2 charged after horse found dead near Maple Park

Two people have been charged with failing to provide adequate care for an animal after a dead horse was reported Tuesday at a farm near Maple Park.

People called the Kane County animal control office, Maple Park police and the Kane County sheriff's office after seeing a Facebook video of a dead horse lying inside a fence line at 50W160 Peterson Road. By Friday morning, the Facebook video had logged more than 275,000 views.

The farm's owners, Paul and Kay Feltes, were charged with an ordinance violation of failure to provide a sufficient quantity of wholesome food, water and shelter, according to Brett Youngsteadt, Kane County animal control director. Attempts to reach the Felteses were unsuccessful.

Youngsteadt said there was adequate food and shelter when wardens investigated Tuesday morning, but that water had frozen, preventing the remaining 10 horses from drinking it. He said the horses had access to two lean-to shelters and to a barn.

Youngsteadt said this was the second time animal control had been to the farm. The first time was when the Felteses reported that a stray pig had wandered onto the property.

No necropsy was done on the horse, which appeared to be of normal weight, Youngsteadt said. The body was released to the owners, and they complied with a law requiring dead animals to be disposed of within 24 hours, Youngsteadt said.

Having horses outside in the cold is not necessarily bad, according to Dr. Scott Austin, section head of equine medicine and surgery and clinical assistant professor of veterinary clinical medicine at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois.

As long as the horses are healthy and have access to good food, warm water and shelter especially from the wind, they can handle the cold and prefer to be outside, he said. Horses will often group together for warmth and rotate positions in open-sided shelters, he said.

But young horses, old horses, those in ill health and those whose coats are thin, perhaps from clipping, may need to be brought inside, according to Austin.

Horses generate heat through digestion, as bacteria break down the food in their stomachs, he said. But they don't like drinking water that is colder than 40 degrees or so, which can lead to painful abdominal problems including constipation, he said. They also need to eat more food, or food of higher quality, to account for the calories they burn off trying to stay warm.

"As long as they have shelter, they can withstand these temperatures without a lot of problems," he said. "They have a remarkable ability to withstand the cold."