#Hundreds of unwanted horses end up at Pennsylvania auctions. It may mean a death sentence

NEW HOLLAND, Pennsylvania − The horse could barely open its mouth.

It was known, on this day, by only a few crude details:

The numbered sticker on its left haunch. The halter digging into its face. And its price tag.

The big bay quarter horse stared silently at the hay in front of it. It jostled for space, tight between two others. They each were tied to a long cement trough at the New Holland Sales Stables in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, waiting their turn in the weekly auction last summer.

The inspecting vet paused at No. 428. The halter around his muzzle was fastened so tightly it dug deep into his skin, creating wicked abrasions. 

Dr. Jim Holt immediately removed it, fetched a new halter and placed it on loosely. He gave the horse a pat and quickly moved on to the next to inspect, a long lineup ahead.

Each horse at the crossroads of its life.

They end up here every Monday, like they have for decades, because they are unwanted − too slow to race, too old to work the fields, too expensive and time-consuming to handle anymore.

Some will find reprieve at animal rescues or with families looking for a cheap ride or a pet. The very best will be bought to work again.

Many, though, leave with a slaughter trip to Canada or Mexico hanging over their heads − to be butchered for human consumption in other countries. 

A livestock dealer bought No. 428 and more than a dozen others that day.

He paid $600 for him.

He bet on making much more.

Sentenced to death? A horse’s unpredictable home in Pa.

Pennsylvania is a Top 10 horse state when it comes to numbers and finances − and for those who treasure their animals.

But it also could be considered one of the most demanding, if not dangerous, too.

Horses are born into the racing industry here, like at standardbred giant Hanover Shoe Farms. They live strict lives of labor, plowing fields and pulling buggies for the Amish. They are bought and sold at auction by the thousands each year.

And they have a greater chance of being sentenced to death here, too: Rotz Livestock in Shippensburg, for example, is one of the prominent slaughter shippers in the Northeast, according to animal rights groups and horse rescuers. 

The plight of America’s most diverse animal, one of its most beloved and yet neglected, has only become more complicated.

No other boasts its vast utility as a worker and healer, pet and partner and yet also as a food source in some places. Horses are big money − whether it’s to care for them or make a profit from them.

Certainly, economic struggles and unrest beginning with the COVID pandemic have made it more difficult for owners to afford them. As food and supply prices continue to rise, donations to shelters and rescues decline. Those who save horses say the demand has overrun their space, time and means. 

It costs more than $3,000 a year just to feed a horse a recommended diet including grain and hay. Hoof care, dentist and veterinary work, including vaccines and medicines, as well as boarding and training, push the overall expense much higher. 

So hundreds of horses each month end up in sales such as New Holland, which bills itself as the largest livestock auction east of the Mississippi. It’s been doing business for more than a century. It’s a key spoke in the American food industry with thousands of sheep, goats, pigs and cattle sold there each year for butchering.

Though horses draw the most attention and controversy at New Holland, they’re its smallest money-maker, said auction manger Ryan Kolb. (They account for only a fraction of New Holland’s $220 million yearly sales, $150,000 or so on a decent summer week).

They keep selling them, Kolb said, because, simply enough, they always have. And because they’re the star of the show, so to speak.

“Horses bring the crowds,” Kolb said, “because they’re kind of glamorized.” 

Though classified as “livestock” by the federal government, horses are considered domestic pets or companion animals by many. They are admired for their racing prowess and as rodeo and dressage partners. They are prized therapy animals. 

They once worked the fields that settled the nation, delivered the mail and carried men into war. 

Their celebrity on the track often exceeds their human counterparts, the most prolific racers infatuating the nation. They’ve been the subjects of novels and movies, names still resonating decades later: Seabiscuit, War Admiral, Secretariat. 

Drew Myers is a full-time farrier in York County, caring for horses’ feet for a living. He grew up around them and put it this way:

“I think the biggest thing God created for man was the horse. It’s how he made them. The size, the strength, the back that he gave them to carry us. Just what they’ve done for us over all the years, and they still keep doing for us. You take a 2,000-pound draft, and he’s so docile and he’s so willing.

“Without them we would have been lost. Without them today we’d be lost.”

And yet a horse’s fate often comes down to simple finances.

Take Secretariat, a Triple Crown winner and one of the fastest thoroughbreds of all time. Disney made a movie of his life. His offspring were pampered and cared for as potential champions.

When one of his granddaughters, Go Go Lark, didn’t perform well as a racer she was tried as a brood mare. One owner bought her after another. She was passed around, essentially stripped of her regal bloodlines. 

She ended up with a horse dealer in Lebanon, Pa. and was in danger of being shipped to slaughter. A married couple in Illinois stepped in to buy her in 2015. But they eventually surrendered her, as well, they said, because of financial and health troubles.

She finally found refuge at a sanctuary in Maine, saved a second time. She was more fortunate than most. 

The rescuers: Caring for horses and working with ‘kill buyers’

The long drives are the worst. So much time, Kelly Smith said, to think and pray about the abused, neglected and abandoned horses she’s about to meet.

