurance when I had it.
By the way, what a bizarre picture she put on her front page. The way that horse’s head is twisted and what it does to his neck makes it look like the pony on a stick I had when I was little.
a pony on a stick with a parrot mouth.
My first thought exactly. It reminded me of the first post I ever read on this blog. I believe Fuggs said something along the lines of “Is that a horse or a llama?”
I’m from upstate NY, but have not lived there in many years. When I did live there, the laws did not cover housekeeping issues like manure removal, except in cases where there was downstream pollution of streams/well water. Even those types of complaints get little traction. No one is willing to open that can of worms with so many dairy and chicken operations around. Can’t piss off the farmers! My mother called in several cruelty cases, but as long as the animal had water and was not on the brink of starvation, there was nothing to be done. This included a still-ridden lame horse kept in a hovel with a maybe 6 ft ceiling with a foot of manure on the ground. He could not raise his head, but hey, maybe they were just training him for WP!
It sounds like the horses are in decent enough shape from the reporting so far, especially considering the SPCA says they’ve been getting anonymous complaints for two years. Hopefully she’ll agree to downsize the herd, clean the place up and make any necessary repairs just to make the spotlight go away faster. But I could also see her lawyer arguing that it was winter and snow made manure removal impossible until spring. If the animals are in fact in overall OK condition, so there’s a good chance not much will be done.
I can see that argument too.
OK, folks in snowy climates – how many of you are not letting your manure removal wait until spring?
Oh fugs, no one here is going to admit to that, but I can tell you it was somewhat common in my area in the dairy barns. NOT the milking barn, but the other barns. And with some people keeping horses. With horses, you let some manure build up, but there’s always fresh shavings on top. The manure would be composting itself and letting off heat throughout the winter, but the shavings on top would be clean. Clean it all out in spring.
Some of the dairy barns however… blech. They’d pile up and get ‘dozed out in the spring. You couldn’t even walk in without your eyes and windpipe stinging like crazy.
Not *all* cow barns mind you, but some.
It is called “deep litter” and is an accepted and acceptable method of livestock keeping, so long as it is practised correctly!
I use deep litter with my chickens, so I’m familiar with that. The horse scenario was something close to deep litter. The dairy barns though, it was just straight up poop. With deep litter, if you’ve got an ammonia stench, you’re doing it wrong.
It’s not like “it was snowy outside” is a legitimate reason for her horses standing in filth, I just wouldn’t be surprised if her attorney lobs that one out as her excuse and the court system buys it.
OK, I really to get off this blog today
LOL that’s how we did it way back when. Throw more straw on it, scoop it out with a front end loader in the spring. Makes me shudder now to think of it. My brothers did that work, and they weren’t horsey.
I’ve never done horses this way but in the older british pony club manuals this is called the “deep litter system.” You put fresh bedding on top daily. I’ve seen it done with cows though. One barn I worked at we had a smaller barn and we actually mucked out into the separate run in for the cattle — dumped our wheelbarrows there for relatively fresh bedding for the cattle. Their run in was cleaned with a skid steer to the concrete in the springtime. The horse stalls however were mucked once a day and picked out at night.
I think the deep litter system could work OK for very well ventilated / open barns in cold climates — the one thing that it does well is provide a deep warm bed for horses to rest on.
30 years ago when I first got married I had the use of an old dairy barn. It was huge and open with 3 stalls at one end. We used the deep litter system then at the time because there was no other way. Once a week we would strip the stalls but the manure pile was inside the barn, we weren’t allowed by the owners to have it outside. Every spring they would bring in a big spreader and tractor and haul it all out to the fields. We would use straw and plenty of it every night to bed on top of what was there.
Now I prefer the daily method. I have rubber matted stalls and the horses have 24/7 access to them. One stall is usually a mucky mess and needs done every day. My old gelding keeps his clean, maybe needs done once a week. This winter there were a few days we couldn’t get rid of the manure, 3 foot of snow blocked the door. Since the stalls are rather large we pilled everything to the back corner and hauled it out as soon as we could clear the path to the pile. As for the paddock. Well yes that got rather nasty for a few weeks. But they did have access to the clean, dry barn and to the field when it was frozen or snow covered. We scraped with the tractor and blade as son as the weather allowed. Right now things are back to normal spring mud, it rained again today.
We do the best we can all winter, but a certain amount of horse (and dog, ick) poo builds up from either sinking into the snow and being covered before it’s cleaned up or being snowed over. It can also be hard to chip the frozen poo off the surface of the packed snow in the paddock. Every spring is a pretty big clean up even though we muck daily. During breakup we clean loads of dirty snow and poo out of paddocks and back yards for weeks. Just one of the many inconveniences of horse ownership in the frozen north.
So I live in Alaska and I have 4.5 horses. They all live together in a little under a half an acre with a three-sided run in shed. I’m not a big fan of individual stalls. Anyways, I keep my shed bedded in shavings, I pick it out every day. Sometimes it dips down to -20 or -30 for a week or two at a time. We usually hit -40 for a week also. Our ground freezes in October and thaws in late April. I have to plug in my backhoe overnight and pray it starts when we get above zero, otherwise I have to put a propane heater under it for an hour or so. It kills me to let my corral go for longer than a week without scraping it out. I remove the manure from my property before the big thaw, you can literally smell when it’s time to get the manure pile out! We used to use a fourwheeler with a plow to clean out the corral, and I tell you, the heavy equipment leaves me literally hours more time to spend with my horses! I also scrape out the top layer of gravel my horses are on, and replace it with fresh gravel and lime. The things we do for our horses!
I interned at a stallion station/training barn one winter in Michigan. I cleaned the back 14 stalls as fast as I could and trained horses all afternoon (took me 2-3 hours). Anyways, at that barn, we just pushed the wheel barrow up a ramp and dumped directly into the manure spreader. Then every day we took the tractor over to some nearby cornfields and dumped. I’m not sure it even got below zero that winter, and not once that winter did I plug my truck in. The boarders cleaned out the turnouts in exchange for discounted board, so we never had to worry about that. I think that winter is a poor excuse to not take care of your horses properly. I freeze my ass off on a regular basis cleaning my pens.
Hey Fugs~do you think you can do a blog on the climate differences in relation to horse care differences?
I am from the north and we never had a problem with manure removal. I cleaned my stalls EVERY day. Wooden floors are much better up there in my opinion. The manure pile wasn’t far from the barn, and if we had to, we ran boards over the snow out to the pile to run the wheelbarrow over. The big pile would be removed in the spring. As the old saying goes “when there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Wow–73 horses–I can’t even imagine. I’d love to have a sweet Morgan.
