MISSOULA -- What to do with unwanted horses is an increasingly difficult problem and one without easy solutions.

The bottom has dropped out of the sale market for horses, something to which Kent Kerchal, manager of the Missoula Livestock Exchange, can attest.

Many of the horses sold there, even trained riding horses, end up being sold for meat and shipped to slaughterhouses in Mexico or Canada. Horse slaughter ended in the United States in 2007.

But slaughter isn't the only option, he said.

"Call the vet," he said. "That's what you do. Have the animal put down."

Easier said than done, especially when money is tight, said Linda Kauffman, a Stevensville veterinarian.

It costs about $100 for a vet to euthanize a horse. Then it's another $100 to rent a bulldozer operator to dig a hole and bury a horse.

Owners who don't have the land for burial can call the knacker, who hauls the body to a rendering plant. That's another $100.

Which brings the situation back around to slaughterhouses, Kauffman said.

She said she's in favor of slaughtering horses in the United States if the business returns with governing boards that ensure ethical slaughter as defined by national veterinary associations.

Shawn Gleason, a Victor veterinarian, shares her sentiments.

"Without slaughter facilities, it's taken away an avenue for people to move older horses, or any horses for that matter," Gleason said. "Some of these people, instead of getting a few dollars from their animals, now it costs them to get rid of their animals. ... In my opinion, it probably has created more neglect to a degree, at least that's my perception."

Longtime rancher and horse broker Ole Olson of Elko, Nev., places most of the blame on the Humane Society of the United States and other organizations that lobbied Congress to end horse slaughtering.

"Stopping horse slaughter in this country was the worst thing that ever happened, because people don't have a market to take their animals," said Olson.

He's a regular at the Missoula horse auction, and makes the long journey from Elko to buy and sell horses.

If the price is right, he'll bid on the healthy young horses that haven't been ridden or the rank good-looking ones. After hauling them back to his ranch, his staff of experienced riders puts miles on the horses, gets them trained and better conditioned. Then Olson resells the animals at other auctions.

Last Tuesday, an untrained pony he bought for $100 in Missoula two months ago sold to a family for $550.

But he also buys the others, the "loose" auction horses, the ones that aren't led in by someone, but rather are moved through as a group at the end of the auction, when crowds have thinned.

Meat buyers seek those horses.

"If there's anything we can salvage, we will," Olson explains, "but what else can someone do with the old ones and the crippled ones and the mares nobody wants? If people can't take them to slaughter, we'll be having people turning animals loose on the freeway and that's not right."

The Humane Society of the United States also sees a rise in horse neglect and abuse, but said it's not because American slaughterhouses have been taken out of the equation.

It's because there are too many horses.

Keith Dane, the organization's chief equine protection specialist, explains it this way:

"What we would like is for the horse industry to look at the economy and the demand for their product and reflect that in their breeding practices. Unfortunately, that has not been happening."

Last year, 106,963 American horses were slaughtered in Canada and Mexico. That compares to 133,912 in 2006 and 111,649 in 2005.

The numbers speak for themselves, Dane said, and what they say is that the United States is irresponsible when it comes to breeding horses.

"We believe there are solutions in achieving equilibrium, where there is virtually no horse oversupply," he explains. "In the 1990s, over 300,000 horses were slaughtered in one year, and we've come down to 100,000 in the last couple of years and as low as 40,000 in 2002.

"We believe there is no reason not to get that number down to zero through more responsible breeding, by placing horses in good homes and the adoption of unwanted horses."

Dane is adamant that if the United States purges itself of the horse slaughter option, people will make more responsible decisions.

The Humane Society is working on new legislation to permanently stop all horse slaughter for human consumption, making it illegal to transport horses to Canada and Mexico for slaughter.

Dane challenges all critics to get on the Internet and read the investigations into Mexican slaughterhouses.

Not only do horses endure the long truck drive across the border, with trailers jammed to maximum capacity with untethered animals and many individuals getting severely injured on the journey, he said. But when horses finally get to the facility, they are knifed several times in the spinal cord, rendered paralyzed but not unconscious before slaughter.

"It's pretty gruesome," said Dane, who has reviewed the evidence. "If people knew of the treatment their horses get in Mexico, where most of them go, they would think twice about looking at slaughter as the only means available for dealing with horses."