I live in Ohio about an hour away from Sugarcreek, and have been behind the scenes in the auction pen with a vet (a group of students got permission to practice drawing blood on the animals there and palpating cows, etc.) In exchange for being able to do this, we were told to not mention anything about our experience publicly.

I have been there, and Sugarcreek is much more horrific than the three-sentences in this article makes it out to be.

At Sugarcreek, I witnessed dozens of horses and cattle, most in deplorable condition, being held in filthy old pens without food or water. The air smelled like... feces and death. Like fear. I don't think I saw a single animal without the whites of it's eyes showing... If they were healthy enough to open their eyes.

I had to step over two dead calves to make my way into one of the back pens. The stress of being there routinely sends cows into premature labor, I'm told. Groups of skinny Jersey cows, most heavily pregnant, were huddled toget

I live in Ohio about an hour away from Sugarcreek, and have been behind the scenes in the auction pen with a vet (a group of students got permission to practice drawing blood on the animals there and palpating cows, etc.) In exchange for being able to do this, we were told to not mention anything about our experience publicly.

I have been there, and Sugarcreek is much more horrific than the three-sentences in this article makes it out to be.

At Sugarcreek, I witnessed dozens of horses and cattle, most in deplorable condition, being held in filthy old pens without food or water. The air smelled like... feces and death. Like fear. I don't think I saw a single animal without the whites of it's eyes showing... If they were healthy enough to open their eyes.

I had to step over two dead calves to make my way into one of the back pens. The stress of being there routinely sends cows into premature labor, I'm told. Groups of skinny Jersey cows, most heavily pregnant, were huddled together in tiny pens. While I was there, a large double decker truck came and loaded them up to be slaughtered. I don't wish to go into detail about the methods they used to round up the cattle.

I saw horses with leg injuries that left them barely able to walk (forever burned into my memory is an old Belgian horse with both back hips dislocated), eye injuries, missing fur, etc. Most of these horses were Amish buggy horse castoffs, who were on average only 5-15 years old.

There were a lot of young, healthy horse there too, trust me, but even though the vast majority of them were off the track Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds with decades of potential ahead of them, the vast majority of them went to kill buyers.

Ohio has several rescues dedicated solely to rescuing animals from Sugarcreek (such as Sugarcreek Horse Save), because it is our state's most notorious, and sickest, kill-buyer auction. Sugarcreek is synonymous with animal abuse and neglect. Even if you support horse slaughter, this is an auction where animals are denied food and water, beaten, locked into tiny, cramped, unsafe pens, denied veterinary care, etc. This is what is considered normal here.

Sugarcreek is run by a man who personally buys quite a few of the horses who come through the pens. He sends all of them off to be slaughtered. His name is Leroy Baker and he buys more horses to slaughter than anyone else in the state of Ohio. The last estimate I heard was that he personally buys over 1-2000 horses a year to slaughter. There's a handful of other well known kill buyers who are Sugarcreek regulars, waiting at every auction like a flock of vultures.

Baker's known for picking up a lot of the pregnant mares that come through, too, because he knows desperate rescue groups will pay much more than he did to rescue the mares and their unborn foals from the kill pens before both are killed. A lot of kill buyers are making money that way now. They put horses on display in the pens for a few days, tugging on people's heartstrings and making a heavy profit off charging an arm and a leg for horse lovers to rescue the horses from slaughter.

Below are links to investigations of cruelty at Sugarcreek: http://www.animalsangels.org/taxonomy/term/2/0?title=Sugarcreek&field_date_value%5Bvalue%5D%5Bmonth%5D=

https://tuesdayshorse.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/baker-the-horse-butcher-of-sugarcreek-whines-and-will-not-pay-fine-us/

http://www.habitatforhorses.org/tag/sugar-creek-livestock-auction/