I live East of the Cascades, Washington State (90 minutes from Seattle), and ‘sort of’ leave the manure pile until spring. We have 5 horses, each have their own stall in the barn that’s open to an individual wood fenced 50′ paddock; no one’s ever locked in a stall. We get on 6+ feet of snow, and the ground is usually frozen from November through April (not this year!) So, there’s layers of poop, ice, poop, ice, etc., in the paddocks, but it’s frozen solid, with snow on top. All horse feet are clean and sparkly, and we do hand shovel out the stalls of the ones who crap inside (rubber mats on gravel), about once a week, more or less depending on the “useage”. Come Spring (i.e., now), it’s a complete pit. Too wet to get the farm equip. in there to clean it out. So, this is the ugly time, but as soon as the paddocks dry out somewhat, they get totally stripped and new gravel comes in. Compost piles are in the back, we have about 4 piles in various stages of composting, getting ready for the gardens.
I’ve known lots of people from colder climates who do this. Honestly, I’ve left paddocks when freezing weather and 12″ of rain just makes everything a mud pit because once everything is that churned up you either leave it or scrape 6″ of mud out of the paddock (and even then, theres still the slip hazard of having horses out in wet clay all day). If its that bad though, the horses always came in for 12-16 hrs a day to prevent thrush and scratches. We’d clean their legs and hooves and treat any scrapes and cuts and then leave them stalled to dry off, if things got really bad we did 4 hour turnouts in the arenas while the paddocks dried.
In the summer its the opposite, paddocks got picked every 1-2 days (depending on the size and number of horses), fields got dragged once a week and high traffic areas got picked. Half of the stalls only got cleaned twice a month though. Why? Because the horses only came in for grain and vet visits. If they didn’t poop/pee in the 30 mintues they were inside, there was no reason to clean. Obviously if we had a sick horse we cleaned daily, but for the most part boarder horses were the only ones getting their stalls cleaned daily.
OK and how do they end up with more large animals than small? I have seen this in several stories hundreds of horses and 50 dogs/cats. Wouldnt it be easier to get and hide the smaller ones than the horses and maybe Im crazy but would people be more willing to take a free horse over a free cat or dog? Maybe not in this economy but I think people with lesson barns or flippers and traders would have taken free horses. But the Humane society and SPCA has been known (atleast around here) to turn away people with stray dogs and kittens.
FUGS Please run for president the next term. Our country desperately needs a no nonsense, tight belted, frugal. fair minded, woman in office and I think you are just the woman
Woot to the office of the equine!!
Hey,
wanna know what a horse looks like that spent 6 (!!!) years in his stall w/o the stall being mucked ONCE?
http://www.bild.de/BILD/regional/ruhrgebiet/aktuell/2009/06/13/tierquaeler/das-traurige-pferd.html
This was a terrible case here in Germany last year. 3 horses were seized. The stalltion shown in the picture was put into his stall as a wenaling and didn´t see the outside until 6 years later…
Take a look at this vid, you don´t have to be able to understand German, the pictures speak for themselves:
http://www.myvideo.de/watch/6556805/Das_vergessene_Pferd_trustmaster01
A local rescue organisation, the fire department and the police did a great job. They couldn´t load the stallion so a fireman walked him several miles (!) to the nearest horse hospital. It took all night because the horse was so weak, walking for the first time…
Fortunately, the horses are fine now, although, not unsupsingly, they suffer from problems with their lungs.
Btw, the owner wasn´t sick or anything, he just didn´t care. When the horses were loaded into the trailer, he laughed and didn´t understand the fuss because “they are only animals!”……..
Unfortunately, that attitude exists. Fortunately, we have laws that contradict it – though not as many or as well-enforced as I’d like!
DISGUSTING! The owner should be tossed into that stall and locked up for a good long while just to see how that poor pony feels.
What flooded out of that pony’s stall reminded me of a situation we had. When I was about 13-14, we had a mare with a perforated intestine (very small hole, but still) who developed peritonitis. Our vet took her to his home for some intensive treatment. We truly never expected to see her again. He FLOODED her with antibiotics, and she did survive, but the huge amount of meds killed off her beneficial flora and fauna, and she developed salmonella. Her manure was like pea soup guacamole, and just shot out of her. Her stall was cleaned (spooned out) 3 times a day for MONTHS, until she finally recovered completely. That was nasty, but it was part of our responsibility as her owners.
Re: Keeping clean stalls: my husband and I have exausting jobs, our daughter is in a smarty program at HS where she gets 2-3 hours of homework daily and we suffer from a severe lack of time/energy. My house is a wreck, my social life is non-existant, but my dang stalls are CLEAN. We have no house cleaner (not enough $$ for that), we had to fire the gardener due to pay cuts, but our stall cleaner gets paid every week and does a bang-up job for us. And on his days off?? I get my tubby butt out there and rake away. Shoot – if I can make it work out that my ponies have clean stalls despite our time constraints/financial issues, anyone can. (ps – I drive a 12 year old Ford Ranger – keep reading the comments and you’ll get that reference)
I live in the area where these horses were seized – the barn is about 5 miles from where I board my horses. The barn I board at has 10 horses and all through the winter their stalls were cleaned daily. There is no excuse for what this idiot did other than the fact that she must be mental. This winter was supposedly one of the warmest with the least amount of snow in 40 years for the Buffalo NY area. I also have heard that if anyone even stopped on the side of the road to look at her horses if and when they were out she would flip out and think they were spying on her. Obviously there are more issues here than the news is saying. All accounts I have heard from the horsepeople in my area is she is nuts.
This winter, we had less cold/freezing temps, and WAY more rain! My normally firm packed sand runs were sloppy sloggy muchy messes at the bottom near the barn. We dug in a trench so that any run-off would go into the trench and not flood the barn (had that happen once). The horses ALL seemed to like going poo just past the overhang of the barn roof. I used the tractor to pull the slop off to one side, so the horses all had a firm “path” to walk if they wanted to go to the other end of the runs – where it was clean, though wet sand. I kept the stalls in the barn clean and as dry as I could. I don’t have mats and I don’t use bedding. Just the packed sand. I also have an open sided barn – I don’t think I could stand it if I had to lock my horses in at night. It’d give me nightmares!
I have NO IDEA how the girls on the West side of Washington can deal with the mud and slop every year!
That of course, presents another “treat” – using Sand Clear to make sure we don’t have sand colic.
I have NO IDEA how the girls on the West side of Washington can deal with the mud and slop every year!
The only thing that works here (West side WA) is gravel, LOTS of it, and sacrifice areas or stall runs with gravel. This year I dumped a dump truck load (12 yards) just in front of the gate to my horses turn-out. He stands about a foot higher than the rest of the horses. End of the mud problem, but I have to pick it clean.
I’ll take frozen ground any day of the year.
