5 neglected horses rescued from vacant farm near Elgin

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Several horses rescued Monday from an abandoned farm on McDonald Road west of Elgin were covered in so much filth that the rescuers couldn’t determine their color.

A foal, just 6 to 8 months old, is so undernourished that they are unsure if it will survive, said Donna Ewing of the Hooved Animal Rescue and Protection Society. She and volunteers slid through the muck — months worth of manure that had not been cleaned out of their stalls — before rescuing five horses from the Kane County farm.

“We were asked by (Kane County) animal control” to rescue the horses, Ewing said. “This man relinquished the horses to Kane County because they were not being cared for properly.”

According to Ewing, on a health scale of 1 to 10 — 1 meaning near death — three of the horses were rated at 2 or less. Two mares, two 1-year-olds and the foal had been locked in the lower level of the barn for as long as two months with no fresh water or food, Ewing said.

However, two stallions also in that barn seemed to be getting both food and water. “They were in A-one shape, fat, with blankets, feed and hay … but the stalls were filthy and the mares and babies starved,” she said. “There is some kind of mentality that keeps the stallions beautiful but doesn’t care about the mares and the babies.”

Kane County Animal Control found out about the horses, she said, and told the owner “the conditions were completely unacceptable — that he had to have a vet look at them, and that he had to feed and take care of them,” she said.

It is her understanding that the owner claimed he did not have the money to feed and care for the five that were taken by HARPS, Ewing said. Apparently, the owner no longer lives at the farm but does come back occasionally to feed the stallions “while ignoring the other five,” she said.

A veterinarian will give all of the horses IVs to help them get rehydrated. “It is still touch-and-go,” Ewing said. “We are not sure if they are going to live. The baby and the mother are in the worst shape. She wasn’t getting enough food to make milk. She is a skeleton, and so is the baby.”

The horses will join 10 others at the Barrington Hills rescue, Ewing said. Those horses were abandoned last fall in Crete.

Ewing began rescuing horses, ponies, mules and other farm and domesticated animals in the early 1970s. Since then, she and others involved with the organizations she has led have intervened on behalf of thousands of horses and other animals.

For more information on HARPS visit www.harpsonline.org or call 847-382-0503.