Woman uses gift money to save 3 horses

Woody Creek resident Margaret Reckling planned to buy herself a Christmas present — until she browsed the Colorado Slaughterhouse Bound Horses page on Facebook last week.

That’s all it took to rearrange her discretionary spending. Instead of buying an expensive camera lens, she gave three horses a reprieve from a death sentence.

Reckling was familiar with Colorado Feedlot Horses, a nonprofit organization that was formed in 2014 to try to save horses that get shipped out from Colorado for slaughter, most often to Mexico.

The nonprofit nurtured a relationship with the owner of one of the two horseslaughter feedlots operating in Colorado. It tries to save as many of the horses as possible in the short window from when they arrive at the feedlot to when they get shipped.

The group posts pictures of the new arrivals that the feedlot owner typically acquires at auctions. For a horse lover, looking at the Facebook page can be torture.

“I unfollowed it last year because it was so sad,” Reckling said. “It’s just heart-wrenching, really. Especially when they come in with mares and their babies.”

She can’t help herself from checking the Facebook page occasionally. When she saw three young, healthy horses she felt she had to act.

Reckling can’t board and care for horses where she lives, but she was willing to pay to get them released if she could find someone to adopt them. Through networking, she found other women who shared a concern over doomed horses — one to transport them and another to care for them in New Mexico. That sealed the deal.

Reckling paid $855 per horse to remove them from the feedlot.

Crystal Brady, president and co-founder of Colorado Feedlot Horses, said most of the horses get saved through the type of networking that enticed Reckling. She said it isn’t unusual to rescue healthy, welltrained horses from the slaughterhouse lot because they often have been dumped at an auction house for one reason or another. Some of the horses are near the end of their lives and the owners hope to make a few bucks through auction rather than pay a veterinarian to put them down.

Colorado Feedlot Horses’ tactics have been criticized by other animal rescue organizations since it was founded in 2014, said Brady, a Morrison resident. That’s because the group pays the feedlot owner, who typically sets prices higher than what he would get for slaughter. Foes contend that encourages feedlot owners to buy more horses.

Brady counters that the organization has saved 9,500 horses through networking and another 400 through its own rescue program.

“Basically we always said we’d save the ones we can and pray for the ones we can’t,” Brady said.

In most cases, Colorado Feedlot Horses vets the homes where the horses are going to avoid “horse flipping,” she said.