For the past two summers I have irregularly
helped at the Menomin Meadow Morgan Horse farm, and have
seen appalling things. In the summer of 2009, a friend of
mine was working at the farm as a student. She informed me that the owners,
Mitch and Co, would give you free half hour lessons if you helped them do barn
work through the day, so I went with her once to try it out.When I got there I immediately noticed the vast amount of horses.
Menomin farm is a very large place. They have an upper barn, a lower barn, a
runner barn, and several outdoor fenced in areas where horses are also kept, in
all weather. I was shocked when I learned that my friend, Mitch and Co were the
only ones who took primary care of this facility, while getting help from
others on a far less regular basis. I spent the day feeding and watering the horses, as well as
mucking the barns. The horses water was filled with duck poop. Though Mitch
encouraged me to empty the buckets, clean them, and refill them again after, it
was clear that he did not do this himself. After watering and feeding all three
barns as well as the horses kept in the fenced in pens, we started to muck
stalls. It smelt appalling. Manure coated the floor, inches
deep. These stalls hadn't been cleaned in a long time. Mitch was also verbally
abusive, and often made sexist and inappropriate remarks. It only got worse in the next year. The horses are underfed. I would sometimes feed them in the morning, and upon arriving the next day to feed, I would clearly see from the horses behavior and their empty water containers, that they had not been fed since I had been there the previous morning. They have a vast amount of ducks at the farm that poop in the horses water, which the horses are then expected to drink. They have starving cats that are living ( and peeing ) in the barns hay lofts. The stalls haven't been mucked in I don't know how long. The horses are living in manure. The running barn is the worse, with piles of manure literally mounded up to my knee. They also board dogs there for varied periods of time, being days or months. The dogs dogs do not go out to play. They get fed once a day. They are left in empty horse stalls 24 hours a day. These people will cheat you out of your money, claiming that they will board, and take care of your horses. They do not take care the horses. They just neglect them. |