Yes, the Morgan world is small. Yesterday I read about this mess on a Morgan board. This person was able to buy some high price, top show bred horses (and people on that board who sold them to her are horrified & trying to get their horses back). She owes money to everyone from trainers to feed dealers. One report said the horses’ body scores were 2.5 to 4 and that, while not horribly thin or starving, is something else to worry about. I have to wonder if under their manure caked coats they are actually thinner.
Is this person a wack job?–in my opinion, absolutely. Which makes it even more important that this goes to court & that she be forbidden from owning any animals. Yeah, like *that* is gonna happen.
I haven’t read any of the articles on this that were linked & just won’t have the time. Can someone tell me the condition of the cats? Outside, inside, what?
Actually, the foreclosure I bought almost a year ago had manure 18 inches deep in the stalls and the barn aisle. Supposedly there were 70 horses on the 35 acres. I have my 4 out 24/7 in paddocks w/ run-ins, so there has been no rush to clean the barn. Over 18 months since the foreclosure, and I still hit wet spots while using the pick-axe to clean them out. It reeks and is moldy – very slow going. It’s like chopping up particle board 6 inches thick made from manure. Sometimes it comes up in huge slabs of over 100 lbs. – easier to lift intact than break up. The wet is rather surprising, as this is the rather dry, windy plains of Northern Colorado.
Yeah, my trainer’s barn was a foreclosure and wow, what a mess! Major excavation to get down to the actual floors of the stalls or get the paddocks level again (they had poo mountains). I think once people know they’re losing a place, they just say eff it, even more so than usual. They don’t care what kind of mess they are leaving for the next guy.
This is so true. Our neighbours were being foreclosed on and they pretty much destroyed the place. They stopped cleaning or doing yard work, threw parties every night for the last month they were there, set a fire in the kitchen and left water running from a cracked pipe (apparently they ripped a toilet out during a party) when they moved out. The bank actually sued them because they caused so much damage that the house couldn’t be sold for what they owed on the mortgage.
Yikes. Just the thought of that many horses in one place, owned by one person, boggles me. I learned long ago that horses are a great deal of work, and even with both myself and SO working full time, we are struggling to support our FIVE horses–thats absolute max capacity for us (even with two retirees).
I hope they find some way to throw the book at that woman, no matter what that is.
I’m here in Oregon, and while we did have some freezing temps, not really enough in my area to make clean up that bad. There was maybe a week or so where the poo would stick to the paddock ground. When it did, I would just keep him inside and turn him out in turnouts during the day until I could clean it up.
I used to work for a gal who had probably 12 horses, foundation QH’s. 2 stallions, 10 mares. She let me keep my Arabian gelding there in exchange for training her horses and cleaning their stalls. She was an older gal so it was hard for her to do it daily. What got me was that she would tell me not to clean them everyday because they can’t afford that much sawdust! They would let them sit for a week and then strip them… She couldn’t handle her stallions so they were inside constantly, when she wasn’t home I would get them out, let them roll in the arena and munch on some grass outside. They were really quite well behaved, I never had a problem with either of them. I eventually left because the demands on me were too high for what I was getting in return, and when I went back to see her about a year later the place looked awful. Horses were ok, but stalls didn’t have mats and were about down to cement, no bedding, her indoor round-pen she used as a group stall over winter and it was piled high with shit, and both stallions looked as if they wanted to bust down doors! Why have that many if you can’t give them QUALITY life?!
Also, I must say you were right about how the Arab people got so upset. I AM an Arab person, and the ABN was just sooo upset that it was being featured. Would you not have posted it if it here a thoroughbred? Or any other breed? I think sometimes people take it too personal and are a bit sensitive, much like Arabian horses, lol.
Yeah, I pick on every breed here. There is a handy search box in the upper right hand corner – put in a breed, you will probably find entries. Even the rare ones.
MAJOR Icelandic horse breeder-gone-bad situation probably going to break soon…I know many of you like them, good, ’cause I’m going to be asking you to take one if this blows!
Put me down for an Icelandic (maybe two) if this comes about!!
if this is the one in Washington that has been a problem for 40 years, LOOK OUT.
Nope, not WA. I didn’t know we had a Crazy Icelandic Breeder, do we?
Must have missed that story!
I do not leave my house in the morning unless all the stalls are clean, that is just how it is. It IS lots easier, less work and less expense to clean daily, two or more times per day if horses are stall bound. I can not imagine leaving any animal to stand around in his own crap. I’ve seen lots of folks who don’t clean their stalls daily or even weekly and it disgusts me. I know everybody has their own set of standards but IMO horses should be kept in as natural a state as possible, they are healthiest and happiest that way. Horses will not willing eat where they poop if given the choice..when you remove the choice you take on the responsibility to keep it cleaned up. That’s only fair.
There’s no excuse at all!
I went to check out a barn in my area last week and was disappointed: The facility was actually quite nice overall but the ventilation was poor even on a warm spring day (still closed up) and the smell of ammonia was HORRIBLE, though I was told they muck daily and pick out at night. A clean well-ventilated barn would never smell like that one did. So having been in the facility for 30 seconds, I knew it was not a place I would consider being associated with. Thanks but no thanks!
I can’t stand that smell – I would not want to live in it and I know it’s not good for the horses’ lungs!
An old guy I knew who had pulling horses told me that ammonia is also v. bad for your tack. It will break down the fibers in the both the stitching and the leather.
I know, it’s just hard to fathom!
I used to teach lessons at a barn where the woman paid a kid to muck out her 20 stalls just twice a week. She believed that was sufficient because the horses were in the pasture 6 hours a day. The stalls usually looked kind of gross but not too bad, especially because they did put down a lot of shavings, so I guess that disguised some of the grossness.
Then one day the kid was out or on vacation or something and I said I’d muck the stalls for the extra money. The kid usually did them in three hours. Well I got in there and found an alarming amount of muck under the shavings and tons of those gross yellow-red compacted pee layers. I couldn’t just scrape off the top layer and go on my merry way, I was stripping and digging to China to get to the bottom of things. Ten hours later I’m still in the barn digging and the owner comes out to investigate why I haven’t finished. I show her. She always proclaimed how well she took care of her horses, I thought she would care. She was glad I friggen stripped out her stalls, I guess, but she still only paid me for THREE HOURS work! She explained that she hadn’t asked me to do that, although she appreciated it. ?!? Your welcome, I guess.
*huff* man I am still mad about that!
I say if the filth causes health problems, and it is evident in the horses, then this is abuse. This is the same as people who have their children taken away by Child Protective Services for living in filth. It is unsanitary and causes disease. However, a line should be drawn between just dirty and filth which causes health problems. Otherwise, any one of us can be suspects if we get sick and get behind on chores, get in a car accident, etc.
Sure. It needs to be a long term pattern of unsanitary conditions, not one complaint and you lose your horses. Anyone could have a temporary problem.
