My first jobs in the equine industry was riding Quarter Horses. I graduated from showing in the youth division, to working for a few of the trainers I admired. They were great bosses and horsemen. Both trainers would be considered big name trainers although one is in Europe now. Because I was busy riding other people’s horses for a living, I stopped showing. I really didn’t miss it much either. After a few years of this, I moved on to race horses. I kept my personal horses, but have pretty much been a race-tracker ever since. Between the racehorses and my own `pet’ horses, I still keep in touch with some old show friends and still have family involved in the AQHA. I have to say, I’m disgusted with the AQHA and what it has become.
I don’t really think that anybody really cares about what I did as a kid or who I worked for. I only bring it up to say, I did my time with that breed. They really are awesome all around horses. I LOVE my Quarter Horse. I will also likely never own another once his time on earth is done. I refuse to support they AQHA in its present form.
It is no secret that the AQHA supports humane slaughter. You can go to their website and they have links to the Unwanted Horse Coalition. Former AQHA president, Peter J Cofrancesco III spoke out on his support on slaughter. Of course, he framed it with having a humane way of dealing with unwanted and unusable horses. He refuses to accept that the AQHA is a huge part of the problem. Peter, in particular is a major contributor as well. Peter and his family are into halter horses. He has been since he was a youth. They just love those ginormous bodied horses standing on OO feet and will happily breed an HYPP positive horse as long as the end result is a few points or a ribbon. HYPP could be completely wiped out of the gene pool if the AQHA took a stance and refused registry of any stallion or mare shown to be positive or a carrier. Instead, they regularly reward these overpumped up freakshows and breed more just like them. Disgusting. Of course you end up with unusable and unwanted horses when they are flipping out on the ground or crippled up with navicular. May as well squeeze a few more dollars out of them in a slaughter house rather than do the right thing and STOP breeding these frankenhorses.
Here is a picture of a winning halter horse from the 80’s. He was an AQHA champion and also rode like a dream. He had points in pleasure, reining and a few other events. He was sound til the day he died too. This horse would likely not get a single halter point today. He may or may not place in the other classes either as the AQHA has gone to extremes. He certainly wouldn’t be purchased for a LOT of money and sent overseas to stand at stud.
Here is a two time world champion halter horse today. He is HYPP N/H. I have NOT altered this picture at all.I will guarantee you he has never had a saddle on him, nor will he. He probably can hardly move.
Here is good ole Peter Cofrancesco winning the 2007 World for Amateur halter stallions..You guessed it, the horse is HYPP N/H and standing at stud to this day. What a great horseman the past president is!
Even if you can get past how gross these horses look now, you also have the issue of their breeding practices. AQHA is perfectly fine with embryo transfer, so the same horse can have a few full sibs each year. I dropped in on a friend that still shows QHs last year. She proudly showed me the foal out of her good mare with its surrogate and while her mare was off at the trainer’s getting ready to go to a show. Yeah, gross. The foal was a rat btw. He never made the show ring.
Less controversial is the use of AI in the AQHA. Back when I was involved, the only way you could use AI is if the mare was present on the same farm the stallion was collected on. I get that horses are valuable and it minimizes the risk to them. But, when you are shipping semen all over hell’s half acre, it’s not great for your breed. Consider how the Thoroughbred registry works. There is absolutely ZERO AI allowed. Every single mare must be bred on a live cover. No exceptions. Yes, they will backload post ejaculate, but they also record every cover as proof. These stallions are way more valuable than the AQHA ones. Distorted Humor currently stands to a full book and gets $100,000 on stand and nurse guarantee. His book closes after 100 mares. Period. That’s still a lot of foals, but due to the restricted book, they have ensured the value of his foals will remain constant. I guess since AQHA supports slaughter, they are breeding on a `more the merrier’ concept. All those $350 stud fees are very appealing to your backyard breeders.
As I have stated, I really like performance Quarter Horses. Sadly, they have gone the way of show dogs. They breed for extremes and hurt their own brand. There was a time that it was pretty tough to win a class in a circuit show and I remember riding split classes lots. It was a big deal to make the cut and be brought back for the final. It was an even bigger deal to actually win one of these classes. I’ve visited those same circuit shows and there aren’t many big point classes anymore. AQHA has done a great job of killing their own breed. I’m sad about it.
This and AQHA are heavily funded by Lucas Oil, whose owner wants to bring back horse slaughter to the US. Look up Protect the Harvest and United Horsemen. These horses are being bred to produce “meaty” horses who cannot run or put up too much of a fight in the slaughter cage.
I agree about the AQHA no longer breeding an all around individual. However, you are walking a thin line with the pot calling kettle black on the horse slaughter topic. The amount to thoroughbreds showing up in the slaughter pens is pretty staggering! Perfect example- Tricky TB Champion runner was just rescued by an admirer from a slaughter pen this week! We are not talking about a run of the mill TB that never did anything- although there are plenty of those in the slaughter pen as well. Tricky ran out over $300,000 and that still was not good enough to guarantee him a safe retirement. I do not like slaughter anymore than the next person, however I support it instead of starvation and neglect from breeders of all types of horses.
The number of TBs sent to slaughter will never come close to the number of stock breeds sent. Ever.
