We did a lot of research before purchasing a broodmare from Marla King and the Rocking K Ranch. We were very hesitant as the mare was older and we lived out of state and were unable to see the mare in person. She had good feedback on her guestbook and the mare we were buying her gauranteed breeding sound and even offered to breed her to one of her studs.
We had a vet check done, and the report we recieved state that although arthritic, the mare passed. We had a hauler ship her out and were horrified at the state of the mare. She was very sick, very emaciated with a body score of about 3 and could harldy stand. Her front pastern appeared broken at some point. The hauler assumed we knew what we were buying so just brought her out. He had two other nicely cared for horses from another farm, so we believed him. He will no longer deal with Marla.
We called Marla and she state that the mare was "just fine" and we were over reacting. She said she had had the mare in a small separate pasture with high quality feed. She refused to refund our money and told us to ship the mare back at our expense if we didn't want her. We tried to tell her that the mare was in no condition to go down the road, let alone back to Texas. Honestly, the horse must have had God and Angels looking after her to make it out to us.
We went back and forth and were dodge by Marla and the vet she took the mare to. We did the best we could to make her comfortable. She seemed to be making improvement after a few weeks, but then coliced. We took her to the vet and they were suprised she was still alive.
The mare was euthanised due to her system shutting down from pain and colic. She had previously broken the pastern years ago, which has fused back together improperly due to lack of attention. She had obviously foundered many, many times and had been starved for months on end.
We took Marla to court and subpoenad records from her vets to get them to turn the information over. Turns out, the mare had been doped up on massive amounts of penicilline and xylazine by her personal vet. We finally got a hold of the vet who did the vet check for us and he stated he will never work for her again. She forged the papers he had given her. He had told her the mare should have been euthanised a long time ago, never sold and definately not shipped anywhere.
To this day she has not paid us the money awarded by the court. But the money is insignificant compared to how many horses may be in the same condition.
She has been reported to the Animal control in her county, but they refuse to do anything. There is no telling how many horses are in the condition that this mare, Freckles Nugget, was.
There is no excuse for a "breeder of quality horses" let her horses starve to death and to put them through the pain this champion, sweet mare had. Nugget had a lot of heart, more than any horse I have ever seen.
If you buy from this lady, beware.
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