Why the increase in kill pen horse prices? Recently, in a discussion with several other rescues, one rescue mentioned when they went to the kill pen to pick up a horse, there was a horse with a leg injury. The rescue asked how much they wanted for the horse and were told $750. For an injured horse! The rescue paid the bail and took the horse. At the time, we thought it was a very high price for an injured horse, especially given the vet costs that would be involved.
A few days later we saw this horse posted by another kill pen with a “bail amount” of $1400. When we saw this, shock doesn’t adequately describe what we felt. Yes, it was a beautiful horse who deserved to live! But $1400?? Who was going to pay $1400 to a kill buyer to save a horse? Well, someone did! A “group” fundraised on Facebook and paid the ransom on this horse. Given that our first two kill pen rescues only cost $400 each, in April 2015, this prompted us to take a deeper look into the increasing cost of Kill Pen horses.
After rescuing the first two in April, we did not rescue from a kill pen again until August. In August we jumped on the “Feed lot Frenzy” bandwagon and bailed A LOT of horses. So we decided August was a good starting point to see just how much prices had actually gone up in the last 6 months.
To be fair, we looked at the four kill pens with the largest broker programs on Facebook: Bastrop Louisiana Kill pen, Bowie Kill Pen in TX, Kaufman Kill Pen in TX and Sunnyside Feed Lot in WA.
For our research we used the horses sold to us and others in August and compared them to horses available for sale currently on their broker pages. We only looked at individual horses. We did not use the figures for ponies, donkeys, mare/foal pairs or large herds. We were not surprised to find the prices had increased an average of 19% for the four kill pens. The highest increase coming from Bastrop Louisiana Kill pen at 31%! Surprisingly, one of the kill pens prices stayed about the same over the past 6 months.
Kill pens would like us to believe the increase prices is due to “higher meat prices” and they are selling them to us out of the “goodness of their hearts”. It does not take a financial genius to see they make much higher profits when selling to the public. The truth is, the increase is because they know that someone will pay $1400 for a horse if there is a threat of that horse shipping to slaughter. They know they have us by the throat and are taking full advantage.
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