Horses face starvation as drought ravages Texas pastures

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/11/06/129446/horses-face-starvation-as-drought.html

Posted on Sunday, November 6, 2011
By Steve Campbell | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

FORT WORTH — With drought-ravaged pastures turning into dust, water tanks drying up and the price of hay skyrocketing, equine rescue groups across Texas are being inundated with horses surrendered by cash-strapped owners or simply abandoned on back roads.

"I've taken in 14 horses in the last two weeks," said Bob Williams of Ranch Hand Rescue in Argyle. "Law enforcement agencies can't keep up with the numbers of animals they are rounding up on country roads. Nobody knows what to do. I'm telling you it's an epidemic.

"The problem is everyone used up their winter hay supply during the summer. Between the drought and the wildfires, there's no hay in Texas," said Williams, noting that the cost of forage has more than doubled in a year.

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Cattle ranchers, whose pastures were withered by the hottest and driest summer on record, have been trucking in loads of out-of-state hay, selling off herds or shipping them north to greener pastures. But that's not an option for most of the estimated 181,000 people who own the nearly 1 million horses in Texas, Sigler said.

With the drought expected to continue into next year, dwindling water supplies are an even greater concern for Sigler.

"The tanks are dry and wells are going dry, and some water suppliers are restricting water use for livestock," he said.

With the horse market glutted, people can't even give horses away.

Every day, beleaguered owners are asking the Humane Society of North Texas to take theirs, said Sandy Grambort, equine services manager in Fort Worth. The society is now caring for 40 head.

"We used to take in 20 to 30 horses a year; now we're getting that many every month. Some months we're getting 50 to 60," she said. "It's a double whammy with the economy and the drought. It's putting the horse industry in a pretty serious crisis."

Melissa Orten of Rendon, who has been raising and showing quarter horses, paint horses and Arabian horses for 30 years, recently surrendered four of her nine prized show horses to the Humane Society.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever done to swallow my pride and ask for help," Orten said. "We have income, but with the cost of hay, we couldn't make it work. It just drowns you."

Orten, 54, and her husband, Jeff, an insurance adjuster, had their manufactured home repossessed a year ago and are living in a storage building that was a tack room on their 8-acre property.

"That wouldn't have happened if I had let go of the horses earlier," she said, noting that she has "sold down" from 16 head.

"I've tried to sell the four I'm surrendering, but the market is flooded," she said. "I just want to make sure they get good homes. I don't want them sold for slaughter in Mexico."

Orten thinks she's found an adoptive home for her best horse, a 5-year-old mare that she says won a world title at a paint horse show in 2008.

"She's got champion bloodlines. I've got $10,000 in her and I'm giving her away. It's heartbreaking," she said.

Instead of removing the horses, Grambort is giving Orten "hay assistance."

"We can't support people's horses, but we can supplement them. The goal is to keep horses in homes as sort of a stopgap," she said.

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Some horses are being abandoned, and donkey-dumping has become so pervasive that Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue in Miles quit taking in animals three weeks ago when its facility reached capacity at 450.

"We've taken in 600 in Texas this year. We've got a list of 300 more waiting to come in, mostly from law enforcement agencies," said Mark Meyers, who founded the rescue group. "I think it will be a crisis this winter. I don't think it will just be abandonment. I can see hundreds of donkeys being shot by their owners this winter."

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