Once I was in a barn where the stall floors were pile about a foot and a half deep with compacted manure. You basically opened the door and looked *way* on up to the horse. Disgusting.
My horses get 12 hours of rotational pasture turn out and 12 hours confined to a huge corral with access to a stall. In what can only be called a case of Universal Irony I developed a problem with my neck that means I can’t shovel, use a manure fork or do heavy sweeping. After having much medical treatment and PT, the conclusion was pretty much that I should not move that way. Instead I’ve done this amazing thing where I give a guy money and he comes out and does it for me.
I know! Who even knew you could do such a thing?
My helper mucks once a week, stripping the stalls and cleaning the corral (works great except in really wet weather, then my husband will reluctantly put in a shift). Additionally I use a drag on the 5 acres of pasture once or twice a year. I pay my helper well and let him work any hours he wants and the arrangement has been great for about 5 years now. Is it cheaper than boarding? Probably not, but at least it is clean!
Looks like a classic case of hoarding to me…I LOVE Morgans, but don’t want 73 of them. Way too much work. It does sound like a case where money trumps brains, though.
I will probably get stoned for this, but if the bloodlines of the studs are any indication, I don’t think the Morgan breed will suffer if none of them get to breed again. The Morgan breed is being swamped by stallions and mares that are being bred for non-Morgan conformation and type and way of going…people who show prefer the horses to resemble small Saddlebreds and/or Hackney Ponies instead of looking and moving like classic Morgans. (I’m mostly referring to the saddleseat disciplines and the changes that have been made to the breed to ‘enhance’ their look and movement.)
The look of the youngster on the ‘believe’ page is so non-Morgan I don’t know where to begin…all I can say is yuck! That is NOT what the typical head and neck of a Morgan should look like, despite what the magazines portray.
I don’t know that you’ll get stoned. I will publicly admit I wouldn’t know a good Morgan bloodline from a bad one so I’ll leave it to the Morgan breeders on this blog to comment!
This woman was the first one to dual register Morgan/Pinto after the high white rule was removed by AMHA. pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbblt (raspberry noise)
I quickly looked at one of her ads from the Morgan Connection ($$$ ad, by the way) & the horse had a ridiculous snake neck. Another one of her ads had a huge pic of a (dead) famous stallion that was the sire to the mare that was being advertised. I actually had to do a double take- thought she was standing the dead stallion. The pic of the mare was barely visible. There was one pic of a horse in some of the articles that I thought actually met (real) breed standard & that I liked. However, unfortunately, I think that this might make her the norm in the Morgan world today, rather than the exception.
She is not a backyard breeder: these are horses that are worth $, even though they may not all be to my tastes (which are reflected in my moniker). She could have sold one or two and paid for cleaning staff for a few years.
The weird thing is that she has been around a while. If you look at some of the stuff on her site, she has been an invited columnist & featured interview in prominent Morgan mag (the articles are posted). She had a VERY prominent national champion park horse in the 1980s as a kid (who I actually remember). She def. knows horses should not live in manure. If the allegations are true, I am guessing she has mental health issue (NOT an excuse, just speculation) – I would bet she some major control issues. Most likely a rich spoiled kid..
The foal on the lead-in page? wtf is that?
Those of you who read the Morgan forums – can you give me a link? I want to get in on the gossip.
“She is not a backyard breeder: these are horses that are worth $, even though they may not all be to my tastes (which are reflected in my moniker). She could have sold one or two and paid for cleaning staff for a few years.”
She is not a breeder, period. She only bred her first Morgan 2-3 years ago and has not yet registered it. There is ONE horse in the registry with her name on it as breeder.
“The weird thing is that she has been around a while. If you look at some of the stuff on her site, she has been an invited columnist & featured interview in prominent Morgan mag (the articles are posted). She had a VERY prominent national champion park horse in the 1980s as a kid (who I actually remember). She def. knows horses should not live in manure. If the allegations are true, I am guessing she has mental health issue (NOT an excuse, just speculation) – I would bet she some major control issues. Most likely a rich spoiled kid..”
You’re probably on the right track. She gained notoriety by her personality and spending money with the right people. She showed Morgans as a child. She came back into the breed with a bang… dating a prominent trainer, buying some much talked-about horses for lots of money, etc. But IMO, she’s done nothing with these horses except degrade the quality of their lives. Hopefully this will bring that all to a close.
Wow. From reading the interview from the Morgan Connection she did create the big stir when she came along and bought up a lot of prominent stock. And in all this time she has registered only a few horses??? The people she bought breeding stock from from must be apoplectic. Have the ones in her ads been doing anything other than having their picture posted on glossy pages?
I smell crazy.
It’s a crazy mess, that’s for sure.
Please excuse me while I have a major fangirl moment, since I didn’t know that Windenhill frequented FHOTD.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE CT Ginger Lee and all the foals she has produced, especially Shanghai and Another World. Actually, pretty much all of your foals are amazing, quality Morgans. Keep up the good work!
I have no problem with fangirl moments here, go for it. Good breeders need to hear the encouragement!
Why, thankyouverymuch, it’s always wonderful to find out someone notices your hard work! And Ginger is now enjoying her retirement at beautiful Hollybrook Farm in NC. Her last foal, 2 yr old gelding “Don’t Blink”, is looking very special at TRF in the Northeast. So keep an eye out for him!
I love Hollybrook Farm! My home barn has a couple wonderful Hollybrook-bred horses. Their farm is gorgeous, too. I wish I could live at a place like that! And I’ve already seen pictures of Don’t Blink. He is fantastic, very flashy. Will he be competing at Connecticut/Mass Morgan/New England? I try to go to at least one of those shows each year. If you’ll be there, I’ll stop by and say hi!
I own 4 1/2 horses, take care of 5, and really really really wish I was down to just 3. 2-3 horses is a really really good number, I think. Yesterday when I was working everyone, I got 3 worked, no problem, and was DRAGGING on the last one (luckily one is a yearling and doesn’t need to do anything more than eat, play, sleep and poop). I had to force myself to squeeze in just one more.
20 horses blows my mind at how much work they would require, and 70 is completely beyond my comprehension without a full-time hired STAFF.
Maybe if I had someone to do stalls and chores for me I could focus on more than 4 horses, but then I would need the money to put them all at a full-care barn that I trusted.
Is it just me, or does that morgan banner on her front page look suspiciously like a llama? Whoever photoshopped that needs to be shot, seriously.
I don’t own any of my own horses but I do work on regular basis for a woman who has 8 percherons. Even with both of us the work is never-ending. I can’t possibly imagine why anyone would think they need more than 20 horses, let alone 70+. That’s just too many.
Bad photoshopping seems to be another warning sign that a farm will go bad.
