Farmers are getting upset with horse owners not being able to afford the maintenance and feeding of their horses, in which they just “turn ‘em loose” to survive on their own.
The equine industry has slowly spread its market decline down into the southern states this past year. Sale horses are being sold at a minimal low, kill buyers are offering a small wage for poorly conditioned horses, and lastly the sale barns aren’t making a surviving business profit. A highly reputable sale barn in the area of Clovis, NM is not offering as many sales as in the past due to the decline of the horse market.
“At our type of sale, 85 percent of the horses are going for a lot cheaper. I see a lot of little, thin unwanted colts that are bringing 20 to 50 dollars,” Steve Friskup, manager of Clovis Livestock Auction, said. “Little yearling colts with no papers used to bring 150 dollars or even 200 dollars. Now they’re bringing 20-50 dollars.”
Jim Freeman, a sale barn owner from Sulphur, OK, said he has seen a significant increase in thin, underfed horses, Freeman allows horse slaughterhouse kill buyers to attend his sales, to help out the declining horse market.
“Horses sold for slaughter used to bring 60 to 70 cents a pound,” he said. “Now, a lot of them are down to 18 to 20 cents a pound.”
Freeman said that the market decline is related to horse slaughter in Mexico.
“People are raising heck about how horses are being slaughtered in Mexico,” he said. “Well, we brought that on ourselves. We took it out of the United States, where we can’t regulate it.”
In Canyon, hay prices have remained the same as the past year. Alfalfa small square bales are still at a high of $8-10 a bale for about a sixty-five to seventy-pound bale. Other grazing hay such as Coastal Grass and Beardless Wheat hay are stuck in the range of $6-9 a bale for small square bales. Apparently the forage and hay market is not nearly in as bad condition, but grain prices, however, have dropped tremendously. The reason is that horse owners can’t afford to feed their own horse, so they stop buying feed to refrain from feeding their stock.