Smith and her Omega Horse Rescue in southeastern York County are different than most. She not only cares for animals from broken homes − she feels compelled to work with the “kill buyers” licensed to ship their horses to slaughter plants in Canada and Mexico.

She buys some horses directly from them. She said she’s been allowed to painlessly, humanely, euthanize select others, ones suffering and broken down physically. 

Smith described the scene at a kill buyer’s grounds − one corroborated through accounts of animal welfare groups and media investigations:

Horses are loaded haphazardly into a holding pen, regardless of size, breed or origin. They are eventually herded through a chute onto a scale to be weighed and glue-tagged for shipping. 

Twenty-five to 30 horses are then loaded into a metal-floor cattle truck for a cramped, chaotic, days-long drive to Canada or Mexico.

“The truck backs up, and they are in a sheer panic like, ‘Oh my God, what is happening now?'” Smith said. “I’ve been there when that truck has turned around and came back and I’ve seen horses trampled to death and laying there with their guts hanging out. I’ve seen horses come back with eyeball hanging out of their head. There is nothing I can say that will make it right or make it OK for them.

“You try to be strong and reserve the tears for when you’re driving home or getting a shower. I’ve laid with a horse dying there in shit and piss. There’s things there you will never be able to unsee no matter how much therapy you get.”

She always tries to return. Her ability to comfort, save and even rehabilitate these horses, she said, depends on building a relationship with livestock dealers like Bruce Rotz and his son, Cody, in Shippensburg. The Rotz’s declined, on multiple occasions, to be interviewed for this story.

“They see (horses) as widgets, something they buy and sell. It doesn’t have feelings. It’s something they do for a living,” Smith said. “I try to keep focus on maybe my actions will teach them some compassion, which has changed, in the sense that we get to do our humane euthanasia (by chemical injection) from there. When I first started doing this I wasn’t allowed at his facility, I wasn’t allowed to see the horses, I certainly wasn’t allowed to euthanize them. 

“Now, sometimes they’ll call and say, ‘Hey, we have a horse that might work for your program’ or ‘Hey, Kelly, we have a group going to Mexico soon. Maybe you want to come up and see if there’s any you want to euthanize.’ Not always, they will sometimes call.

“When I first started doing that, (the auction workers and kill buyers) all hated me. … Like I was trying to cause them problems, that I was just some animal rights person. But when people get to know people on a more human level, and know what your motivation is, it can open a lot of doors.

“Do I see eye-to-eye with them? No. Do I support horse slaughter? Absolutely not. Do I wish they’d stop? Yes, I do. But since I don’t have any control over that, I do what I can do.”

What is horse slaughter?

Upon arriving at a slaughter plant, particularly in Canada, horses are led, one by one, into a “kill box.” There, they are attempted to be restrained, then shot in the head with a captive bolt gun − a high-pressured firearm that penetrates the animal’s head with a retractable metal rod. 

The goal is to render the animal unconscious and “brain dead” before it is hung, dismembered, bled-out and prepared for shipping. (The slaughter procedure is murkier in Mexico with less documentation, including protocol oversight).

Animal rights groups and rescuers consider the slaughter kill process inhumane to horses, in particular, because of their physiology and body structure. As “flight” animals, horses are skittish by nature and difficult to control when crowded and confined in noisy environments and able to smell blood − hindering the ability to make exacting, effective bolt gun shots.

The American Veterinary Association, meanwhile, considers three properly administered means of euthanasia as humane: captive bolt gun, gunshot and chemical injection.

Horses intended for human consumption cannot be euthanized by chemicals for slaughter because of safe-eating guidelines.

The gatekeeper: ‘I’m the judge and executioner’

Dr. Jim Holt’s horse job is essential, trusted and yet reviled by many.

His truck tires have been slashed, and his office has been broken into. He said he’s received death threats from as far away as Colorado.

This life-long big animal vet also works as a gatekeeper of the New Holland’s crowded sales barn and auctions.  

“I have fewer friends than I have enemies. I live in that narrow place between the buyers and the sellers,” Holt said.

“You’ve got to have brass balls because you’re criticized on both sides of it.”

Holt is the only licensed authority to oversee the welfare of the horses at the weekly auction in Lancaster County. His job calls for bare-bones but prudent care. He gives every horse, sometimes more than 150 on a Monday morning, a brief wellness check. He also administers tests for equine infectious anemia, which are processed in his on-site lab.

Most sales barns, he said, only have a veterinarian on-call if needed. Rather, he inspects every horse, making sure it meets basic selling qualifications: They cannot be blind in both eyes or lame. They must be able to move soundly in all directions.

And so Holt decides if a horse here is fit to be sold, usually pulling at least a few from the lineup each week. Sellers deride him if they believe he’s being too tough with safety protocols. Conversely, animal rights activists and horse rescuers vilify him for doing the work that even allows the auction to operate − and funnel horses to slaughter.

“Literally, I’m the judge and executioner.”

He knows he may be hated for his stance on slaughter, as well: He supports it as long it’s done as humanely as possible. He believes horses, particularly ones that are old and broken down, may suffer longer at a rescue or sanctuary, lingering and deteriorating in pain and discomfort.