Seriously, I bet you could scientifically prove a relationship between this stuff! I just see it too much.
In response to yuor question about what us in snowy areas do with manure…..if we get a bad snowfall, where he can’t get the barn doors open, or the tractor out, we might have to wait a day or two. However, we always can shovel the stalls out into the barn isle to get it out of the stalls, in an emergency. What is getting harder to find is bulk sawdust. Because the housing industry is slow, so are the sawmills. That, and the increase in pellet stoves.
Yes! Bedding has gotten progressively more expensive. I use the wood stove pellets but the pellets aren’t cheap – it’s $16-$20 just to bed the stall (though like I say, it can last a week with regular picking.
Where I live we make sure the barn doors open to the inside, and have barns designed with overhangs to keep snow away from doors. I’ve never experienced being unable to muck because of a deep snowfall.
Hmm my husband thinks I am anal about cleaning corrals. I can not stand not to have them done everyday. I know I am at my limit, with 3 mini horses, 1 mini mule, 1 Morgan Mare and 1 Morgan/Belgian cross. It takes me an hour and a half each day to clean and feed them with the slowdown feeder bags. They do no live in their stalls as they have a yard that they go into during the day which is about and acre or so with access to the barn for protection if they want. the half draft has his own house and shortly his own 1 acre yard. He is considered my husband’s horse and sometimes I throw a hissy that he does not help and threaten not to clean his corral. But that lasts for maybe a day as I can not stand it and go in and clean it. I regret not doing it the day before as it gets heavy!
I clean the water buckets and troughs at least once a week. The way I look at it, if I won’t drink out of it, then they should not have to. One time I had a Vet out, not my usual one and she made a comment that I had the cleanest water troughs she had ever seen.
As much as I would like to get some more mini’s or maybe breed my Morgan Mare for myself, I know that to keep the level of care that I think needs to be done, I am realistically at my limit with working full time. I can not understand people who have 20 horses, big or small by themselves and keeping proper care of them, without relegating them out to pasture 24/7. My guys come into their clean house at night, my Morgan Mare gets her blankey and they get their vitamin buckets. Ok so I don’t have grandkids, these guys are my spoiled babies!
The horses may not be thin, and/or dead yet, but it’s just a matter of time when you have 70, PLUS the rediculous number of dogs and cats!
Well, my opinion of the web site was, I just couldn’t take any more floweriness! Bleah! I could almost smell cheap perfume while starting to read! My eyes itch now…
Heck — we are in the part of the world that got slammed with 2 feet of snow (several times) last month. The manure pile for our 18 stalled horses sprawled rather randomly around the ‘core’ pile as we were having trouble finding spots low enough to dump wheelbarrows, but we shovelled a path to the barns, shovelled a path to the hay, shovelled a path to the manure pile and all the stalls were cleaned daily. I considered this a concession to the weather as we usually clean 2x a day.
I think this woman is probably depressed — think of it, she has been living off a trust fund and ex-husband and now she is facing an entire remaining lifetime of having to work for a living. Like the rest of us. Oh, horrors!
I have a friend who had 300 horses. He was over at a another friend’s barn when she was feeding her 10 horses and he said he could feed his 300 faster than she could feed her 10. Everything he did was in bulk and large groups of horses were feed together. Only a few ( the stallions) were kept in stalls. It was all a matter of organization and good management. Having 300, to me, would be like painting bridges, once you get done at one end, it’s time to start again at the other. However, have them outside in big pastures with good run-in sheds, it can be done quite easily. He has since sold most of his horses because of declining health, but he managed 300 for many many years, with only a couple of hired men who helped with the stall cleaning and training.
I will never understand, having “the best of intentions” is never enough, when you are dealing with living creatures. If you can not commit to them, you’re not “saving them.” That pony is just adorable…
All my stalls are cleaned daily when used. I live in Northern British Columbia so in the winter it’s hard to clean the frozen shelters but they are still cleaned out twice a week. What ever is left over is cleaned out with the tractor as soon as it thaws out. This year I have 2 miniature babies (I didn’t breed them the mares were already bred when I bought them) and they have their own little pen with a shelter. The snow is packed hard in their pen and there poo freezes right away (like walking on golf balls) so it get raked out twice a week as well. In the spring here its hard to deal with the mud. There is alot of clay here so it gets really slimy. I can’t keep all the mud away but the shelters are dry and I haul out wheelbarrow loads of shavings to all the traffic areas (gates, feeding areas and water troughs). I try…luckly I have a young neighbour that works off lessons with me so she does alot of the mucking. I can’t stand looking at horses up to their knees in manure and mud!
Sorry to be OT, fugs, but this has GOT to be addressed:
http://juliegoodnight.com/questionsNew.php?id=199
I cannot believe someone who considers themselves a “natural” horseperson would resort to such a painful measure to fix a problem. I had a mare who was like this, and all she needed was help with her hormones. Put her on a natural mare supplement and she is fine now. I am so mad at this woman and let her know so on her FB page.
I kind of want to say “I told you so” on this. I criticized her once before, I think it was for some really dumb trailer loading advice, and was BLASTED for daring to criticize her by her fans.
And yes, R-E-G-U-M-A-T-E … or, you know, C-R-O-S-S-F-E-N-C-I-N-G.
Kind of OT-
I’m taking a Livestock Merchandising class right now, and one part of one of our presentations is to highlight some well designed and disaster websites. Your promo package is all part of your farm’s reputation, you know, and your reputation is what sells cows horses.
If you guys know of any really well designed or super nightmare websites (or even some that have cleaned up their acts but the evidence is still on the wayback machine XD) relating to horses, I’d love to take a look and maybe feature them in my class. My email is my username at gmail.com, or I’ll check back here.
UGH, when this story broke, my first thought was who can take care of 73 horses and THEN that we were gonna make Fugly. And here we are. I board my horses not far from this farm. She has 50-60 acres I believe. Patures with grass but no horses were turned out. Fences were in disrepair. Some of the horses were in a barn with sides made of tarp. She was fussy about the quality of hay she got. Drives a Hummer. Had to haul water to the horses. She bred lovely foals (I know nothing about Morgans) but apparently didn’t like to sell them because no one could love them like her. She was looking for another place to buy becuase her neighbors were spying on her. The cats were all in one building (so I heard) because she thought the neighbors were killing them. Lots of concern from the neighbors but difficult getting on the property and because the horses were in the barns and could not be seen it was hard to get evidence from the road. Yeah, she is a little nuts. I do hope the SCA gets to keep the horses and they can be re-homed with appropriate owners but I’m a little concerned that a judge will think that because they weren’t starving they weren’t being abused.
