Lake deputies seize 7 starved horses
Seven starving horses resembling walking skeletons have been rescued and their owner is in custody, the Lake County Sheriff ’s Office said Tuesday.
The horses’ tails and hip bones jutted out in angular directions and, having used up their fat, their bodies had begun eating their muscle for fuel. Some could not stand up on hooves grown soft from decay.
Deputies arrested Angel King, 46, of Eustis, on Monday on seven counts of animal cruelty for the horses’ malnourished condition, sheriff ’s Sgt. Jim Vachon said.
“She was claiming to be a horse rescue for horses that couldn’t be cared for any more,” he said.
Since June 1, there have been three allegations of animal cruelty at “Kings Cove Horse Rescue” on Huff Road in Eustis, a rural area 35 miles northwest of Orlando, Vachon said.
Agriculture deputies trained in assessing livestock visited the property Wednesday based on an anonymous tip, according to an arrest warrant. They ordered King to comply with a health-improvement plan for the horses, but in two days took them into custody after they failed to improve.
Teresa Meixner, owner of Howey Horse Haven Rescue in Howey-in-the-Hills, said the first 10 days will be critical for the horses.
“They’re not used to having any food … you have to feed them very, very slowly or else you’re shocking their system” and they could die, she said.
Meixner said it’s possible some might not make it.
“It’s hard to say what God’s got planned for them,” she said. She’s had recovering horses fall, be too weak to rise and pass away.
The horses were rated on the Henneke horse body condition scoring system, which rates a healthy horse at 9 and a very emaciated horse at 1.
Two horses rated a zero, starved to the point where their skin is stretched over their bone structure, according to an affidavit of probable cause.
One had a score of 1 and the rest rated a 2.
The affidavit said the “starvation over time is a repeated infliction of unnecessary pain and/or suffering.”
A veterinarian’s exam found that the condition of the horses “is not attributed to age nor to obvious illness but to being deprived adequate food and nutrition.”
In the past four years, Meixner has rehabilitated nearly 60 horses “and that’s just us,” she said, adding