The Draft Horse Journal invites you to explore the online version of our magazine, the world's foremost heavy horse & mule publication. This big quarterly, approximately 200 pages per issue, has been serving the trade since 1964. We intend our web site to be the online counterpart of the magazine. If it has to do with draft horses, Belgian horses, Percheron horses, Clydesdale horses, Shire horses, Suffolk horses, Brabant Draft Horses, you'll find it here. Make this your Draft Horse Home on the web.

The Draft Horse Journal invites you to explore the online version of our magazine, the world's foremost heavy horse & mule publication. This big quarterly, approximately 200 pages per issue, has been serving the trade since 1964. We intend our web site to be the online counterpart of the magazine. If it has to do with draft horses, you'll find it here. Make this your "Draft Horse Home" on the web.

The Grass Is Always Greener
by Dan Davalle, Glenview, Illinois
published in The Draft Horse Journal, Summer 2008

Lincoln Park Chicago, Illinois

Before there were golf courses at every turn, before lawn mowers outnumbered lawns, before commercial fertilizers were available at Wal-Mart, there was manure ...

Interestingly, no one race, tribe or person can be attributed with the use of organic fertilizers to boost crops. Its history started with that of plant cultivation itself ... some 10,000 years ago. Native American tribes of the American east coast used fish to fertilize numerous crops. The most common species used for this purpose was the menhaden. The Narraganset called it "munnawhatteaug," which roughly translates to "that which manures." English colonists soon corrupted the word into “menhaden.” The Abenaki of Maine called them "pauhagen," their word for “fertilizer,” hence “pogy,” still a common name for the fish Squanto likely taught the Pilgrims to plant with their corn.

For much of the coastal farmland of New England and the mid-Atlantic, menhaden actually became an industrial-scale fertilizer during the early 19th century. Farmers often joined ranks to form small companies–with jaunty names like Coots, Fish Hawks, Eagles, Pedoodles, and Water Witches–that owned the boats, huge nets, and draught horses necessary to catch and haul tens and even hundreds of thousands of fish at a time... [Read More]

“You can die of good intentions.” That is the best summary I can give of an editorial I read recently about the bill to ban horse slaughter that was passed last year.

The editor and I had discussed the issue when it was a hot topic. At the time she could not imagine “a horse being dragged across a kill floor with chains around its legs.” A gruesome description that elicits a sickening feeling in the heart of any sensitive being. But a few short months later, some of the bill’s supporters are taking a new look.

One of the factors that hastened the disintegration of the bill’s good intentions has been America’s economic pinch. Most horses in civilized countries today are luxury hobbies. Backyard horses are an expensive pet, easily thousands of dollars a year for most owners. Today, gas is over three dollars a gallon. Food is up. Essentials like cell phones, I-Pods, computers, big screen televisions, video games, golf course fees, and movies are up. A triple-shot large latte five times a week now costs over twenty dollars! And you have a real estate license and have been trying to sell your house for a year!

The kids have gone or outgrown the horse in your backyard. The hay, fly control, regular vaccinations and worming continues and the vet says your 18-year-old equine has ring bone (diagnosis including radiographs, nerve blocks and advice was $325). You’d love to sell the horse, but people aren’t stupid. You make a call or two to the horse rescue and retirement pasture. They’re either full or they want money from you to feed it. The thought of a professional euthanasia, then a winch truck or front end loader to haul it to the dump … “a chain around the horse’s legs being dragged across the field.”

The editor said all the reader response to her editorial was negative. On her follow up she found the majority of callers she talked to didn’t own a horse! Couldn’t afford it! But they thought slaughtering horses was cruel and you shouldn’t eat them.

Good intentions, no responsibility. We see it a lot. Critics, columnists, movie stars, reporters, politicians ... We’ve now gotten into the mess the good-intentioned created and it’s getting worse. And where are they now? Offering to pay your euthanasia and burial fee? Offering to take your horse and care for it? Not a peep.

It’s no secret who is going to be cleaning up after them. The same people who always clean up after the well-intentioned. In this case, the real animal lovers; the humane, the sympathetic and the practical … and they’ll do it with no thanks or recognition. That’s not why they do it. They do it for the horses.