'The Hungry Herd'

We received a call about 18 emaciated horses on Tuesday, February 11, 2014.  They had been impounded in the south end of the province and were in terrible shape.    If we were not able to help them they would all ship to slaughter.   We reached out to some of our volunteers for help, as we'd be taking 2 trailers, and we'd need help with them as soon as we got back.     It was many hours' driving to pick them up and bring them home.  Fourteen of the herd were doing okay but, due to their weak condition, four of them went down once we arrived at the Rescue.

Despite heroic efforts on the part of everyone here, we lost the bay filly named Jasper on Wednesday morning and had to euthanize Phoenix, the stallion, and Nova , a sorrel filly, on Wednesday evening. Delilah J, one of the sorrel mares that was in the worst shape, seemed to be doing better and we managed to get her up for one hour on Wednesday evening and for three hours Thursday morning.  After that,  she was up and doing very well, even  being able to go for short  walks, so we were heartbroken when she went down again after four days and we were unable to get her up; in spite of our best efforts, she passed away two days later.

It was a long road to get each of these surviving horses back into shape, but we were able to  accomplish it with  a lot of help from our great volunteers; some even stayed overnight to help care for the horses.

Maggie, one of the youngest horses, developed laminitis in her back feet, along with abscesses. The horses had been fed alfalfa hay at the impound lot, as that was all they had, which must have overloaded her system.  With ongoing attention from our vet and farrier she has recovered well, with no obvious soundness issues.   Marvel, a gelding, was adopted within a couple of months.   It also happened that, not long after the horses arrived, we discovered that Ivor and Valiant were both intact stallions - when they are emaciated their sheaths are swollen and you couldn't see right away that they still had their testicles.  Until they could be gelded we separated them from the mares,  but by the time we had noticed that they were intact, Tinsel and Rosey had already been bred and were now pregnant.    The next year, Tinsel's foal was, sadly, stillborn, but Rosey's foal, Matilde, was healthy and grew into a lovely filly.  Buckey injured her foot (torn ligament) while out on pasture in 2016, but she has recovered from that.  Missy was really the only one of the entire herd that seemed to have had any handling, as she is halter-broke and foot-broke.

  Most of 'The Hungry Herd' is still here at the Rescue, and they are all doing very well.

We arrived late in the evening and worked quickly to care for the sickest horses.

They were nothing but skin and bones.

DJ was doing well, but started going downhill by about the 3rd day. We were heartbroken that she didn't make it.

Everyone worked tirelessly for hours, doing what we could, but sadly some could not be saved.

Manes and tails full of burrs.

DJ

Three that didn't make it - Jasper, Phoenix (the stallion), and Nova.

  Working on Maggie's foot, which had foundered and abscessed shortly after arriving at the Rescue.   She had proud flesh coming through a hole in the sole of her hoof - neither our vet nor our farrier had seen anything like it before.

Summer, 2015

Fall, 2015

2016, 2017