12/23/2008 10:33:00 AM Abandoned 'minis' look for permanent home Town of Oregon woman aims to help neglected animals
Jinx, a 2-year-old miniature horse, is being cared for at a horse farm in the town of Oregon. The farm’s owner, Mary Semerak, hopes to find adoptive homes for Jinx and other horses that have been abandoned or neglected.
Seth Jovaag photo
Mary Semerak was tired of hearing stories about abandoned or neglected horses.
So the town of Oregon resident, who owns a 38-acre horse farm near the corner of Sun Valley Parkway and Judd Road, is doing something about it.
Last month, Semerak, 45, took in three miniature horses who were struggling to survive on separate farms near Janesville and Stoughton.
Semerak is serving as a "foster parent" for the "minis," which stand only 30 inches tall. Eventually, she hopes someone else will adopt them, as she already has nine horses of her own. But meanwhile, she's training, feeding and medicating the minis, which each struggle with different ailments. And one of the horses is pregnant and due to give birth any day.
Semerak said more and more horses in Wisconsin and nationwide are in need of foster or adoptive owners, as more horse owners struggle to take care of their animals.
"The need is everywhere," she said. "It's a huge problem... I'm just trying to help with this overabundance of horses."
The problem is growing, too, she said.
One dilemma is that novice horse owners underestimate how much time is needed to care for their animals, she said. Semerak said she spends up to two hours a day feeding the animals, breaking ice on water tanks, cleaning stalls and other tasks.
The cost can overwhelm owners, too, especially in a weak economy, she said. And horse owners aren't castrating enough stallions, she argues.
In addition, when the federal government tightened prohibitions on American horse-slaughtering plants two years ago, there were some unintended consequences, including that overwhelmed horse owners no longer had an easy way to unload horses they weren't equipped to raise, Semerak said.
That's led to a spike in demand for horse-rescue operations like 2nd Chance Horse Rescue Ranch in Blue Mounds and Spirit Horse Equine Rescue in Rock County.
Spirit Horse made news this fall when it stepped in to care for nearly 30 horses after a beleaguered 69-year-old farmer in the town of Lima agreed to surrender his horses - and dozens of llamas and goats - to the local humane society.
Spirit Horse found foster families for many of the horses. That included Semerak's pregnant mini, which is roughly 10 years old and had never been tamed, she said.
Semerak got two more minis in November from a Stoughton-area woman who simply couldn't handle raising them anymore.
"They both had overgrown teeth and hooves," she said. But they are doing well and are "extremely friendly."
Semerak said she'll raise and care for the three - and soon to be four - minis until she finds adoptive parents, even if it takes years. And once they are adopted, she'll foster more horses from Spirit Horse "until they all have a home."
But the larger problem of horse abandonment or neglect will persist, she said. She recalled a case last May when Dane County Animal Services was called to monitor the condition of 17 horses at a farm near Brooklyn. And she said 2nd Chance Horse Rescue gets calls nearly every day from horse owners looking to get rid of their animals.
Besides fostering abandoned horses, Semerak will tackle a larger, more controversial issue next year when she launches a Web site that aims to curb rampant breeding among unhealthy horses.
The web site - AmericanStallionRegistry.com, due to go live in late January - will create a standard certification for horses that are to be bred, she said. It will require veterinarian checks of the animals' teeth, hooves and bone structures, and any horse with a defect won't be certified to breed, she said.
Such a process is likely to rankle some horse owners, who often just let "their old stallion out in the back pasture" to breed with as many mares as it wants, she said.
But that practice leads to more overpopulation - and the need for more adoptions, foster homes, or, worse, more animals sold at auction that are then shipped to slaughterhouses in Mexico or Canada, she said.
The web site will be a major undertaking, but Semerak said "someone needs to do it."
"People have to understand that something has to happen. People need to be selective (in horse breeding) and bring quality back into the herds."
