So it seems that there is an ever widening price gap between sending a horse to the knacker and summoning a vet to euthanizing, cart off, and either bury or burn the carcass. I think they used to fetch about $.40 a pound or for horse meet at the auction, so an ordinary riding horse who went to the knacker would fetch about $400, depending on weight.
I cannot imagine that the prices gone down beyond the $300 you cite. There must be another $500 for transport and disposal. That means the spread is about $1200. The people who are losing their ranches and backyard farms to foreclosure might just not have $800 or $1000 for each horse to be disposed of. If they have two or three horses, it becomes a major concern.
Since the Liberals and the greens have driven the price of feed up because of their lunatic biofuels subsidies, keeping horses is no longer an option. The Liberals have thus destroyed the market into which to sell them. So the Liberals have created a situation of horror for the horses by squeezing a tradition about which they are utterly ignorant at both ends.
By the way, I was up at my stable the other day when the neighboring farmer drove by with a brand-new tractor and a brand-new trailer behind it. My stable owner asked, "you know how much that tractor and trailer cost?" Without waiting for my reply he volunteered, "€80,000 for the tractor 15 to 20,000 for the trailer, and he just bought a Mercedes car." The farmer did all of this by selling his grain about a mile down the road to a place where the government is making electricity. There is a surtax on every kilowatt of electric energy consumed here in Germany which goes to such madness.
