Every Thursday people crowd into a room raised high above the auction ring. The air is thick with the warmth from their bodies and the voice of the auctioneer rattling off at a mile a minute is the only distinguishable sound. To get from one end to the other you have to squeeze between the tightly compacted bodies, hoping not to offend or step on any toes. To obtain a seat closer to the ring you must arrive early - my chances for that were shot. My father and I had arrived at about noon just in time to give the livestock a once over and grab a bite to eat before the sale at one.
You can view the animals from a walkway looming high over their heads. The very first ring of animal you see is a pen with four horses in it; a tall sorrel mare with a white stripe, a splashy overo horse with a ghost eye, another sorrel mare, and a dark bay. They stand perfectly in a line looking anxious but in decent shape. Next to them is another pen of horses, this one one with an array of ponies and one oddly built chestnut mare. This pen is not so calmly kept. The chestnut is constantly crying out, pacing back and forth relentlessly and the ponies squeal and kick out at one another if someone ventures too close.
As you continue down the walkway and look to the off to the left you can see the hogs. They appear to large for their own legs to support their legs. They lay on their sides with their faces pressed into the mud and their legs dangling in the air. Beyond the sows are many pens of cattle. There are dairy cattle with their prominent hip bones and young steers. There are also massive black Angus pulls, angrily stomping and blowing snot out of their noses. The calves are most pitiful to see, huddled and bleating together with large sad eyes. Their is an array of goats and alpacas, even a single mule.
But kept far in the back in hopes of staying away from the viewers eyes are the saddest animals of all. These are the horses who have been dealt a bad card. A two year old buckskin is in misery with his head between his knees, every bone in his body visible. His eyes are sad and if he has no response to any attempt to draw his attention. A pinto stud colt beside him is equally as pathetic but his eyes are not so subdued. They flicker about the building in distress, constantly moving with a wild look. The horse that draws the most heartache is an incredibly emaciated mare. Her body score would have certainly marked a 1 or less as her bones jut through her skin. Her muscle has all deteriorated and she is just barely clinging to life. Worst of all, she has a weanling filly still trying to suckle milk from her.
Waynesburg Auction is a livestock auction and it is one of the few places they sell horses by the pound. With the re-opening of slaughter houses in America, the killer-buyers are more aggressive than ever. Most horses run through the sale will end up in their hands. The buckskin colt, the pinto stud, and the horribly abused mare and her baby all sold for $5 dollars each. They will not be brought back to health. They will not know love. They will meet an end at the slaughter house. It is a terribly unfortunate thing because all of these horses had so much potential to become something. Because of neglectful owners they will never have the chance at life.
Oddly enough, I am a support of horse slaughter in America. However, I am not a supporter of abuse on any level. There is absolutely no excuse for the horses to have ever have reached that condition. If you cannot afford to feed a horse, do something with it besides slowly letting the poor creature starve to death in a pasture. Send it to auction before it reaches that critical point! I can't even begin to express the sorrow I feel for those horses.
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