Trent Riddle, magistrate for Barren County third district, looks onward toward other magistrates and the county judge-executive. He voiced strong dissent Tuesday, March 15, 2022, regarding the purchase of a livestock trailer.
(BRENNAN CRAIN/WCLU NEWS)
GLASGOW — Officials have noted an uptick in the number of loose animals across the area, particularly livestock. Details of those cases were given Tuesday to the Barren Fiscal Court.
Roaming pigs, a loose donkey and a handful of horses are just a few of the animals officials said they have encountered the last several weeks. Many are abandoned and owners are hard to find.
“Pigs are a very big issue. Horses are a very big issue right now,” said Shelley Furlong, animal control officer with local animal control. “People think they’re like dogs, and they just let them run.”
The caveat? Animal control vehicles are not equipped with containers large enough to transport livestock and other large animals. Instead, the county government has entered the animal catching business to help transport and store these larger animals.
Jamie Cummings, the county’s Solid Waste Coordinator and Code Enforcement Officer, asked the court for approval to purchase a livestock trailer to help with these transports. She’s been the primary aid to animal control over the last few months.
The court asked a few questions before voting, one of which was how often she needed the trailer. Cummings said there were about six times this fiscal year. But the plea wasn’t great enough to convince the court.
“Cows can wait,” said Trent Riddle, magistrate for Barren County’s third district. “We’ve never had a horse trailer. We’ve dealt with it for all these years, so I think we’ll be fine.”
But can it? Cummings said no.
“Not normally, because most of the time it’s out somewhere,” Cummings said. “Either in somebody’s yard or out in a field.”
The magistrate said he could think of a list of about 20 area farmers who would transport animals when needed. Micheal Hale, county judge-executive, told him to compile a list of those able to transport the animals because he was confident the county would continue to see the problem.
The county already uses area farmers to house stray livestock, Cummings said. Those animals are housed by the county for ten days and attempts to sell them are made after that time. But animal control officials are not certain they will always have the means to use farmers.
“It may get to a point where you wear out your welcome,” Cummings said. “We’ll eventually have to figure something out there.”
A recent incident involved a loose donkey heading toward Glasgow from the southwestern end of the county. Officials detained the animal, and a farmer placed it with his horses. Officials also responded to a loose pig near Glasgow-Park City Road, which was detained in a nearby dog kennel and transported with the county’s Emergency Management trailer.
“You have two animal control employees standing there kind of keeping it in place until someone shows up,” Cummings said.
Magistrates Riddle, Carl Dickerson, Tim Coomer and Kenneth Sartin voted against a trailer’s purchase. The vote was a tie, which means it failed.
I keep taking them back to the owners, but there’s going to have to come to a time that we’re going to have to hold these owners responsible for getting in the roadway,” Furlong said. “You’ve got lives we’ve got to protect, too.”