Those more mundane details are at the heart of a debate about growing cases of mistreatment of horses in the United States, at a time when hay and grain prices are skyrocketing and when options for disposing of unwanted horses are dwindling.

Just a year ago, the sale of an average horse suitable for recreation -- one with neither prized bloodlines nor a performance record to heighten its status -- would have fetched several thousand dollars.

Today, prices in some cases have dropped to just hundreds of dollars, largely because of higher costs for their maintenance and transport.

The situation for marginal horses -- horses whose poor physical condition or disposition makes them targets for slaughter -- is even worse, after a court ruling sought by animal-rights groups effectively shut down the US horse slaughter industry last year.

The result is that a growing number of unwanted horses are being starved or turned loose to fend for themselves in the US West, according to animal welfare advocates.

"What concerns me is a fate worse than slaughter," said Temple Grandin, professor of animal science at Colorado State University and an authority on the handling of livestock such as horses. "We've got people turning horses loose in fields, dropping horses off in the night -- my worst nightmares are coming true."

Such images have strong resonance in the West, the land of the rider on the range immortalized in art by Frederic Remington and in popular culture by actors such as the late President Ronald Reagan.

Far from Kentucky, where thoroughbreds race the Churchill Downs, owning a horse in the West is a middle-class occupation. The average horse owner rides for recreation and keeps their horse on their own land or land rented for the purpose, rather than at a commercially run barn.

Horses eat hay made from either grass or alfalfa, or a mix of both, and a modest amount of grain. Prices fluctuate, but in east central Idaho, hay prices have risen to $145 from $120 per ton a year ago, a jump of 21 percent. In northern Idaho it costs $220 per ton and as much as $300 per ton in parts of California. Feeding a horse can cost $2,000 a year or more.

TURNED LOOSE

The West is also the region where the historic practice of releasing domesticated horses into the wild -- first by Spanish explorers and last by ranchers -- gave rise to the herds of Mustangs, or feral horses, that still inhabit the vast public lands of Western states.

But the romantic concept of freeing a tamed horse to roam the West's wide open spaces bears no resemblance to the reality, said Kirk Miller, livestock investigator in Idaho and Montana for the US Department of Agriculture.

"They have no survival instinct in the wild, no clue as to what's dangerous to eat, no knowledge of how to grub for food under the snow," he said.

Miller and Colorado State's Grandin are among animal experts who say the campaign led by the Humane Society of the United States to end domestic horse slaughter was well-intentioned but misguided.

Now the tens of thousands of American horses marked for slaughter are shipped to Canada and Mexico, where long, stressful journeys end in what some horse advocates say can be unduly painful deaths.

Most horses are slaughtered for human consumption, with Europe and Asia providing markets for their meat.

Some horse associations are siding with the Humane Society in its fight to end export of horses for slaughter altogether. But others are seeking to re-establish processing in the United States to broaden the outlet for unwanted horses and to ensure the animals are killed by a mechanical method approved by the US Department of Agriculture.