Reason 342 not to own a horse...
 

When people find out I live the country, they always ask if we have horses... While horses are beautiful, I have no plans to have any. My buddy's predicament compounds my argument against horse ownership.

On Thursday, his daughter's horse died unexpectedly.

What do you do with a dead horse?

The ground is frozen and will be until late March or April so burying it won't be easy without bringing in a big excavator or having a large fire first. Their acreage isn't big enough to just drag it off into the corner for the coyotes (and it was a pet so this isn't really kosher).

He was planning to wrap it in a tarp and bury it in snow until the spring. This seems like a bad idea to me...

What would you do!

Rent a backhoe for the day.... Get it done now....

Here they go off to a pet food rendering plant...just burying them can have nasty results if there are wells nearby.

This makes perfect sense. A backhoe should break through the frosty ground. Make sure it is deep or the critters will get it......

It is a major pain in the arse to get through the frost with a backhoe. I have an old John Deere backhoe and have done this beforE, not fun... Still better than dealing with a rotton carcass in the spring.

Fire then backhoe then.....

Yeah that'll work! Just ask the state of Oregon. ;)
expwhale - YouTube

OMG, Did you ever smell a dead horse in the summer? Make sure that that thing is buried 20 feet deep. That stench permeates and you can smell it for miles.

The only smell worse than a dead horse is a dead whale or maybe 20,000 cans of chopped clams rotting and bursting in the summer sun. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/puke.gif

The last horse I had die on me....we called a service to have it hauled off and disposed of properly. There are people in that business.

That was in TX but I would assume other parts of country would offer similar.

I wasn't kidding about the well....I'm surrounded by horsey set idiots. One buried her "pet" horse. Even had a headstone. Ended up polluting another neighbor's well. He sued her and won...a large enough settlement nearly 6 figures.

This is the greenest solution. Do they do anything this civilized in Calgary? Not having buried anything lately I don't even know if they do it here!But I can find out.....:eek:

Call Burger King and use an English accent.

crows and coyotes gotta eat too!

hahahahaha!!!!

This is the best advice. I'm sure you could find someone locally.

Why did I use the laptop today?

Have any enemies ?
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Post of the week

Chain saw like in Animal House.

You need the "Guy"

All the horse folks have the ''Guy''

He's creepy but fast and efficient , Where they go no one knows.

Talk to the horse folks they will get you his # :(

Damn, beat me to it.

Don't start with the Calgary comments, he is just Outside Edmonton...n:rolleyes:

I talked to my source who is a breeder of horses near Spruce Grove. She says that you need to get a horse renderer. If you don't know one then phone a vetinarian who will likely know one. Cost is $180-250 to take it away.

Burying is apparently illegal due contamination of ground water. Yes Uncle Billy if I find a
dead horse in my backyard you will have got me back.LOL:):)

If he has horses, he almost certainly has a big pile from cleaning stalls out. Use a front end loader to bury the horse under it's own piles. It will degrade very quickly under the steaming mass.

dump it in the driveway of someone you don't like?

Ask your friends Willy & Pete to lend a hand

+1 on the pick up service. The large animal vet really should have that service on speed dial and be able to give a reference. Even a small animal vet usually has a big chest freezer and collects carcasses (that are not cremated and returned to the owner) for pick up by a service on a regular basis.

G

No offense but what kind of idiot friend do you have that owns a freakin' large pet like a horse, lives in a place where the ground is frozen tundra for half the year, and doesn't already have some contingency plan of what to do if said horse kicks it during one of the chilly 6 months of the year? This is the first time this predicament has ever crossed his mind?

Viking funeral

What the government has to say on the matter: http://www.qp.alberta.ca/documents/Regs/2000_229.pdf

And a company that will pick up the horse: Dead Stock - Dead Livestock Removal - Alberta, Saskatchewan - WCRL.com

when you park your motorcycle and don't ride it for weeks, nothing happens. the less you ride it the cheaper it is. if it leaks put a pan under it. it won't die. you don't have to name it.

stuff it into a Burger King dumpster and take a photo?

Sell it to the British beef producers, they've been mixing it with beef for years.

Horse meat found in 29 British beef products
By Europe correspondent Mary Gearin, wires

Updated Sat Feb 16, 2013 7:24am AEDT

British food safety authorities say about 1 per cent of the beef products they have tested so far contain horse meat.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) tested 2,501 products and found 29 contained horse meat.

Testing covered only one-quarter of the entire range of available products, and did not look for contamination of less than 1 per cent.

"The overwhelming majority of beef products in this country do not contain horse," FSA chief Catherine Brown said.

"The examples we have had are totally unacceptable, but they are the exceptions."

All of the 29 products containing horsemeat have already been withdrawn from sale.

They include lasagne and spaghetti bolognese sold by Aldi supermarkets, burgers sold by Co-op stores, and burgers and spaghetti bolognese sold by Britain's leading supermarket chain Tesco.

Beef lasagne made by the frozen foods giant Findus, as well as burgers for the catering industry produced by Irish firm Rangeland, were also on the list.

Separate tests confirmed horse meat was delivered in meals to dozens of schools.

Horse meat found in 29 British beef products - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I bet that's been done... Lols

As posted above, call the local rendering plant. Haven't had to for a while, but that's the ticket.

Your comments are very logical and sensible. As we become older and can't take the cold as well we migrate snowbird like to warmer climates such as Arizona and California. I used to think that Californians were nuts - you have earthquakes,bush fires,desert, not much water. And then you have that fierce heat in summer away from the ocean. Overall you all make more sense to me now. I have no horses to hold me back......:)

I would imagine burying an entire horse is probably illegal in most civilized countries..
Hell , it's illegal to bury even a much smaller dog around here.

Over three decades, we have buried three equines along our 1/4 mile long driveway. I have a good neighbor with a backhoe, who's daughter has horses (read "pets") as well. He digs. I use our tractor/front end loader to back fill. We're lucky in that we hardly have any frost around here, so the digging has been easy.

Do NOT let it sit. The suggestions of fires to melt the frost and a half hour with the backhoe are fine if you've got the acreage, as we have. Without the acreage, contact someone who can transport the carcass to the rendering plant.

Hang in there
Les

You beat it.