By Nancy K. Crevier

It is truly a grassroots group, if you count hay as a grass. Beth Helms of Pound Ridge, N.Y., is a member of an online writers’ board, a horse owner, and a client of Dr Mark Baus of Fairfield Equine Associates in Newtown.

When another member of her writers’ group recently posted a link to a Los Angeles Times article concerning the plight of horses in the drought-ridden southern United States, she and the other horse lovers in the group realized that they had the opportunity to do something to prevent horses from starving to death. “We realized we could actually do something without government bureaucracy getting in the way. We could just buy hay ourselves and ship it,” said Ms Helms.

The months-long drought in southern states has created a feeding problem for horse owners. Grass that horses would normally have fed upon in the warmer months burned up beneath a hot sun and lack of rain; hay crops were damaged by the long, dry spell, causing prices for hay to shoot up beyond what many horse owners can afford; and suppliers have not been able to keep hay in stock in the quantities demanded. This has led to a great number of horses being fed inadequate amounts, to the point of starving to death in some instances, Ms Helms said.

Ms Helms realized that in order to raise the funds to purchase hay, however, her group would need the assistance of a nonprofit organization to collect and process the donations for them. She approached her veterinarian, Dr Mark Baus of Fairfield Equine Associates, who agreed with her that this cause deserved attention.

A horse requires approximately two percent of its body weight in hay each day, said Dr Baus. That means that the average horse weighing 1,000 pounds needs 20 pounds of hay. “Here in Fairfield County we are apt to see more problems with horses being overweight,” said Dr Baus. Many horses down south in need of assistance are hovering around 800 to 900 pounds, he said, substantially below what they should weigh.

 “Our goal is to take an immediate action,” said Dr Baus. After consulting with The Humane Society of the United States, he determined that drought-related issues were truly a problem for horses in several of the southern states. “I’m sure that some of the urgency may be an emotional itch. But I think that there are factors that make this a very likely situation. One, the drought has caused a decrease in the amount of hay available and an increase in the cost. Secondly, with the economic downturn, you have to remember that a horse is often a discretionary part of the budget. When things go wrong, the horse is let go,” he said.

Whether “letting go” of a horse is to be taken literally, as professed by various websites and news reports that horses in southern states are actually being released to fend for themselves, Dr Baus cannot say. But certainly when a horse becomes an economic liability something has to give, he said, whether it is the quality of care or if the animal is actually disowned.

The third factor that may have contributed to the plight of the horses, said Dr Baus, may be the outlawing of slaughter of horses in the United States. Owners of horses with no residual or terminal value no longer have that option available, as unpalatable as the thought may be to many Americans. “These three things make it likely to see an increase of starving horse,” said Dr Baus.

The United States Equine Rescue League has noted a sharp increase in the number of horses neglected beginning the winter of 2006-2007, said USERL board chair Jennifer Malpass in a recent e-mail to The Newtown Bee. That increase has stayed steady through 2007 and the case load continues to increase as this winter wears on, she said.

The USERL believes that a cascade of events, with the drought being the catalyst, has pushed horses’ problems over the edge this year. A soft horse market that has steadily declined over the past ten years, an increase in responsible breeding on nonmarketable horses, and lower prices for horses making them more available to the general public, compounded by a disregard to the high cost of keeping a horse, has led to an oversaturated horse market, Ms Malpass said. The drought, she said, has only exacerbated the problems.

Keith Dane of Equine Protection, The Humane Society of the United States, said that while there has been no verification of reports of large numbers of horses being left to forge for themselves, it does not rule out that it could happen. “We have had no cases reported to the Humane Society,” he said, and believes that rumors of abandonment have been propagated by activists against the closing of US horse slaughter houses.

The problem, said Mr Dane, is that the drought has made hay unaffordable for many horse owners, thus forcing them to release their animals to rescue leagues. In 2006-2007, the Equine Protection provided assistance to horse rescue leagues in the Dakotas, Idaho, and Montana to alleviate the effect of drought in those states. “Now the drought is worse in states like Tennessee, parts of Kentucky, the Carolinas, and Virginia,” said Mr Dane.

The Humane Society of the United States has set up a Hay for Horses Fund to assist nonprofit horse rescue organizations purchase hay during the drought and to supply hay for hundreds of horses during the winter months. All donations go to animal rescue programs for the purchase of feed for the animals. “We have not seen starvation as a huge problem, but if hay is not available to horse rescuers, they cannot take in more horses, and some horse could go hungry,” said Mr Dane.

Ms Helms’ small group is working to make sure that as many horses as need hay will get it. Through donations to The Hay Fund, the Fairfield Equine Foundation actually buys the hay and pays for shipping it where it is most needed.

Growing up in South Dakota and a graduate of Kansas State University, Dr Baus knew that he had connections to hay sources that could be utilized for this situation. “Each shipment of hay will be between 20 to 30 tons, and will be shipped directly to a reputable equine rescue organization for distribution,” he said. “This has all happened so quickly. We just heard about this from Beth less than a week ago,” Dr Baus said. But the $5,000 needed for the first shipment has been received and he hoped that the hay would be on its way to its destination by early next week.

“We will try to collect enough money for one shipment at a time,” he said. The project will be ongoing, so long as funds are received and so long as there are horses in need of help.

He stressed that all of the donations go toward the purchase of hay and the shipping of the hay. “Fairfield Equine Associates is not making any money on this,” he said.

Tax-deductible donations can be mailed to Fairfield Equine Foundation, Attention: Hay Fund, 32 Barnabas Road, Newtown CT 06470.