Virginia: Ferrum man Kerry Hodges, 59, indicted on animal cruelty charges

Starving horse has gained 112 pounds

VIRGINIA -- A Ferrum man was indicted last week on two counts of animal cruelty in connection with a starving horse.

Kerry Warren Hodges, 59, was indicted on one count of depriving an agricultural animal of feed and veterinary treatment and one count of depriving an animal of necessary food, drink, shelter or emergency veterinary treatment.

The horse, a 25-year-old male Saddlebred, was discovered on Nov. 22 in a wooded lot on Haw Patch Road, according to Capt. Marvin Woods with Franklin County Animal Control. The horse was emaciated and was straddling a large tree, eating briar leaves within his reach.

The horse was seized and transported to the Roanoke Valley Horse Rescue in Hardy, where he was examined by Christopher Sumner, DVM.

Sumner scored the animal's condition as 1.5 out of nine, according to his report to animal control. The horse, named Chad at the rescue, weighed only 796 pounds, 300 pounds underweight.

The scoring system used is the Henneke body condition scoring system. A "1" is the lowest score indicating emaciation. Five is ideal and "9" is extremely fat.

"This degree of weight loss is life threatening and required immediate action," Sumner said.

Sumner determined cause of the horse's extreme weight loss was starvation, he said.

"All the dorsal vertebral bodies were visible, as well as the horse's ribs," Sumner said. "The muscle mass also appeared metabolized. The horse's manure contained bark and leaves, which is not normal and is also an indication of malnutrition."

Photos of the scene where the horse was found depict a lot that had recently been logged with no grass. There were three other horses in the same lot, Woods said. They appeared to be in good health and have been removed from the area since the one horse was seized.

 

During the past six weeks at the rescue, Chad has gained 112 pounds and now weighs 908 pounds, said Patricia Muncy, rescue founder.

The rescue needs help with special food for Chad, including bags of Legends Omega Plus, beet pulp and Legends Rice Bran Pellets, which can be found at any Southern States feed stores, Muncy said. He is also being feed Sentinal LS Feed, available at Holdrens Country Store in Vinton.

The rescue also accepts monetary donations, Muncy said.

An indictment is not a finding of guilt. It is a determination by jurors that enough evidence exists to warrant a trial.

(Franklin News Post - Jan 12, 2014)

Outrage in Virginia: Sherry Overfelt gets just 15 weekends in jail for starving her horse to death

VIRGINIA -- A Boones Mill woman will serve 30 days in jail after pleading guilty to one count of animal cruelty Thursday in Franklin County Circuit Court.

Sherry Renee Overfelt, 41, was charged with cruelty after a horse she owned, Lulu, died of malnutrition in January.

Overfelt was sentenced to 365 days in jail, but through a plea agreement, all but 30 days of the sentence were suspended. Judge Stacey Moreau said Overfelt could serve the 30 days in jail on weekends.

Sherry Renee Overfelt sits with her attorney C. Holland 
Perdue III during her trial on animal cruelty Thursday in 
circuit court. Staff Photo by K.A. Wagoner

Judge Stacey Moreau also ordered that officials take a third horse Overfelt owns, as well as her six chickens, two cats and a duck.

In addition to the jail sentence, the judge also ordered that Overfelt not be allowed to have agriculture animals. Overfelt must also make restitution to the Roanoke Valley Horse Rescue for its care of Lulu after Overfelt surrendered the horse on Jan. 23.

A second misdemeanor charge of failing to provide feed, water and veterinarian treatment for her horse was dismissed through a plea agreement.

Lulu, a 28-year-old Appaloosa mare, was taken away from 
owner Sherry Renee Overfelt in Boones Mill in January. The horse 
was so malnourished that it had to be euthanized.

Overfelt testified that she knows "what I did was wrong, but I had a lot of demands on me during that time."

Overfelt’s husband, Christopher Overfelt, testified that she is chiefly responsible for raising their four children, who range in age from 2 to 14, and she also cares for his ailing mother.

“She’s got a lot on her back,” Christopher Overfelt said. “She also takes in animals. Feeds them. Finds them homes.”

He said his wife has found homes for about 15 animals over the past year.

“I basically don’t have a life during the day,” Sherry Overfelt told the court, and acknowledged she’d become overwhelmed in the time leading up to when the horses were seized: “I was not in my right mind. I tried to care for the horses myself, and I couldn’t.”

Overfelt said one of the reasons the horse (Lulu) was weak and thin was because another of her horses "bullied" Lulu by biting her and not allowing her to eat.

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Patrick Nix said Overfelt still has one horse that she will have to surrender to Franklin County Animal Control.

