What auctions have "Killer Buyers"?

All horse auctions have dealers who travel from sale to sale buying and selling horses with the ultimate goal of making money. The dealer sells the horse to the purchaser who pays the most within a time frame that allows the dealer to make a profit on the horse.

The horses in this photo bear a red "P" around the USDA backtag on their hip. That mark identifies these horses as belonging to a certain "killer buyer" and allows the slaughterhouse to credit his account for the horses.

Slaughter provides horse dealers with a guaranteed method of clearing their inventory on a weekly basis with a guaranteed base price.

"Killer buyers" also have dealers who will purchase horses at various auctions, racetracks or directly from owners and then deliver the horses to an auction where the horses are dropped off for the "killer buyer" to then deliver to the slaughterhouse.

Smaller horse auctions are comparable to the large end of a funnel. Auctions known in the horse community as "meat sales" or "killer sales" are the small end of the funnel. Agawam, MA, Cottonwood, NM, Middleburg, PA New Holland, PA Shepherdsville, KY, Shipshewanna, IN Sugarcreek, OH, and Unadilla, NY are a few examples of horse auctions that have reputations as "meat auctions".

This blind appaloosa mare was dropped off by her owner and sold directly to a killer buyer for a Texas slaughterhouse. The owner stated that he believed the killer buyer would "take good care of her."

The mare proceeded to bump into the sides of the drop off pen over course of the next several hours until she was loaded onto the trailer destined for yet another holding facility to be held until the killer buyer had accumulated enough horses for a trip to the slaughterhouse.

She had no water, no hay. She would be herded into the trailer, not led. Not once, but at least 2 more times. Her final ride would be over 28 hours to Texas with no food, no water, and no rest. At the slaughterhouse she would be herded with other horses into the line up where she could smell and hear the horses ahead of her being killed. She would hear them struggle and thrash in the knockbox. She would smell the blood. One can only imagine the terror she experienced, all because her owner chose to get the last few dollars out of her, her meat price.