Oh, I’m at a barn with about 20-40 horses (depends on whose showing where), never had a manure removal problem in several winters, harsh or not. Stalls mucked twice a day regardless of the amount of snow and manure pile removed monthly.
OK that’s awesome:
YOU DRIVE A HUMMER BUT YOU WON’T PAY $10 AN HOUR FOR STALL CLEANING HELP?
* head explodes *
I’ve been waiting for someone to comment on Beth Lynne Hoskins … *crickets*
Really? Not one of my 20,000+ readers today knows anything about this woman?
Or is the Morgan world circling the wagons and hoping this story dies down quickly?
I don’t know, Fugs… I own Morgans and belong to a pretty big Morgan list. I posted about your story, and haven’t seen any responses yet. So either no one in that group knows her, or they ain’t sayin’
Hard to believe no one knows her with 73 head – and she was showing fairly recently.
She showed ONE foal in a big money sweepstakes, had it with a top in hand trainer, they won the class (got a check for $25,000), Beth still owes the trainer money. BTW, she never registered that foal (he happens to be the snaky necked foal everyone thinks is so awful… he’s actually a really nice colt that looks bad in the photo because the ad designer–directed by Beth–took a photo of a bad angle and cropped it in a bad place).
IMO, she is NOT a breeder in any sense of the word. She has ONE registered horse with her name on the papers as breeder. She has hoarded, finagled horses out of people with promises of payment, bred them and hasn’t registered any of them in 3 years. Her success in the show ring (except for above sweepstakes appearance) has been limited to childhood activities that she has not duplicated as an adult. She was “living the dream”, as she says on her website, unfortunately, the dream turned into a nightmare for her horses and for the many people who sold/leased her those horses and are now desperately trying to get them back or into a better place and keep them out of her hands.
Where are the Morgan people? We’re here, Cathy – and some are very involved in this. AFAIK, NO ONE is circling the wagons or trying to cover this up. It’s beneath you to accuse the Morgan community of this simply because no one else posted here.
People ARE trying to help the horses – and have been since this broke several days ago. Yup – most of us learned of this before it ever made it to this blog, and people have already been involved. Sometimes publicity is a good thing for helping the horses in these cases, and sometimes, all it does is bring out the lawyers and make recovering the animals even more difficult. People are trying to get back horses they’ve sold to her, or rehome the others – and everyone is concerned about getting sued by her, as she has shown a fondness for legal action in the past. She comes from a very wealthy family, and is known as being pretty darned eccentric….and vindicitive.
People are scared, and are still trying to get the horses to safety.
The word on Morgan Street has long been that Beth Lynne Hoskins is difficult. I’m not sure the divorce had anything to do with the situation – my take has always been that she had lots of money with or without the hubby – and she has a young daughter as well, who is somehow caught in all this mess.
FWIW, while people knew she was eccentric, the horses seemed to be well-cared for before this happened – or else she was really good at hiding this stuff.
People have tried to breed to her stallions – and she has some NICE ones – and it was impossible. People have sold her mares with the understanding that the mares will return when Hoskins has pulled a foal from the mare – so she never breeds the mare and never has to return her. My understanding is she has been breeding foals from these valuable horses, (some came with a pretty price tag), and hasn’t registered a single one. Several people have sold her horses which have never been transferred out of their names – do they have a legal right to take them back?
I sure hope so.
My take? Hoarder with lots of money.
Normally, the second I post these things, someone is posting the entire insider backstory. Since it didn’t happen in this case, I apparently needed to make a little stronger remark to get the facts. Seems to have worked.
Don’t worry – it’ll be a very icy day in Hell when I tell anybody your (or any other blog poster’s) real name or give them any information.
It’s just a dicey situation right now – which is why I sounds a bit…brittle… (Sorry).
Hoskins has a GOOD lawyer. She hasn’t been charged with anything yet, and those people who sold her horses – or had leased them to her – are very worried.
BTW – She wasn’t the first to reg. a pinto Morgan after the high white rule, which went into effect in the early 1960′s – before that, there was no restriction on the white markings a Morgan could have. (The anti-white stuff is relatively new, actually – considering that there was NO white resoitriction for the first 200 years of the breed’s existance). The first horse reg. under the restored rules allowing high white was a very nicely bred colt belonging to a small, private breeder.
No offense, no worries
I know about the dicey situations but my philosophy is always, shine the light and watch ‘em scurry!
It seems weird to me to imagine a Morgan with a lot of white. In my mind, they’re always that classic dark bay or black with flowing manes and tails.
The cavalry preferred dark horses with little white for uniformity, and this preferrence shaded (pun intended) the breeding practice of the post Civil War Morgan people. Later, in the mid-1950′s, white markings and the dilute colors (buckskin, palomino, dun, gray, roan), were felt to be “proof” of outisde blood and there was a definite prejudice against them. Often, foals born with offending marks or colors were killed. In the early 1960′s, the white rule was brought in to ban high white horses, and those with blue eyes, from the registry. This was rescinded in the 1990s after DNA testing became the norm and the parentage of the horses was able to be verified.
Buckskin and pinto Morgans appeared in the third generation of the breed (grandsons of Figure). Black appeared in the same generation. Palomino likely did as well (called “buckskin with white mane and tail”). Gray and dun were documented inthe first few generations, as well – so the “non-bay, chestnut or black” colors have been in the breed for a very long time.
It’s true, though, that most people still think of a nice bay horse when they think of a Morgan.
Hoskins has some of the nicest examples of show-bred splash and sabino stallions in the breed – horses which really have things to contribute to the breed in addition to their rare markings.
I am familiar with the history of colors, markings, etc. The high white rule was eliminated in the late ’90s and Regal Charade (this woman’s horse) was one of the first dual registered horses after the rule was lifted. My big issue with the rule changes is that we will start to get the krazy kolor breeders breeding for louder color and not quality. It just seems inevitable & I already have issues with the way the breed is headed (gone?). On the good side for the rule change, a quality horse cannot be excluded from registration simply based on his color ( & I know that there were some painted knees before the rule change. I always wondered why it never ran)
Also, I am sorry, but I will never EVER be able to stomach a cremello Morgan. Buckskins & palominos, smokey blacks were always allowed, and if they are then we have to let cremellos come along, but…ick
“Also, I am sorry, but I will never EVER be able to stomach a cremello Morgan. Buckskins & palominos, smokey blacks were always allowed, and if they are then we have to let cremellos come along, but…ick”
I take no offense, but don’t worry about it, because I am perfectly happy with my horses, including the cremello one. I don’t want to be offensive here, honestly, (and I DO mean it, truly), but I couldn’t care less if you find my horse icky. She is gorgeous, with superior comformation, a perfect set of legs, a deep hip, a long shoulder and a head like an angel (both in looks and in smarts). Oh…did I mention she’s got a white hide and blue eyes? See, sometimes I forget because I like the total package so much. The only thing I don’t like is keeping her clean – trust me, there are days I wish she had been born a chestnut because it would have reduced the manure stain visibility.