In closing statements Thursday, Nix said he did not think Overfelt's lack of care for Lulu was done maliciously, "but she had a duty to care for the animal. She couldn't care for it, and as a result, that animal suffered and died."

Judge Moreau said the lack of caring for the animal by Overfelt was "tragic."

 

"This had been going on for a long time as evidenced by the scars and bites on the horse," and the condition of the horse before it died," the judge said.

The case against Overfelt came to light when Animal Control Capt. Marvin Woods received complaints about a starving horse. Woods visited a pasture on Crooked Run Road where Overfelt's three horses were living. Woods found a 28-year-old Appaloosa mare (Lulu) that weighed only 575 pounds, he said.

[The vet testified that a horse of this age and size should have weighed 900 pounds.]

Nix said the veterinarian who examined Lulu evaluated her on a nine-point body condition scoring chart, with 9 being the healthiest level, and rated her a 1.5 to 2.

After being charged with inadequate care of an agricultural animal, Overfelt surrendered Lulu and one other horse to the Roanoke Valley Horse Rescue in Hardy on Jan. 23, Woods said.

Rescue Director Patricia Muncy described Lulu as "extremely emaciated with no muscle tone" and noted that the horse's backbone, hip and "bone skeleton" were visible. The horse was weak and unable to stand on her own, Muncy said. Lulu was placed in a medical hoist to support her body and help her stand.

When Lulu was examined by large animal veterinarian Dr. Chris Sumner, he ruled out other causes for her weight loss and said she suffered from severe anemia and low blood proteins.

"I believe this mare was severely malnourished and this caused her death," Sumner said in a written statement. "Despite aggressive IV fluids, antibiotics and steroids, she did not respond and had to be euthanized."

The second horse surrendered to the rescue is an 8-year-old Saddlebred gelding (Neptune) that weighed 802 pounds, Muncy said. Although his hips and ribs were visible, Neptune is responding well to his new diet and had gained 100 pounds within two weeks of being brought to the horse rescue.

(Franklin News Post - May 3 2013)

Earlier:

• Horse owner indicted on two cruelty charges

Virginia: Horse owner Sherry Overfelt indicted on two cruelty charges

VIRGINIA -- A Boones Mill woman has been indicted on two counts of animal cruelty in connection with a malnourished horse that she owned.

Sherry Renee Overfelt, 41, was indicted Monday by a Franklin County grand jury on one count of depriving an animal of necessary food, drink, shelter or emergency veterinarian treatment and one count of failing to provide feed, water and veterinary treatment for her horse.

Both charges are misdemeanors.

After receiving complaints about a starving horse, Capt. Marvin Woods with animal control visited a pasture on Crooked Run Road where Overfelt's three horses were living. In the pasture, Woods found a 28-year-old Appaloosa mare (Lulu) that weighed only 575 pounds, he said.

After being charged with inadequate care of an agricultural animal, Overfelt surrendered Lulu and one other horse to the Roanoke Valley Horse Rescue in Hardy on Jan. 23, Woods said.

Rescue Director Patricia Muncy described Lulu as "extremely emaciated with no muscle tone" and noted that the horse's backbone, hip and "bone skeleton" were visible. The horse was weak and unable to stand on her own, Muncy said. Lulu was placed in a medical hoist to support her body and help her stand.

When Lulu was examined by large animal veterinarian Dr. Chris Sumner, he ruled out other causes for her weight loss and said she suffered from severe anemia and low blood proteins.

"I believe this mare was severely malnourished and this caused her death," Sumner said in a written statement. "Despite aggressive IV fluids, antibiotics and steroids, she did not respond and had to be euthanized."

The second horse surrendered to the rescue by Overfelt is an 8-year-old Saddlebred gelding (Neptune) that weighed 802 pounds, Muncy said. Although his hips and ribs were visible, Neptune is responding well to his new diet and had gained 76 pounds by Feb. 18.

An indictment is not a finding of guilt, but it is a determination by jurors that enough evidence exists to warrant a trial.

(The Franklin News Post - March 8, 2013)

Local horses head to slaughter across the border

WEST VIRGINIA -- Dozens of kids at Tyler Mountain Stables in Kanawha County have learned how to ride, on the back of a gentle giant named Duncan.

He is a 16 year old Saddlebred horse that carefully carries children on his back, as a lesson horse at the stable.

"We use him for all of our camps and our little kids at the horse shows and it is just neat," said trainer Marlena Thornton.

The stable adopted Duncan from a Saddlebred rescue group that out bid a kill buyer at an auction.

"Every time he goes in the ring it crosses my mind you know, where he would have been," Thornton said.

