Enlarge Rescue Horses

Horse Rescue Success Stories

At Dead Broke Farm, we love horses, and we can't stand to see a horse that is in need of feed, kindness, or veterinary care. As a result, we have rescued at least a dozen horses since 2004. We nursed them back to health, rebuilt their trust in humans, and gave them a purpose in life... to delight all those who come in contact with them. They are an inspiration to everyone's life they touch, so we'd like to share some of their stories with you.

 Princess is a mustang who was rounded up and sold by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). She ended up in the hands of a horse trader that bred her, but neglected to feed her sufficiently or de-worm her. She had her foal and continued to lose even more weight while nursing her newborn filly. When we bought her (for 10 times the price that they can be purchased from the BLM), she was very thin and very nervous and distrustful of humans. She had not only been neglected but abused as well. We fattened her up, won her trust, trained her to ride under saddle, and now she is one of the children’s favorite horses because she is to stunningly beautiful and gentle.

    Enlarge Princess (before)            Enlarge Princess (now)

Enlarge Booger (before)

Enlarge Booger (now)

Booger is another one of our rescue horses. He's the little one on the left. He's the same age as the foal beside him, but he should be bigger than the other foal because Booger is a big draft breed, while the other foal is a normal size breed. Booger had been with us for about 3 months when this picture was taken, so you can only imagine how emaciated he was when we first got him. We purchased Booger off of an online horse auction site. He was a pitiful with a huge belly and hocks (the knees of his hind legs) that touched because he was so thin. He was being sold “as is”. He was a five-month-old orphan who was being kept in a tool shed! We drove to Maryland to pick him up, and learned that he also had infection in his muzzle. The vet came to examine him the following day and told us to prepare ourselves in case he didn’t survive. She gave him a body condition score of a “one” on a scale of 1 to 9 with 1 being a horse on the brink of starvation and a 9 being obese. His belly was bloated from worms, he had infection in his face, his muzzle and jaw was disfigured from over-calcification due to him eating whatever dog food he could scrounge up off the floor of the tool shed, and the insides of his hind legs were raw from his legs rubbing together when he walked because he had no muscle or fat to make his legs position themselves normally. It took more than a year for Booger to look like a horse rather than a camel, but after another two years, he began to actually grow. He now stands 16 hands and weighs about 1,300 lbs. Booger’s growth was stunted, so he will probably never reach his full potential to be a 17 hand Belgian draft horse, but he’s still very beautiful and dear to us. We named him Booger because he was so pitiful looking. We unconsciously kept calling him “our little Booger”, and the name stuck. Many people, including the children who attend our riding camp, now enjoy Booger. He’s very gentle and loving, and he deserved much better care than he was receiving as a baby.

 Patches was a victim of a divorce. He was a young two year-old foal left to languish in a pasture with very little grass. He had a leg injury in his left hind hock that was swollen to three times the size of his right one. It had fluid on the joint and was feverish due to the internal infection. We had the vet examine him, and we purchased him knowing that we were facing a $1,000 vet bill the first week, and that he might not survive due to his weakened condition and the damage that the starvation may have already caused to his liver. But Patches was a fighter, and he pulled through after a few scary incident with colic caused by the medication prescribed to help fight the inflammation in his leg. Luckily, there was only minor damage to the cartilage in his left hock, and he is sound today. We started him under saddle, and he now enjoys taking adults and children alike on trail rides at our farm.

   Enlarge Patches (before)            Enlarge Patches (now)

Enlarge Bo Gets a Bath

Bo was our first rescue horse. Bo was 5 ½ months old when we bought him from a Pregnant Mare Urine (PMU) farm in Canada. The PMU industry purchases the urine from pregnant mares to make a hormone replacement therapy for women going through menopause. The mares live out their entire pregnancy in slip stalls so small the horses can’t lie down or turn around. The foals are unwanted by-products that have to be dealt with. Many foals don’t survive the unsupervised birthing process or are destroyed by the farmers because they are unwanted and costly to raise. Those who do survive are weaned from their mother’s milk at just three months to bring the mares back into season sooner. Babies may not survive because they don’t get teeth for grazing until they are five months old, which is why they are normally left with their mothers until they are 6 months old. The foals who live are usually sent to feed lots where they are fattened up, and when they reach 700 lbs or 1 year of age, they are sold to slaughterhouses where they are packaged for human consumption in countries like Japan, China, Europe, and Germany where horseflesh is considered a delicacy. Bo was one of the foals fortunate enough to be purchased by the Foal Adoption Network, Inc. (FANI) and put up for adoption. (For more information on what FANI does, visit FANI's website.) After a being prescreened and approved as an acceptable owner, we purchased Bo from FANI for the price that the meat packers would have paid plus shipping from Canada ($850 in total). We drove to New York to pick him up from a foster farm where he had stayed until being adopted. Bo, like all the other PMU foals, had never been handled, so he was wild and fearful of humans. Today, Bo is healthy and happy where he delights riders with his mischievous antics on the trail. Bo is a 17.5 hand black Percheron weighing nearly 2,000 lbs. He serves an important role at our farm because he is one of eight draft horses capable of carrying riders up to 450 lbs, so that we never have to turn anyone away or insult them by asking them their weight in public.

We have other rescue horses we'll be happy to show you and tell you their story when you visit our farm. We're not including them all here because, unfortunately, we didn't have the foresight to take pictures of them when we bought them, so we are unable to show you the before and after photos.

So come on out and experience these awesome horses. Participate in our volunteer program or make a reservation for the horseback riding adventure of a lifetime!