A farmer from northwestern Ontario is appealing to people online to help save her stock of a rare horse breed from being auctioned off in Manitoba — and potentially sold for slaughter as meat.
In a social media post on Thursday, Fort Frances, Ont., farmer Rhonda Snow said she has been forced to sell off 25 of her roughly 50 horses, including several Lac La Croix, or Ojibwe, ponies — a breed so rare, it’s estimated there are only a few dozen left in existence.
“If I had my choice they would remain with me til death do us all part,” Snow wrote in the online post.
Snow was given a lifetime achievement award by the Rare Canada Breeds charity in 2016 for her work preserving the Ojibwe pony.
Harold Unrau, manager of the livestock auction house in Grunthal, Man., confirmed he received notice that about 25 horses would be shipped in for a sale to be held Saturday in the community, about 60 kilometres south of Winnipeg.
Pamela Heath, office manager with Rare Canada Breeds, said the pony breed is “critically rare” and needs to be protected. She said the smaller, muscular breed measures about five feet tall and in the past, roamed the wilds from Fort Frances to Minnesota.
A photo from Rhonda Snow of an Ojibwe pony. The wild horse is also known as the Lac La Croix pony. (Rhonda Snow/supplied)
Heath said her organization is a volunteer-based charity with next to no capital to swoop in and save horses in situations like these.
Elwood Quinn, livestock co-ordinator with Rare Canada Breeds, said the breed used to be common, but he estimates there are fewer than 50 Ojibwe ponies alive in the world.
“They’re really scarce,” he said. “These would now only be a pleasure horse.”
Indigenous Peoples used to use the nimble pony for a variety of work purposes, he said.
Quinn attributed the breed’s decline, in part, to technological changes in agriculture that have rendered horses and ponies of all kinds less relevant in the sector.
It remains unclear what will happen to Snow’s ponies. Unrau said he was happy to hear people were chiming in online and trying to find ways to ensure the ponies are purchased and kept alive, rather than going to a buyer who intends to slaughter and sell them.
Well-tempered, trained, young horses can fetch anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000, Unrau says, but those animals are typically bought with the intention of riding them.
Horses and ponies sold as meat usually fetch between $0.30 to $0.50 cents per pound, which works out to between $300 and $500 in many cases, he said.
Meanwhile, Quinn said if the ponies are sold for slaughter, it would more or less seal the fate of the breed because there could be too few left for the breed to survive.
If the ponies go, so does part of Canada and Indigenous People’s natural heritage, he said.
“We’d be looking at going into the deep end without a lifejacket,” he said. “This is a bad situation. It’s critical.”