In 2007 the United States ended domestic horse slaughter by cutting funding for USDA inspections. But that didn't stop horses like Duncan from ending up in slaughter houses. Every week horses are sold at auction, bought by kill buyers and shipped to Canada and Mexico. According to the USDA as many as 138,000 horses are shipped out of the country for slaughter every year.

"They go through the kill pen then they are run through the chutes into the ring and out the other side of the door," described Julie Copper, from Copper Horse Crusade. "It is mostly kill buyers that are buying horses that are in those pens."

Copper started Copper Horse Crusade when she realized what was happening at the local auction house in Sugarcreek, Ohio. She goes to the auction every Friday and buys horses from the kill pen, rehabilitates them and then places them in new homes. 

"People have the misconception that these are all sick, blind, old or injured horses," Copper said. "That is so far from being the case."

The owner of Sugarcreek Livestock Auction, Leroy Baker, has been fined several times by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the USDA. Baker is a known kill buyer. A complaint was filed by the APHIS in 2008 accusing him of many violations including transporting blind or injured horses without consideration or vet care and even failing to take action as some died on long trips to Texas.

"There are dealers that just don't care," Copper said. "You see these horses cheap on Craigslist and they go and they pick them up and they can take a load up to Sugarcreek and make a couple hundred bucks doing it."

Each week the kill pens are packed full of healthy, sometimes purebred horses. Copper says the situation is a product of irresponsible owners, over breeding and the economy. 

"There are too many horses and not enough homes," Copper said. "Everyone says ban slaughter, ban slaughter. Slaughter isn't really the problem. It is the result of the problem."

Some have argued that ending slaughter in the United States would lead to more suffering among horses whose owner could not or would not care for them.

Horse lover Gena Nicholas says there are better solutions.

"The minute that door closes on that slaughter truck I go home and grieve for every horse on that truck," Nicholas said.

She is a volunteer with the Heart of Phoenix Equine Rescue near Huntington.

"You need to know that your horse is not leaving your residence or the person you sold it to and going straight to a slaughter factory."

The United States Government Accountability Office is a nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. The agency looked into the issue of horse slaughter last year.

Their report recommended that Congress either restore domestic slaughter houses to end the long trips out of the country and allow for better supervision or entirely end both horse slaughter in the United States and their export out of the country.

In November 2011, an appropriations bill passed allowing domestic horse slaughter facilities to reopen.
"This horse is worth more right now in our economy dead," Nicholas said when describing the horse market today and the value placed on horse meat by kill buyers.

These days horses at local auctions that used to sell for hundreds of dollars can barely fetch $25.
Which is why Copper says, desperate owners are taking desperate measures.

"Getting 50 bucks is a lot more feasible for them than spending hundreds of dollars putting their horse down," said Copper. "That is unfortunate, but that is the reality."

[The reality is that people are cheap you-know-whats. They enjoy having this horse until it begins costing them too much money or begins to get old and needs more veterinary care so they're too cheap to have it humanely put down by a vet and buried on their property. When people don't want their dogs and cats any more, dog we ship them off to China to be eaten???]

Some progress has been made when it comes to the treatment of slaughter horses. Revised regulations for the types of trailers and manner of transport have helped. But Nicholas says it isn't enough.

"Every horse on that truck deserves someone to shed a tear for it. Every horse on that truck deserves somebody to stand and say they don't agree with this," Nicholas said.

Horse advocates even recommend gelding clinics to keep horses from reproducing or euthanasia clinics for horse owners that can no longer care for the animals. It is seen as a preferred alternative to the horror of slaughter.

Even those who aren't animal lovers believe selling backyard horses for meat could be a public health issue. Especially since medicines like worming medicines and pain medicines routinely given to horses are clearly marked as not intended for animals used for human consumption.

"That is especially true with horses going to the European Union. The horses are tainted because they weren't intended to be food animals," Copper said. 

And as she watches Duncan work with the children at her barn, with a gentle spirit and patience, Thornton can't imagine what could have been.

"He'll be at the barn forever," Thornton said. "I am never going to agree with the fact that they need to be slaughtered."

Encourage people you know who continue to breed
run-of-the-mill horses to STOP.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals recommends alternatives to taking your horse to auction. Including finding a new home for your horse on your own by checking referencing and adopting to someone you know. They recommend donating your horse to a therapeutic riding program or other group that works with horses or finding an approved rescue group that may have an opening.

Rescuers themselves say calling auction house to complain will not help. Instead they recommend getting horses gelded, breeding responsibly and educating yourself and those around you about horse slaughter. Since the issue has been considered by Congress, you can also contact your representatives.

(WOWK - Nov 21, 2012)