Lakeland’s Grune Heidi Farm Rescue Saves Horses From Slaughter to Rehabilitate & Rehome
by REBEKAH PIERCE
photos provided by GRUNE HEIDI FARM RESCUE
Every horse has a story, and Lakeland’s Erika Gilbert has made it her mission to learn those stories. She wants to make sure that each horse has the opportunity to continue living out its story with dignity, love, and purpose—far away from the grim fate they once faced.
Growing up in the 1970s in the Amish Country of Pennsylvania, Gilbert saw firsthand the reality of horse ownership there.
“I saw those horses, how hard they worked,” she reflects. “They are tools; they’re meant to work.”
The horses she witnessed on Amish farms, where they were bred to pull buggies for miles, were a sharp contrast to the ones she raised: American Saddlebreds pampered for the show ring.
Now, decades later, Gilbert has made it her life’s mission to give unwanted horses a better life through her non-profit rehabilitation Grune Heidi Farm Rescue, which she runs at her Lakeland farm.
Cross-Country Reach
Along with a group of friends and volunteers, she travels monthly to auctions as far away as Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky to find horses destined for the slaughterhouse.
“We give them a second life,” she says.
Typically, Gilbert explains, horses are sold to the Amish to serve as work animals. When they reach the point, whether due to old age or poor health, that they can no longer fulfill those roles, they’re funneled to the auction house, where they’re often purchased by slaughterhouse buyers.
“I have friends in the Amish community that will contact us when a horse can no longer do the job,” Gilbert says. “They’d rather we get the horse before it goes to auction. They do love their horses and will reach out to a rescue. They don’t want it to go to the slaughter pipeline.”
Aside from her “insider” sources, Gilbert also attends auctions whenever they’re scheduled, typically once a month.
“I can’t go all the time,” she explains with a touch of sadness in her voice. “I have to work. They’re far away. I have friends that can go for us. There’s a network of people.”
At the auctions, she looks for American Saddlebreds in particular, though she will occasionally rescue other breeds.
“Sometimes I just happen to be at the auction and [the horse] pulls at my heartstrings.”
She also performs local rescues, receiving multiple calls per week from people who are surrendering their horses. Often, the horses are older and they need to be vetted. She partners with Dr. Katie Hennessy at Polk Equine, who conducts a thorough health check to determine whether the horse would benefit from the rehabilitation process or would be better off with humane euthanasia.
The horses Gilbert takes back to her farm are given a bit of a mini-vacation.
“They get time off to decompress, figure out their new world,” she explains. “They have a stall, we groom them, [give them] 12 hours a day, turn out in the pasture, and feed them high quality food. If the horses are malnourished or lacking some kind of nutrition, they’ll get that here.”
Learning Their Stories
The goal of Grune Heidi is to rehabilitate the horses, not to provide permanent sanctuary. As such, Gilbert works closely with each and every one to learn its story and determine the best possible pathway for the animal moving forward. The good news, she says, is that “once the horses have been with the Amish, they’re family oriented, used to kids, traffic, and everything. It’s easier for them to transition into a family life because they’ve seen it and done it. They’re not ranch horses.”
Whenever Gilbert adds a new horse to the farm, she sends a DNA sample to a laboratory at UC Davis in California to learn more about the horse’s history.
“They run that DNA through a database, and 99.9% of the time, if the horse is registered, it will be a match. They’ll let me know what horse I actually have. It’s great getting those emails.”
She mentioned one recent rescue horse by name, a former showhorse named Mowgli.
“I can get his entire life story because I know his registered name. Another American Saddlebred that was lost has now been found. I can give that horse his identity, his heritage. That’s the most important thing: Those horses gain their identity back.”
A Labor of Love
Gilbert is a self-described “one-woman show,” waking at 4:30 a.m. to clean the stalls and turn the horses out to pasture before clocking in to her day job at 8 a.m. She clocks out at 5 just to do the same thing all over again.
Although she has a team of volunteers, it’s inconsistent.
“We try to partner with high schools…the kids come out to volunteer on a 30-day rotation and get large-animal handling skills.”
But when the kids are in school, the number of volunteers drops, and Gilbert is left doing the lion’s share of the work yet again.
She has a solid backing, receiving generous donations from local foundations (and relying heavily on her own paycheck to fund her operations). Yet caring for horses is expensive, and her operations are limited by the high costs of transportation, feed, and veterinary care.
“I just can’t save them all,” she says.
Nevertheless, each horse she saves is another horse that is being given a chance at a second life—and at getting his or her identity back.
To learn more about Grune Heidi Farm Rescue, visit www.gruneheidifarmrescue.org.