Oct 28, 2009 6:41 pm US/Central
Texas Ranch Saves Horses From Slaughterhouse
NEAR JOSHUA (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
It's a practice that makes animal lovers cringe. Pregnant horses are needed to make medicine, but their babies are sent to the slaughterhouse.
But with the help of animal rescuers, a dozen young horses were spared the certain death and arrived at a small ranch near Joshua, Texas.
A handful of volunteers at the
Passion Horse Ranch have worked for months for this moment. "I see a baby head!" said one woman, pointing at a horse trailer as the truck pulled it toward a barn. "I saw a baby head!"
The foals are the offspring of pharmaceutical horses. Drug makers need the urine of pregnant horses for menopause medicine, but they don't need the horses' babies.
In this case, the foals in the trailer were rescued from a Canadian slaughterhouse.
"A lot of those horses had been injured," explained
Passion Horse Ranch founder Debra Naismith, as she described the feed lot where the horses are fattened for slaughter. "It was just bad," she said.
The volunteers hug one another and take pictures as the horses nervously emerge from their trailers and move haltingly through their new environment.
The cost was about $1,500 a horse and a long trip from Canada, but the horses
are wanted at the North Texas ranch.
"It's so overwhelming when they come off that trailer," said Teri Brisson, a Passion Horse Ranch volunteer. "They're finally here."
"I feel joyous," said Naismith. "I feel fearful. I just want them to get settled and find them homes. We need homes for them. We do."
But the horses already have something they didn't just days ago -- a chance.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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