But she wasn’t, and I do love how she’s built.
We are in total agreement as far as breeders getting wrapped up into one trait (or bloodline) so much that they can’t see beyond that to the total horse they are creating.
She is very high in old government breeding, BTW, and you might actually like her (going from your handle) if she was a different shade.
Everyone is allowed to have their preferences as far as colors, as the Morgan is a bloodline breed, not a color breed. Conformationally, my cremello is one of the best horses I have bred – and wasn’t bred to be a cremello, but to be a good Morgan. It just happened that both parents were dilution carriers, and I could select the best stud for my mare regardless of color. There are good horses in all colors, and crappy ones, as well. Colorful breeders are a favorite target for the rotten breeder tar brush, however, there are plenty of people breeding “traditionally colored” horses who are breeding crap, and who love to show disdain for better horses that just happen to be in colors they don’t like. Not singling out Morgan breeders or yourself, because it happens in all breeds.
Actually, I find many breeders of colored horses (if they are breeding for things other than color), to often be the most color blind breeders around – and sometimes it’s those people who dislike one color or another who can’t see past the color to the horse beneath the hide.
My philosophy is that a good horse is a good color…AND people are allowed to have what they like – and should be granted respect for that, which is why I try to give that same respect to those who have different tastes than myself.
Don’t tell anyone…I have a light colored palomino. & yes, what an ass-pain to keep clean. I never knew horses could stain!
Exactly, she’s a hoarder. This is an illness. The horses paid the price. Likely the Morgan community isn’t speaking out because the ones that know and are concerned are all up to their eyeballs trying to collect money for the ASPCA’s care, communicate with the powers that be about getting them back into the right hands, etc, etc.
I for one have a lot of work on my desk, but I took the time to send a donation and have received and sent lots of communications among the Morgan people to spread the awareness that these horses need help, and to make sure people who sold/leased these horses to her are proactive about helping them or getting them back.
Not all of us have time to read FUGLY daily, even though we want to!
Unfortunately, on some of the Morgan lists there’s some effort going on to “silence” the discussion. People do not like it when dirty laundry is aired… The Morgan community is small and tight-knit and sometimes forgets that we are subject to the same problems as any other breed. My very own mare’s grand-dam was rescued as an aged mare out of terrible circumstances, after a lifetime of making babies. She was terribly thin and not expected to survive, but she did, and lived several more good years before being put down just before her 29th birthday.
See, and I hate that. To be a credible group of anything, you need to take an active stand against the bad seeds rather than try to cover up the story.
There are people that actually think I shouldn’t out bad rescues, that somehow we should all stick together – which I think is ludicrous.
To be fair, I think a lot of people are still in shock. This was someone who really did have a very nice collection of horses, well-bred, high quality ones, and who has a long association with the Morgan world.
I know of one other ongoing Morgan situation, though it’s not fallen into the realm of abuse. Elderly gentleman, probably not 100% “all there” anymore, with a big herd of mostly colorbred Morgans. Quite crochety and unwilling to admit he needs help with them, or especially help dispersing his herd. The horses are from working Western stock so very, very different than the Eden Farms horses. Unfortunately, some seem to have jaw/facial abnormalities and whether this is genetic or environmental is anyone’s guess. Those that don’t are really lovely, old-fashioned Morgan working horses. He’s not putting any training into them (an online acquaintance was working with them for a while, just trying to get basic ground manners on them and starting the older ones under saddle, which is how I found out about it. But she eventually quit in disgust.) The old guy still thinks he can get $5K plus for them… but he apparently has cut back on the breeding at least! Not sure if he’s filed paperwork for registration, but the AMHA is quite cooperative about issuing registrations when they can, based on DNA testing.
Well this was as of about a year ago (when my acquaintance quit.) I don’t even know the guy’s name but he’s somewhere in the Pacific Northwest or British Columbia. It’s kind of scary… he could be dead by now and who knows what would happen to all those horses if that was the case!
Yeah – it’s true, we’ve seen a lot of issues where elderly people either die or they just can’t take care of the horses anymore. I wish people would use a little judgment and say, hey, I’m 60, time to stop breeding unless I have younger family members actively involved in the business and eager to continue it, but they don’t.
I’m on quite a few of the Morgan sites and I don’t see anyone trying to hush it up. I do see people warning people to be careful of what they say as apparantly the lady has a litigious history and a good lawyer.
Correction: my mare’s grand-dam was nearly *30* when she died. You can read about her and see photos at http://littlebrookfarmmorgans.com/Coal-Creek-Bitohoney.htm.
My mare’s other grand-dam was an unintentional rescue, in a way, from the Morgan show world. She had been a champion Park horse, both under saddle and in harness, and her brain was fried. After a couple of years tossed out in a field, my mare’s breeders purchased her at auction, knowing little about her except she looked like “she might make a nice Western Pleasure horse” … until the next morning, when the drugs wore off and the “Saber-toothed mare” was revealed! She had just broken down mentally under the show regimen. Her son, my mare’s sire, is about as trustworthy and gentle as a stallion can be.
Ya know if she’s not cleaning then she’s not training. *sigh* I have trouble with 10, 73 is just too many. Hoarder.
Yeah. I’m sure the young stock are wild as March hares. At least Morgans are a little more rare, so hopefully the community will have some homes for them.
The observation about the horses being wild is true. Many of them were tranq’ed for the move and there were plenty of young horses with NO handling.
I personally can’t imagine having more than 2 at the moment, and I will not have more than 2 until I have kids and they need a horse, and even then not more than 1 horse per family member with the exception of a project for myself. How do you enjoy and have a relationship with 73 horses? Since getting my Gelding in Nov I have to divide my horsey time in two (after 5 years of only my mare) and it is hard to do everything I would like to do in a day with them in addition to work, housework, and the daily required horsework. I would feel so guilty (and still do at times) doing for one and not doing for the other. I’m a huge believer that if one gets some sort of attention that the other one does too in all aspects of their lives, I’m the same with my 2 dogs and 2 cats. 73 horses, even 20 horses sounds like a guilt ridden nightmare to me. But then again I’m a nut who bought a mare at the age of 11 (she was
and kept her even though I could have sold for a pretty nice penny (early on) because she developed moonblindness and went blind. No one in the world would have cared for her like I did, doctoring her 3 times a day for 7 years, until she passed away July 2005. (Our years were together were great and she taught me so much; we did everything from showing to working cows while blind, her birthday is coming up and she has really been on my mind)
she was a cool cat as well but I was trying to say that she was 8 years old when I bought her at the age of 11. This year she would be 20.
