Animals’ Angels investigators arrived at the monthly auction at 8:40am. There were close to 350 horses in the barn and several more in an outside pen. Hoover announced prior to the sale that there were horses present from states as far away as Minnesota. The inside pens were packed full and horses were observed fighting and kicking. Several horses were quit thin. One pen contained a group of 17 mules and one of them had a bleeding eye injury. In most pens the plastic water buckets were empty. The outside pen, that had never been occupied during previous visits, contained horses without sales tags. They were standing in deep mud and we were told by an auction visitor that these horses would ship straight to slaughter. Kill buyer Bruce Rotz arrived with his stock trailer at 10:00am.
His large tractor/trailer was parked empty at the New Holland Auction parking lot. Kill buyer Brian Moore arrived with his truck 10 minutes later.
