Following the theoretical training of the day before, the TSB/AWF and Eyes on Animals team with dr Rabitsch drives to a designated place on route 2 (stretching from eastern border of Poland to the west) for a practical part of the training. We are accompanied by 5 ITD cars with 2-person teams each. The weather is challenging: 0 degrees with snow…

The horse sale starts shortly after 10:00. The auction is extremely busy this day with over 120 horses offered for sale, including many Thoroughbreds, some of which are pregnant mares. About half of the horses are sold to the kill buyers present. Bruce Rotz ends up with 13 horses, one of whom is “Open Zipper”, a pregnant Thoroughbred mare with…

The TSB/AWF and Eyes on Animals team with dr Rabitsch arrives in Warsaw to give a training to Road Inspectors from Mazowsze (mazowieckie) region. This is the most numerous WITD inspectorate in Poland – even though a flu virus is keeping a lot of people home, we have about 40 WITD inspectors in the room and a representative of Veterinary Inspection.…

We follow a long-distance transport of unweaned calves from an assembly centre in the north of Poland to three different fattening farms in northern Italy. The calves are approx. four weeks old. Many are from Lithuania and have already been transported for several hours before being reloaded in Poland. On the way to Italy, the calves are not…

Our team visits a farm in Leśna. We are trimming a very lame cow with an abscess in left hind hoof. The the stable is very humid and hot. We are informing the farmer about the necessity to open windows and a door to have some fresh air in the stable. At least half of the windows should be opened to provide right air flow if the stable has no…

Our team visits the Skaryszew Horse Market that takes place once per year and hundreds of horses are sold for leisure, breeding and slaughter. We are interested in assessing the transport conditions of the horses to and from the market.

Many horses arrive already on Sunday afternoon and are left in the vehicles until the market opens finally at 11…

Today, our team waits at the Lithuanian/Polish border for a truck of a German transport company, which we know transports unweaned calves from Lithuania to Spain. It is snowing heavily and the temperature is below zero. We observe eight animal transporters crossing the border, but none of the German company. At 3:00 at night, after waiting for 17…

We arrive at the weekly New Holland Sales Barn auction at 8:40. When we enter the stable, we immediately note that a weak mare is down, lying flat on her side. However, she is tied to the feed trough and her head is being held up by the short rope. She is extremely emaciated with hip bones and spine clearly visible. A group of people have gathered…

When we arrive at the Hoover Sale Barn in New Holland at 9:30, the auction is already extremely busy. With approximately 450 horses for sale, the small stable is filled practically past its limit and many pens are overcrowded. The more valuable horses are tethered to overhead beams from both sides of their halter, presumably in an attempt to…