Here is the report on yesterday’s ‘Field Trip’ to investigate for ourselves the situation, take pictures (nearly 200), interview locals, and most importantly distribute food\u00a0 regarding reports of ‘starving and malnourished horses in Egypt’ due to the recent turmoil:<\/p>\n
Our volunteer group (group of seven), met up with Beth Sartain at the stables she works at (Beth is a British Riding Instructor and U.K. trained Veterinary Nurse (with many years of experience treating equines).\u00a0 The food that we had ordered on Beth’s recommendation (suitable for the condition of the malnourished horses), arrived at 11 a.m.\u00a0 The stable hands mixed all the various components together – grain\/bran\/maize and chaff.<\/p>\n
The horse and cart ‘owners’ had already started to arrive ‘thick and fast’.\u00a0 We had informed them (through the Stable owner) that we would be offering minimal amounts of food for ‘malnourished horses’.\u00a0 We had already decided to set up a system of :<\/p>\n
-Horse is inspected, if malnourished would be given the ration of one bucket of mixed food per horse.\u00a0 Unfortunately we had to turn away a few as they were deemed to be ‘in reasonable condition’.
\n-Owner signs up for food, per horse, name is recorded and ID number registered.
\n-Owner is then handed over the minimum amount to keep the horse alive for two days.<\/p>\n
We did not (on Beth’s advice, give the serious cases plant base feed as Beth advised it will ‘worsen their condition’, and play havoc with their already highly sensitive digestive system in the condition they are in.<\/p>\n
When the system of food distribution was well under way, (which we left in the hands of the stable owner), we moved on to investigate the ‘touristic area where most of the horses and carts are concentrated.\u00a0 There was not one single tourist in sight, in fact it looked like a ‘ghost town’.\u00a0 Beth was leading us to the ‘graveyard’ where she had seen a few days ago, the sight of the dead and dying horses.<\/p>\n
Just before we got there we stopped as we saw a stable facility carting out a dead horse (amongst the pictures attached).\u00a0 We asked if we could go inside and see the condition of the rest of the horses.\u00a0 We explained that we were from an Animal Welfare Society and they gladly let us in to see the conditions oursleves.\u00a0 The scene was devastating….most of the horses were extremely malnourished and some were obviously sick.\u00a0 The owner told us he had no money to feed or treat them.\u00a0 We told the owner to go to the distribution point and collect rations for his horses.<\/p>\n
WE then moved on to ‘The graveyard’.\u00a0 The scene was extremely depressing, some of our volunteers could not control their tears.<\/p>\n
There were at least 50 carcasses, most of them in ‘the bloated stage’ and Beth informed me those were the ones that had died most recently.\u00a0 We also found the carcasses of 3 camels, which we knew later from the owners had ‘starved to death’.\u00a0 The most distressing of all the dead animals were the dead foals lying next to their mothers…<\/p>\n
It was here that we had the conversations with the local horse and cart owners.<\/p>\n
Below are some parts of the conversations with them :<\/span><\/p>\n They claimed\u00a0that the ‘Government assigned Vet’ was\u00a0corrupt. \u00a0They also\u00a0claimed the ‘Government assigned Vet’ is only supposed to be assigned to any one area for a one year period.\u00a0 The\u00a0current vet\u00a0has been in the area for nearly 20 years…..They informed us that he should treat the horses for free, but always asks for money.\u00a0 The same applied for medications; he would sell them medications at exorbitant prices.<\/p>\n Another horse owner told us how he had lost five of his horses to starvation this week alone.\u00a0 They usually feed their horses three times per day in normal circumstances.\u00a0 None of the owners interviewed objected to giving out their names and numbers, and were in fact very eager to vent their frustrations….<\/p>\n Other notes\/observations \u00a0:<\/span><\/p>\n My comments\/opinion :<\/span><\/p>\n Facts on feeding according to Beth\/Stable owner’s recommendations :<\/span><\/p>\n An average working horse needs the following in normal conditions, but can survive on much less if not working.<\/p>\n Per day :<\/p>\n 6kg of ‘hard’ food – consists of a mixture of maize\/bran\/chaff<\/p>\n In addition (for healthy horses only) 25kg per day of Barseem (local clover)<\/p>\n Current market prices from wholesalers (feed prices have tripled since the crisis began) :<\/p>\n One ton of Barseem = LE250 Hay and barley are expensive so people do not usually buy them.<\/p>\n Tomorrow, again due to generous donations from mostly local donors (and \u00a0a couple of international donors) we will make our ‘second feeding’. We hope to be ale to increase the number of horses\/camels that we fed yesterday.<\/p>\n For everyone’s information this report is not exclusively intended for any particular\u00a0individual or organisation.\u00a0 it is a general report and findings of the\u00a0conditions\u00a0as ESMA witnessed yesterday.\u00a0 ESMA allows this report to be passed on to any third party to generate as much awareness and support as possible to aid these starving animals.<\/p>\n Thank you for your time,<\/p>\n Susie Nassar PS. Just before sending this report, ESMA has been informed by Beth Sartain that 500 horse and\u00a0camel owners turned up at the stables hoping that there would be food for their animals today (the minimum that each horse owner has is 2 horses, ie. 1000 animals).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here is the report on yesterday’s ‘Field Trip’ to investigate for ourselves the situation, take pictures (nearly 200), interview locals, and most importantly distribute food\u00a0 regarding reports of ‘starving and malnourished horses in Egypt’ due to the recent turmoil: Our volunteer group (group of seven), met up with Beth Sartain at the stables she works […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9v5WU-hk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esmaegypt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esmaegypt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esmaegypt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esmaegypt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esmaegypt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.esmaegypt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1074\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esmaegypt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esmaegypt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esmaegypt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\n”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ” chaff\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 = LE1000
\n140kg of maize\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 = LE\u00a0 310<\/p>\n
\nESMA Founding Member
\nwww.esmaegypt.org<\/p>\n