When I first laid eyes on her she was a pitiful sight.
She was standing in a stall with her nose to the far back corner, her rump facing outward in defense.
Her color was hard to tell.
She appeared to be a dull grey.
Her coat was dirty and rough.
She had a plastic sticker cemented to her rump with a number on it.
The same number had been freeze burned on to her rump as well.
A large ugly burned on number showing the pink flesh despite all that thick grey drab hair.
I had received a call from a friend about this pitiful mare.
She had arrived at my friends house three days earlier.
She had pastured her with her horses and kept her fed and watered.
She was extremely fearful of everyone and everything.
She had broken out through the fence and it had taken six and a half hours to round her back up.
She was then placed in this stall in the barn.
Which she had tried to tear down.
If anyone approached she would wheel and kick.
She would smash herself into the walls and kick at the walls.
I had been asked to bring her to my home and train her.
The first obstacle was getting this terrified horse into a horse trailer.
She would have no part of anyone handling her.
She had a halter on that she had arrived with but it was broken at the nose piece and hanging loose around her neck.
On the occasion they were able to get a hold of the halter she slung them around like a rag doll.
She was wild eyed, distrustful and just plain scared.
She had nothing but contempt for people due to how she had been raised.
You see, Micante was a miracle just in the fact that she was alive.
She had been born on the PMU farm where she had just been rescued from.
How long was she there you are wondering? She was seventeen years old when she arrived here.
She had spent her entire life on the PMU line.
What is that and why is it so bad? PMU is pregnant mare urine.
It is used to produce hormone therapy for women in menopause.
A PMU farm is just what it sounds like.
A farm full of mares used for the sole purpose of producing pregnant mare urine.
What makes this so sad is the obvious.
In order to produce PMU the mare has to be pregnant thus they produce a foal.
The foal is a dispensable bi-product of PMU.
The mares are put out to pasture just before their due date and left to their own device.
Most of the foals do not survive.
They are born in frigid conditions to mares that are malnourished and poorly cared for.
Many have no milk to feed their foals.
The bulk of the foals starve or freeze to death.
This is why I consider Micante a true miracle.
Not only did she survive as a foal but she also survived 17 years of being pregnant and on that line producing PMU.
Why do I say survived the line? The typical span of the horses is seven to nine years on the line and they are simply wore out.
They are fed as little as possible.
Their water is restricted.
You see, the less water they get the higher the concentration of hormone in the urine.
The PMU farms are required by law to "offer" water twice a day.
The mares are lined up side by side in a barn standing on concrete cross tied.
They have automatic waterers that turn on at the same time each day.
The mares will begin sucking at the bowls before the water even reaches them in anticipation.
After the water shuts off they still continue to suck at the bowls trying to quench their thirst.
The end purpose of this is concentrated urine How do they collect the urine? Each mare is fitted with a urine collection device that straps on them and holds the collection device tight against them.
Most of the mares have infections due to them not being cleansed.
They are also not getting proper amounts of water which can lead to bladder and kidney malfunction.
Due to these conditions many mares do not even make it to full term.
When this occurs the mares are tied in these close quarters on concrete and can not lay down.
The foals simply fall to the concrete floor and the mare can not even tend to them.
Are you beginning to get a picture of what life is like for one of these mares? These PMU mares get no comforting, no love, no care whatsoever.
When Micante arrived you could tell her hooves had never seen a farrier.
If you hold out your hand palm down and spread your fingers that is what her hooves looked like.
Instead of nice round hooves it looked as though she had large toes.
These mares do not get brushed or receive any individual attention.
They stand cross tied for most of their pregnancy, which mares carry on average eleven months.
When they are near time to foal they are turned out with the herd.
They foal, are immediately bred back with the stallion that is loose with them and the cycle starts all over again.
Should they not get pregnant they are discarded generally at auction or to a wholesale buyer who butchers them.
Should the foal survive the mare is taken away to go back to the line way before the foal should be on its own.
The mortality rate of these PMU foals is staggering.
A study showed a 67% mortality rate the first week of foaling and 47% mortality rate the following week.
These are devastating results.
The foals that do survive are either kept to be placed on the line when they get pregnant or are auctioned off as foals for butchering.
There is no good outcome in any of these.
Aside from the few that get rescued by groups who go in and try to outbid the meat wholesalers.
Many people believe this barbaric form of torture to these horses was ended years ago.
Micante is proof that it has not.
She was a group of seven hundred mares that was rescued when the PMU farm she was on was finally shutdown.
The stallion she had been bred to was sold to slaughter a long with several other stallions that were on the farm.
What happens to these mares and foals that are rescued? Micante is one of the lucky ones.
She ended up here with me.
She trusts me unconditionally and I still find that amazing.
She was so abused, tormented and misused that I could never imagine she would give her trust to anyone again, especially at her age.
She still trusts no others.
Micante is here to stay.
She whinnies when she sees me approaching.
Her favorite thing is to have her belly rubbed.
She was nine months pregnant when she arrived here and a good three hundred pounds or more underweight.
She'd traveled from Canada to California to my friends then to me at nine months pregnant .
This was to much for her and the foal.
The foal was still born two months after she arrived here.
It did not survive.
Micante's placenta had separated prematurely and the foal was born dead.
While she was pregnant I spent hours rubbing her belly.
I had no way of knowing when she was going to give birth so I kept a watchful eye on her.
This caused a bond to form like no other with her.
It was the only time she had been shown care, concern and affection.
She looked forward to me coming to see her.
I could be any where on my property and look up and Micante would be watching.
It was devastating to us both when she lost the foal.
She became even more clingy to me.
She had never been allowed to raise a foal and you could tell it broke her heart.
She even jumped out of her paddock to come and find me behind the house.
It was as though she decided I was her foal.
She has never tried to escape from here.
Not from day one.
When we first brought her here we backed the horse trailer up to her paddock and she walked right in and over to a hay barrel I had set up for her munched on some hay and lay down and rolled as if to say "I have arrived!" She is one of the lucky ones.
She found her person.
She will not let anyone handle her but me but she will let me do anything with her.
I can walk right up to her whether she is in the pasture or paddock as long as no one else is around.
People still give her cause for concern That mistrust I do not think will ever go away.
Even the PMU foals that come from these mares are quite distrustful and neurotic.
I believe it comes from their mothers because I am a firm believer what the mother experiences the child or foal experiences right a long with them which ever the case may be.
So I hope the next time your doctor, or a friend or family members doctor, suggest premarin or PMU hormones think of this story of how those hormones came to be.
Also remember there is a soy based alternative to them.
Make a stand for these helpless, wonderful creatures and help completely eliminate the production of PMU and eliminate these horrible farms and conditions for these mares.