Paragallo's explanation..
"This is Ernie Paragallo and I am writing to let every one know exactly what happened, I really don't care what any one on this board thinks about me but I want to get the facts out there so maybe some good can come from this and maybe it can stop it from happening in the future. The mares that are in question were the lucky one's in this terrible tragedy, there were a total of 24 mares that were given away to a breeder in florida in mid december. These mares were a part of a package of 60 horses that I had advertised with several bloodstock agents and breeding farms, I had offered the barren mares with a free breed back to any of my NY stallions or to my stallion King Of All Storms in florida. All the horses in this package of 60 were offered for free to the Bloodstock agents and farms, of the 60 horses we had given away about 6 to people in NY at a rate of 1-2 horses per person, in December I received a call from a person in florida who said he had received the list from a bloodstock agent and was interested in the horses, I asked how many and he answer ALL. This was a home run for my business we were going to move 60 horses that had limited value to us and were going to get the added benifits of having the mares bred back to our stallions and we had the potential to earn stallion awards for there offspring. Of the 60 horses 24 were barren mares withe breed back options, 13 pregnant mares where we were going to be co-breeders of the off spring, 10 old racehorses that were going to be used as ponies or pleasure/show horses and 13 2 Yo and 3 yo colt and fillies that they were going to race on a 60/40 split of income with then retaining the greater amount and also paying the entire upkeep. In December two vans arrived at our farm and picked up the 24 barren mares, the drivers said they would be back in a couple of days to pick up the rest. After a week we called back the gentleman who had called us but I never got an answer, safe to say he never came back for the rest. This morning I was called by my girlfriend crying to me about what she had been told and had read on the Rescue Website, I immeadiatly called the Rescue Group and try to find out what had happened. After speaking to them they told me that they knew who had sent the horses there and they believed he had done it before, they let me know that 8 horses had been rescued from the killing pen but believed the others had been slaughtered. This made me sick to hear as most of those mares I either foaled or had since they were babies and did not deserve that faith. This is what happened and I believed I had made the proper business decision but it did'nt turn out that way and it was a terrible tragedy. Like I said I don't care what any one thinks about me because you can not make me feel any worse about myself than I already feel. I have never sent a horse to the killer and I have never mistreated any horse i have ever own, I have gone to great lenghts to keep horses alive even when vets have told me to put them down, I was told by one of the most knowledgeable horsemen I know if they are eating and moving around and look happy there is no reason in the world to put them down."
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