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EF:JMARE Residents
| MORGAN HERD STARVES IN WISCONSIN WINTER |
All through the winter of 2003-2004, a herd of over thirty Morgans in Wisconsin struggled outdoors without adequate food, shelter or access to water. The owner drove up from his home in Illinois and threw them a round bale, now and then. The dominant horses got most of the food, and what little shelter there was. Temperatures hovered at fifteen and twenty below zero for days, and the winds howled fiercely. And still, the herd stood outside.
In April, someone noticed a man dragging what appeared to be a dead horse into the barn, and notified the local authorities. What they found was a nightmare. A stallion stood in a stall piled high with manure. A dead mare lay in the barn. She had bled to death, possibly from foaling complications. Four other horses inside the barn had not been out of the barn in five years. Perhaps most pathetic of all were the horses that wintered outside in this most harsh of winters. Their hides stretched over protruding bones, and some could barely walk because their hooves curled up in front of them. Others had festering wounds. Starvation was only the beginning of the list of health problems these horses suffered.
The Lakeland Animal Shelter took the entire Morgan herd and began to sort out the disaster. Local veterinarians volunteered their time to treat injuries, and geld the stallions, so they could be placed in homes. Then the shelter began to search for homes for over thirty Morgan horses. But the two mares at the bottom of the herd pecking order presented a daunting long term problem. The Shelter managers did not want to separate these two, because they were obviously pasture buddies, and their survivability might well depend on remaining together. Lakeland learned about Elysian Fields: The Justin Morgan Association for Retired Equines (EF: JMARE). With the slaughter house buyers hovering in the background, they began to explore placing these two most desperate mares in permanent sanctuary at Elysian Fields. JMARE was never conceived as a rescue facility for abused animals. It is a facility for retired show horses. But President Linda Ashar decided to call a phone meeting of the Board of Directors. Board members live all across The United States, and this emergency phone meeting was costly. In the end, the Board of JMARE could not just walk away from the Morgan mares.
On Sunday, May 9, while families around the nation celebrated Mothers Day, volunteers loaded up the two skeletal mares and trailered them to the JMARE barn in Cedar Point, Illinois. JMARE volunteers Jann Currie and Sandra Jones-Schauble had stalls waiting for them. The mares arrived, exhausted, distrustful, without so much as their names remaining. Nobody knows who they are. Jann Currie immediately dubbed them Red Angel and Tilly. Their coats are lackluster, and their tails are so tangled with mud and debris, they are as stiff as broomsticks. The hair is dry and dead, like a bristle brush. “We can’t really tell how old they are,” Jann Currie said. “It’s just an approximation. Tilly is the older of the two.
“Angel is a sweet laid back mare, and she has obviously been handled, somewhere, sometime in her life,” Jann continued. “I tried to see if she knew how to park out, and she does! She is a very pretty mare, with a big Morgan doe eye. She has a bad hip. She walks fine. And after a few days here, she started to trot.”
“Tilly is still pretty timid,” Jann observed. “The shelter people told us they had trouble catching her, but that seems to have passed. I’ve had no trouble catching either one of these mares. Every day they get a little bit stronger, and a little more willing to let me go in the stall and do something with them. Angel is really good about it, now. In the evening, when the horses come to the barn, I give everybody a carrot and a pat on the neck. At first, Tilly did not want affection, and she did not want my carrot gift, either. She got over that pretty quickly! I left the carrot in her feeder, and she ate it after I was gone. After that, I began leaving a carrot in each of their feeders, and I noticed they save their carrots for dessert.
At first, I could do more with Angel, but Tilly is gradually coming around. It’s just amazing to see what we might take for granted that is a luxury to these mares. Tilly has discovered she does not have to eat all her grain at once. She can leave her grain, eat some hay, and the grain will still be there when she goes back to the feeder. It’s a great luxury to her.”
By the end of the first week at Elysian Fields, Tilly and Angel came running to the fence when Jann called them. They were eager to receive pets. And they made another new friend. The young filly, Boo, was in the next pasture, and the first morning she saw the Wisconsin mares, she was very upset, as though she knew something terrible had happened to them. She rushed over to the fence to talk with them. She particularly wanted to talk to Tilly. Eventually, the old mare warmed up to Boo. “It’s almost as though Boo knew her in a previous place,” Jann mused. “Boo is an Embryo Transfer baby, and the surrogate mare lived in Wisconsin, which is where Boo was foaled. It kind of makes you wonder….”
Elysian Fields is working with the AMHA Registry to determine the identity of these two mares. Their herd included some of the great Morgan bloodlines of the twentieth century. The pedigrees in this herd included such outstanding individuals as UVM Promise, Bar-T Invader, Kingston, Upwey Ben Don, Beamington, Brown Pepper, Sealect of Windcrest and Waseeka’s Here Tiz… and the list goes on.
News of the Morgan Mares at EF:JMARE spread quickly on the internet lists, and several Morgan owners sent generous contributions. It costs just eight dollars a day to keep a horse at Elysian Fields. That puts a day in the range of even small children. A 4-H club in New York has started a fundraising project for these two mares. Many Morgan owners have sent a gift of $56 --- a week of Life. “We were so moved by the number of people who sent us a week of Life, we have started the Morgan Friends List,” Linda Ashar said. “For a gift of one week, the donor can request that a special horse’s name be posted on the Morgan Friend’s List. It’s a nice way to recognize the contributions of a special Morgan in our lives.”
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Angel shown above on May 19 [headshot]
and on Day One at EF:JMARE [pasture]
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Angel - June 22, 2004
Angel - July 04, 2004
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Tilly shown above on May 19 [headshot]
and on Day One at EF:JMARE [pasture]
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Tilly - Day One
Tilly - June 22, 2004
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If you are one of the Morgan owners cannot just walk away, please send a few days of Life to these two mares, in honor of the Morgans who have served you and your family. A gift of $56 will buy a week on the road to recovery. A gift of $250 will buy a month. Whatever you can give these mares is more than they have received from the rest of human kind. Please make checks payable to EF-JMARE. Please send your tax deductible contribution to EF-JMARE, P.O. Box 231, Cedar Point, IL 61316-0231.
If you would like to give your gift of a week or more in recognition of a special horse, please just tell us the horse’s name, and we will add the name to the Morgan Friends List on our web site.
Help care for the Lakeland Animal Shelter Morgans (Tilly and Angel) with a donation here.
You may designate a horse to support
or choose "Both Tilly and Angel".
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If you would like to help provide for Angel and Tilly's care
please contact us
to arrange your donation.
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