Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is still a market for horses.
Just barely. The slaughter ban enacted over a decade ago has emptied out horses from the American heartland. Lots of them starved to death. Many of them ended up slaughtered anyway, only in much poorer conditions in Mexico. Large livestock used to have inherent value in this country. Not anymore. We're the India of horses. When poor rural families are doing fine, spending thirty bucks a month on feeding and caring fo…
The margin's thin
On treating large animals
Unless it's a purebred
Or more understandable
A racehorse of some kind
Just like people, horses in the modern world have an ascending scale of career options:
- being decorative
- being kind (to people, not necessarily to equids)
- being ornery, but better than one's peers at a competitive skill
(Actually, where I am, one declares if one's equids are to be legally treated as livestock or as companion animals. In the latter case, the vet can prescribe a much wider range of treatments, but one also incurs a duty to rescue[1], and can't put down purely for economic reason.)
[1] as in the human case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_rescue#Civil_law_syste...