Animal Refuge

There’s room in the Humane Society’s rescue barn for creatures great and small.

 

April 30, 2009

For the past year, the Greater Birmingham Humane Society (GBHS) and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office have jointly operated the Equine and Large Animal Rescue Barn, a facility near Mount Olive that provides a safe haven for agricultural animals confiscated in cruelty and neglect cases. Farm animals needing shelter in the event of disasters, catastrophes, and emergencies—as determined by the sheriff’s office—can also be sheltered there. An eight-stall, $185,000 barn is currently under construction as the GBHS continues to raise the $25,000 needed to finish the project’s final phase.

The nine-acre property was donated by Deputy Dwight Sloan, animal cruelty officer for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. Sloan was named the National Humane Officer of the Year for 2008 by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) for his relentless efforts in finding and arresting the person who shot to death a horse named Champ in a local family’s pasture a couple of years ago.

Joe Murphy, cruelty investigator for GBHS, said that some 20 horses have been placed since the project began. The animals at the shelter have varied histories. “Two groups [of horses] actually came from U.S. Steel property. One group included a [horse owner] who did not have a lease with U.S. Steel, and had set up shop there and was boarding horses for other people,” he explains. He believes the trespasser was probably offering riding lessons, as well. “When we got there, none of the horses looked very good. There was one in particular that was probably on the verge of death—emaciated and dehydrated. The man pled guilty to animal cruelty, criminal trespassing, and criminal littering, and signed over his horses,” Murphy says. A second group of horses was found on U.S. Steel land near Wylam. “No food was provided,” he says. “The horses had stripped clean all the vegetation that was in the area. We never were able to prove who owned them. They came here in pretty sad shape.”

A white horse named Hurricane, one of a group of neglected horses reported by neighbors in the McCalla area, was of major concern to Murphy. “She was in very, very poor condition,” he recalls. Hurricane has been at the shelter since August of 2008 and is still waiting to find a home. Murphy says that most of the animals are adopted through word of mouth among those involved with the local horse community. The contract stipulates that if the person adopting the animal no longer wants it, the horse must be returned to the care of GBHS rather than be given away to someone else.

Recently, the facility housed 93 roosters confiscated from a cockfighting operation. The roosters were being held as evidence until the case was brought to trial. Rabbits, donkeys, mules, and goats have also stayed at the shelter.

The Alabama Department of Agriculture is considering building several similar rescue barns across the state to shelter livestock in the event of natural disasters. GBHS director Jacque Meyer says that catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina, which left many agricultural animals abandoned, further heightens the need for such shelters. &