In the last several months, there have been many cases of illegal horse slaughters reported from Florida. One woman from Zephyrhills believes that her equines might have shared the same fate if her two heroic rottweiler dogs hadn’t intervened. She now wants to warn other horse owners in the southern state.
On one weekend in January 2020, Brena Kramer discovered her horses injured with cuts near their eyes and rope burns near their mouths. She also noticed that one of the horses still had a rope tied around his neck. According to Fox 13 News, Kramer said that three intruders broke into her barn using the side gate and wanted to slaughter her horses for meat. In addition, she found that the power to the barn had been cut off.
However, her two rottweiler dogs that were patrolling the property that weekend prevented the slaughter attempt. Kramer shared with the news outlet that one of her dogs, a 3-year-old named Dallas, even had puncture wounds on his head, indicating a clear sign of a struggle.
Now, Kramer has a word of caution for other owners in her area.
“It is common down south, it’s something most horse owners know about, especially in Florida,” Kramer said. “They will bleed them out and start butchering while the horse is bleeding.”
Sadly, not all horses in the state of Florida were lucky to survive a slaughter attempt. During November and December 2019, a total of three horse-slaughter incidents were reported from three different counties in the state, according to WTSP.
A 21-year-old pet horse was found slaughtered after Thanksgiving by his owner Tammy Davis in Marion County. “I got him at a time when I was told I would no longer be able to have kids,” the woman told News 6. Due to the nature of the cuts, the woman said she was sure it couldn’t have been an animal attack.
“It was a very clean-cut,” she said. “And they stripped both sides of the body.”
A few days later, between Dec. 1 and Dec. 2, the Manatee County Sheriffs said an unknown stranger broke in and slaughtered a woman’s horse in a close-by field. The deputies believed the horse was killed for its meat. “We really don’t know in terms of where the meat ends up. There is some type of demand for it. There is a market for it,” said Randy Warren with the Sheriff’s Office, per WTSP.
The third slaughter case came in within less than two weeks. A 10-year-old horse named Jayda in Sumter County left her owner and family devastated with the news of her slaughter. “What were her last few moments like, and that’s just, that tears me up,” said owner Tamara Weaver per Click Orlando. “She had Christmas, birthdays, and just very sad.”
To Weaver, Jayda was more than a pet. “She was very sweet. You could just love on her and you know everybody that was ever around her said that she was just a very sweet and beautiful and just had these very caring eyes,” the woman added.
As per Laurie Waggoner, co-founder of South Florida SPCA, horse slaughters are too common in Florida even though it is illegal.
According to WTSP, she said, “It’s an extremely lean meat, it doesn’t marble the way beef does and people think it can cure anemia and high blood pressure and all kinds of diseases.”
In spite of some people’s belief in horse meat’s health benefits, the SPCA states on their website that it is not fit for human consumption. “Because American horses are not raised for food, they are routinely administered numerous drugs,” the website reads.
