Nine EKY horses to be rescued from kill pen in Tennessee, advocate says | Opinion
Nine free-roaming horses believed to have been taken off a strip mine in Breathitt County are being rescued from a killpen in Tennessee, by an animal rescue group.
The horses will be taken to a farm about an hour away from Sexton’s Horse and Mule Company in Sneedville, Tenn., said Kathy Kelly, the founder of the Anything Animal Foundation. They will be fed, turned out and evaluated for their health while the foundation tries to find them more permanent homes.
Kelly said she contacted owner Jason Sexton after she heard some of the Breathitt horses had ended up at his auction company. He agreed to hold the horses until she could raise the money to buy them.
“I’ve worked with Jason’s lot for three years, and my goal was to stop the horses from being shipped to Mexico,” where horse slaughter is legal, Kelly said on Wednesday.
She is raising more than $7,000 — $750 for each horse, plus $40 a piece for coggins tests, which guarantee the horses do not carry a deadly viral disease. Horses are not supposed to be shipped across state lines without coggins paperwork, which also identify animals. There’s no way to identify whether the horses actually came from Breathitt.
The fundraising is ongoing until she can officially take ownership.
Sexton’s would not comment on the horses, or how many they had received from Breathitt County. At one point, there were 24 in the state’s stray-hold process, but advocates worry many more may have been taken off the site outside Jackson without notifying authorities.
The herds in Breathitt County have been on the abandoned mine lands for many years, some left by their owners for summer grazing. But rampant breeding has meant the herd has grown, and in winter, there is not enough food to support them. They wander down the mountain in search of food, becoming nuisances in people’s yards and a danger on the roads.
Earlier this spring, the Breathitt Fiscal Court voted on a resolution to remove the horses. That opened up a statutory process called stray-hold, where the people who take the horses have to post pictures and identifying markers of each horse on the Office of the State Veterinarian before they can be claimed.
Once that 15 days is over, the horses have new owners, who can make them pets or take them to auction houses.
Kelly said her work involves keeping track of horse auction sites to see which horses are not sold, and therefore might be sold to dealers who will ship them to Mexico, where horse meat goes for as much as 80 cents a pound. It’s a harrowing journey, usually without food or water. If a few are left, she will feature them on her Facebook page to try to find them a home.
“A lot of traders and kill buyers just flip horses, and I at least get the opportunity to save some of them,” Kelly said.
“Jason does give at least a chance for these horses to find a home. Jason won’t ship blind or pregnant horses, he’ll call me and I find a place for them. He lets me take them off the lot where other buyers would have just loaded them up.”
It’s an entire underworld of horse slaughter where unsuccessful racehorses are particularly vulnerable because so many of them are bred every year.
Breathitt Judge Executive Jeff Noble told the Herald-Leader he wasn’t worried about slaughter because there’s no market in it, a claim Kelly flatly denied.
“There’s a market for it because there are so many horses being dumped,” Kelly said. “It’s a cycle, and we’ve got to help the owners of these horses before they get to the auction stage.”
Numerous rescue groups have been working to save the Breathitt horses, including the Kentucky Humane Society, the Appalachian Horse Project, and the Kentucky Equine Education Project foundation.
Kelly said she would like to find a home for all nine horses because they are bonded, but will at least try to find homes for pairs so they can stay together.
This story was originally published August 20, 2025 at 12:20 PM.