“Good Lord. MOST of us have been dumped. Our horses’ standard of living did not change one iota due to our romantic problems. Grow UP. You’re embarrassing the rest of us.”
Amen…Heck my horses’ and dogs’ standard of living IMPROVED when my ex moved out – I had more time for the important stuff!
*high fives* Yeah, funny how that works…
A horse question. If you were doing to body clip (or half clip, just alot of body hair off your horse), would it be too late to do it? I’ve heard it screws up their shedding cycle if you do, but i’ve never done it so idk.
We Arab people clip year-round. There will be no problem with the shedding cycle. And, if your horse is shiny with long hair, he will be shiny after being clipped. People often believe that body clipping will dull the coat. It does not. Almost every horse at Arabian Nationals is body clipped at the show, sometimes twice ( I personally have re-body clipped halter horses two days before they went National Champion). Just be sure to curry, curry, curry. Clipping will change the color dramatically if the horse has a very long coat, though, so be prepared for your bay to be a buckskin or your chestnut to look naked.
Shedding cycle is supposed to be related to length of days/natural light. Go ahead and clip but the horse won’t look shiny for a couple of months. Brush, brush, brush afterwards to get all the old dead hair out.
Not that I’ve ever heard. I’ve body clip in November and again in January, a month or so from normal shedding and never had a problem. Shedding and winter coats are based on the amount of sunlight horses receive. It should have nothing to do with clipping late.
Our Hunter/Jumper folks darn near clip all year around and they still grow winter coats like the rest of the horses (right on time).
I read the article you posted giving background info. The person who wrote it described her day taking care of her 6 horses. She said it took her one-half hour to clean EACH stall? Is she crawling around on her hands and knees picking it up by hand? THREE hours to muck 6 stalls? I have three and I pick stalls clean, water and lay down their night hay in 20 minutes each morning. Get a move on girl!!
Last summer I was looking for a trail horse. I drove and hour and a half away to see a mare. The owner waddled out to the barn to show me her girl. The horses were all in stalls standing 6 inches deep in shit. The mare was filthy. When I told her I wasn’t interested she got mad and said I had wasted her time! Hello? You dragged me out here to see your mare and couldn’t be bothered to put your best foot forward? Clean your barn! Bath your horse! A buyer is on the way!
I don’t know what’s up with people.
LOL well not everybody is fast. It takes me about 15 minutes a stall but I am not aiming for speed. I haven’t had enough horses in many years to need to be fast so now I nitpick and enjoy the process.
i have gotten lazy and cant afford a fancy tractor or a skidsteer to do chores with so i got one of those neat dump buckets swisher makes for atvs.( under $700 for everything including the winch to run it) boy does that make my life easy!. i just load the bucket with the stuff from the stall drive it out back and dump it. also works great for cleaning the pasture dont need to hire someone with a skidsteer a few times a year anymore and i can keep my pasture so much cleaner. if i can do it theres no excuse not to.
My friend got an ATV and we LOVE it for helping with chores! It has made picking poo out of the pastures take about 1/3 the time, seriously.
My atv gets a lot of use. It has a bed so I can put bales of hay on it. I use it to drag pastures and work up my arena. And when I forget to feed it I wanna cry. Also, I have the best alternative to picking: chickens! They shred the poo piles so it doesn’t build up. And two of my girls, when in a stall, politely poop in a corner. Takes, like, 5 min. to clean.
I love chickens!! We have 12 acres, 2 horses, and 8 chickens and we never ever have to pick the pastures or paddocks. Chickens are tiny, fully automatic manure spreaders!
They also help keep the fly polulation down. And they lay eggs!!! Could they be any more awesome!?
I recently was in a Dairy barn that had not been cleaned in YEARS. The manure was 3 to 4 feet deep in front of the cows and the farmer put their feed on top of it.
Calves laying in wet piles of manure, pipes and metal everywhere. The cows do not ever get out of the stanchions. 24/7 until the day they die. No natural light in the barn, no ventilation.
Not only the poor cows, a dog had been tied to a post, about 12 inches behind a cow, FOR SEVEN YEARS on a chain 18 inches long. The bottom of the post had been worn thin by the chain.
This nasty farmer is selling milk to someone……
Fortunatly here he will be forced by the authorties to clean it up.
His excuse??? “I been doing it for 20 years and no one complained”.
Horses, cows, hogs, chickens, dogs, peoples houses, hard to believe how horrible these places are.
FHOTD: In response to the horse adoption video: I’m surprised you’re not bashing this rescue because they use rope halters and carrot sticks. You have an obvious dislike of all things natural horsemanship so I’m confused why you openly criticize anyone who uses them, then you approve of this rescue. Could you please clarify?
I personally dislike rope halters and I don’t see the purpose of carrot sticks, but I know a lot of people who have both and don’t do anything resembling Parelli training. Shiloh’s horses are being ridden, which pretty much tells me no one has natural horsemanshipped them to death, LOL!
Did you see the comment in the linked article made Mar 20 at 9:45 by Michelle42? “Those horses are assets, which is far better to have than money.â€
Wow! We all know how much more time and money it take to look after certificates of deposit than horses. The value of the CDs fluctuates so much more that that of horses too, particularly since they are more prone to injury and illness.
It boggles my mind that anyone would think this, but if one person has said it, probably a lot more think it. This may explain some of the continued breeding in a glutted market. How does one deal with this level of ignorance/delusion?
Jesus Christ, DROP SHADOW much on that text there, honey??? Her web site builder should be shot. You can’t even read it — white blocky text with huge drop shadow, yeah THAT’s easy… Totally amateur (laughable) Photoshopping… One wonders if she does her own.
Just wanted to second the “get a tetanus shot” comment. I saw a horse die of tetanus a few years ago. We suspect he contracted it from a routine teeth floating. It doesn’t take a big obvious wound– according to our vet, the tetanus bacteria is in horse manure. The horse I saw die had no visible injuries. He was a new horse and was due for vaccinations with the rest of the barn just three days after he died. All in all, it was one of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen. The owner refused to put the horse down when it was clear that he was going to die and he was in excruciating pain for hours upon hours until he finally passed away. He was so terrified and in so much pain that we could barely move him out of his stall. Vaccinate your horse (and yourself while you’re at it)!
Hi, I’m in again after a hiatus. Thanks, FHOTD, for helping me re-log in. Politics aside, suffice to say that Morgan people are very aware of the Eden Farm situation and work is on-going to assess and resolve the situation. Will provide updates as they become available.
I know this lady! I’ve seen her at Morgan shows, and she has pretty popular stallion, Stony Hollow Ice Man. Wow, this is a bit of a shock. Not completely surprising because she always seemed a bit of a flake to me. She loved having her photo in the Morgan Connection. Well, hope she loses all her horses.