He admits he straddles the line of care and practicality like few others. He’s bought horses from New Holland to keep on his own farm. He’s rehabbed horses for rescues.

“As to why I do this job, it’s not for the people. That would be insane,” Holt said. “It’s the horses that make me involved. 

“It’s the connection to the horse that wants you to provide them a better situation. No matter how you feel about slaughter, you help them have a humane existence as possible until that time comes. (Auctions) can be a spot where a lot of issues arise. The entrance to the slaughter channel is not necessarily well-regulated.

“I don’t differentiate from a horse going to slaughter or not, they’re all horses in the end. I try to provide them with a comfort level I can.”  

The auction: Buying, selling and horses tagged for slaughter

The New Holland auctioneer called out names and numbers in machine-gun fire, nearly indecipherable to newcomers.

Young women in cape dresses and bonnets led one horse after another through a viewing chute, riding them bareback or pulling them with a lead.

Spectators and buyers crowded the bleachers and leaned on the ring rail, holding coffees and sandwiches. 

The Amish, for example, come here to sell and buy, turning in their old “machines,” in a sense, for new ones.

The horse dealers come from across the state and beyond to buy six, eight or a dozen horses at a time. They may advertise and attempt to sell the most desirable online or to rescues before the rest are eventually tagged for slaughter.

Everywhere you turned there was a horse, standing, walking, riding.

Take that bay quarter horse with the biting halter − No. 428. He used to pull a buggy for an Amish family in upstate New York.

He aged and gradually wore out his working appeal. His Amish owner sold him for $450 to a longtime kill buyer and horse dealer in Watertown, New York.

The dealer eventually drove No. 428 to auction here, saying it could still make “a good meat horse,” if nothing else. Even though the horse looked healthy and sturdy enough, at least on first glance.

It certainly wouldn’t bring bids rising into the thousands on this day, like the exotic-looking Arabians or a beautiful black mare in her prime. 

The dealer banked on simply making a profit.

Sure enough, Rotz Livestock paid $600 for it.

The horse slaughter divide

The second-chance horses munched hay in the afternoon shade of their barn stable.

Polly is a bay pony with a bad case of asthma. She needs treatments from a $500 inhaler and hose baths to ease the dust and dirt. Marvin, her best field buddy, stands straight and strong but suffers from neurological issues and doesn’t walk well anymore. 

Ollie is the youngest and tallest at the Central PA Horse Rescue in Northern York County, a saddlebred with energy to burn (he likes to roll in the dirt like a puppy on his morning walk). He came from a slaughter “kill pen” in Texas, his life nearly snuffed out before turning a year old. 

Connie Greenawalt, who runs the rescue with her common-law husband and a few diehard volunteers, estimated that 100 of the 150 horses they’ve saved over the past six years have come from auctions − the entry into the slaughter pipeline.

Horse slaughter is a longtime business that often eludes public consciousness. The practice was all but banned in the United States in 2007 when the government ruled that it would no longer certify slaughter facilities here. Before that, plants in Texas and Illinois were reportedly slaughtering more than 100,000 horses each year.

Now, horses must be transported to Canada and Mexico to be legally slaughtered − about 20,000 American horses dying in facilities there last year, according to the Animal Welfare Institute. Though a cratering demand for horse meat world-wide, along with the rising cost-value of horses, continues to cut slaughter numbers, the issue remains a political hot-button issue.

It still fervently divides the horse community.

As New York legislators recently banned their horses from being shipped to slaughter, others, such as in Colorado, have shot down similar bills. Legislators in Wyoming have even pushed the attributes of slaughter as a means to control the wild mustang population.

Meanwhile, the Save America’s Forgotten Equines (SAFE) Act, first introduced in Congress in 2021, would permanently ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption in the United States and also prohibit the export of live horses to Mexico and Canada for slaughter. 

Though the SAFE Act has struggled to approach requisite support, lawmakers hope to include it as part of the 2023 Farm Bill when it is considered by Congress this year.

The ongoing struggle remains: Who will care for horses, especially aging ones, as breeding numbers continue to rise nationwide? There are more than 7.2 million horses in this country.

Protecting them from slaughter required a multi-pronged effort − more than hopeful legislation, according to Smith at Omega Rescue.

She talked of proactive practices ranging from training horses for multiple skills to increase their lasting demand (becoming a family trail rider once a racing career ends) to creating low-cost, chemical-injection euthanasia centers where aging, seriously ill animals can die humanely, painlessly, more peacefully. 

“I had a lengthy conversation with an Amish man who wants me to help him find a home for one of his horses,” Smith said. “He heard of what happens (with slaughter). He didn’t know. He says, ‘I’d never want that to happen to my horses.’ 

“So it’s the education. It’s being a spokesman for an animal that doesn’t have a voice.”

Frank Bodani covers sports and outdoor topics for the York Daily Record and USA Today Network. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @YDRPennState.

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Pennsylvania’s unwanted horses face slaughter at livestock auctions

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