The TB industry is the only industry actually DOING something to prevent their horses going to slaughter and actively encouraging post racing homes for their horses.
part of the problem is AQHA wanted to restrict embryo transfer to one per mare per year but the breeders got a lawyer and said that rule was illegal due to another law that said you could not restrict people from making money (cannot remember what the term is) but the horses are considered commodities and products. Like limiting how many items any one factory can produce.
Paints have done the exact same thing. I wonder if appies have also
Appies seem to be getting smaller heads these days. They look nothing like true appaloosas which are closer in appearance to wild mustangs. Lately I’ve been trying to wrap my head around horse slaughter being illegal but premarine mares still being allowed. I think if people knew about what really happens in the pharmaceutical industry with horses it would finally stop.
I realize this is an old thread. Doing a little digging on what’s going on in the halter horse industry. A gorgeous little yearling was dumped at a local kill pen with legs so bad he could not support himself. It was very sad. A local group purchased, vet checked him to make sure of his condition and had him humanely euthanized. I couldn’t agree more with the author on AQHA and their greed and lack of concern for the breed with embryo transfers, A I’s and surrogate mothers. However, there are other issues with the practice of “live cover” many are not aware of either. The killing of newborn foals. Stallion owners don’t want the liability of caring for a newborn foal, so foals are often left behind with nurse mares. These mares can’t produce milk without first giving birth to another foal, which is most of the time left for dead. While some mare owners will at least attempt to find an alternative place for their unwanted foals, most kill or leave them to die. http://www.lastchancecorral.org/foal-rescue.aspx As stewards of our beloved horses, we have to demand better from all associations promoting specific breeds. Yes! The Jockey Club has done great things to try prevent the breed ending up in horse slaughter ship pens across the country. AQHA needs to step up as well. As far as horse slaughter. I hate it! It is going to happen though until people stop over breeding. I believe people were naïve to think banning horse slaughter in the U.S. would end it. Now horses end up stacked on top of each other for hours and hours just to be led to their death in Mexico and Canada. Some Mexican slaughter houses are 8 hours south of the border. Horses are not offloaded prior to crossing the border unless there is a downed animal in the trailer. Otherwise, there is a sticker slapped across the gates and they are waved through. Sure we have USDA inspectors at the plants where U.S. horses are slaughtered. We have no control in how they are slaughtered though. That is up to the country in which their meat will be exported to. At least when horse slaughter was legal in the U.S. we could control the manner in which they died and the conditions in which they were contained until that time.
I agree that halter horses are nothing more than lead a feed horse and that what they have become is gross,but I don’t care to be called a back yard breeder by some bigoted idiot,shovinist pig trainer who makes his opinions known and complains about how things are yet he has done absolutely nothing to make a change in how things are in the AQHA industry bother than grap and conplain and move on to another industry so he just plain stinks and needs to shut his fat yap unless he going to affect change in the AQHA industry.I don’t care how many trainers he worked for or how much money he has,he has no backbone and is a shit ass shovanist pig
the best and probably the only way to stop this bullshit over breeding is to stop allowing poor quality and badly bred stud horses to be studs, we need a governing body and a a major test like they do in europe only about 10 percent of the stallions have the conformation , the attitude and the stamina to make it through the 100 day test of those only about half are registered in the stud book as breeding stallions,the rest are gelded, a few still slip through of course owned by unscrupulous owners but it really has helped with the surplus horse problems, the other help would be if the breeders or owners of studs would just not sell intact stud colts for breeding unless they have passed a test like the one I mentioned, until stallion owners realize this is in their hands this over breeding of unwanted horses will never stop. the biggest problem is that way too many horse owners get a colt and then think they have a a stallion the quality of secretariat( when in fact they have one more like the zebra in stripes )!they think they can make a million dollars a breeding !mare owners are not much better, if the stallion owners would just get out of the way of their own greed a lot of lives would not end in canada or mexico, all you have to do is have the morals and the kindness to say no to the mares owners esp when you can see that she has 3 legs, upside down neck and floppy ears!( ok extreme case it wont slow down and stop the needless killing right away but even if we can slow it down by say 25% a decade in 100 years their would be a lot less unwanted horses and maybe the french can eat something else like carrots people like to point at back yard breeders and say its all their fault but in truth how did they get that ugly little stud to began with?
think about it
having a governing body with testing to see which horses are best for studs in Europe has not stopped horse slaughter—Italy, Germany, Spain and several other countries all have horse slaughter.
I’m waiting patiently for an accomplished ethical horsemen to create a new Quarter Horse Registry for people who demand diversity in bloodlines, genetic variety, excellent standard conformation that represents all specialties, disposition, genetic and physical soundness and culling horses who have no business reproducing. Strict requirements /licensing for training and/or breeding this amazing breed. OOwning a good horse should be a privilege not a right by backyard breeders/halter breeders/ poor quality ranch horse breeders and now the glut seems to be breeding working cowhorse/cutting/reiners. Only when you restrict breeding can you maintain a healthy market for foals.
Do you really think all TB are live covered ? And there is nothing wrong with shipped semin. It’s called DNA testing. And if you asked most vets, and and rescues most are in agreement the horses paid the price when the plants in the USA were shut down. Why should AQHA ban hypp horses. I’ve owed a dozen n/h and never had one that ever showed any signs. Every one is entitled to their Opinion but to blame AQHA is crazy. That’s my opinion.