Mare or Stallion, it's tough for Breeder Joie Roddy to avoid getting attached to her horses.

"That's Holly, Poopy, Sunny, Alabama, she names off."

What's even more difficult, getting them to sell.

"The value of the horse has limited to basically nothing cause of the oversupply. Cavel used to in its' own way take care of the oversupply of horses," says Frank Bowman, Board President of the Horsemen's Council of Illinois.

"There's a lot of horses that have no where to go. The rescuers are full, people are trying to give a way horses left and right," Roddy says.

Roddy says since Cavel International, the Nation's last horse slaughtering plant shut down in August, fellow breeders have found random horses roaming in their pastures. A major burden, especially with the Midwest drought causing hay prices to go up nearly 50-percent.

With it being more difficult to sell horses and much or expensive to feed them, owners like Roddy say the best thing to do is slow down the breeding.

"I bred 6-7 mares last year, I cut back to four mares for this year," she says.

And that's what the Illinois Horsemen's Council says is really all that can be done. With the nearest slaughter houses in Mexico and Canada, and euthanasia costing a couple hundred dollars, they say breeders need to make sure their horses can be cared for properly.

"If it's a choice letting a horse starve slowly in a pasture and selling it to a kill auction, who's to say one's better than the other or not," Roddy says.

The President of the Illinois Horsemen's Council says legislation to shut down Cavel was irresponsible, because there has been no funding provided to those who will take in horses that would have been slaughtered. And for those that would be shipped to plants in Mexico and Canada, they're now on trucks for a day, rather than a few hours. Many feel that is inhumane.