Eleven Thoroughbred yearlings have been secured by new owners after their original buyer at Tuesday’s Texas Thoroughbred Association yearling sale, David O’Dwyer, had listed them on his family-owned-and-operated Bowie Livestock Sale Barn webpage with a “slaughter date.”
O’Dwyer purchased 11 yearlings at the sale at Lone Star Park, each for prices between $1,000 and $2,200. That evening, the horses began appearing on the webpage for the Bowie Livestock Sale Barn, which holds monthly consignment horse auctions as well as online sales. The yearlings were listed at prices ranging from $2,400 to $3,800, and all had “Slaughter Date 09/02/25” on their individual sale pages.
Commercial horse slaughter no longer takes place in the United States but does in both Canada and Mexico. In the age of social media, many websites or Facebook pages have emerged with sellers, typically near the borders, claiming to have possession of horses who are at risk of being exported and are offered to the public with a “bail price” to “rescue” them from the situation, with a date listed ramping up the urgency. Individuals buying horses often pay far more than what a slaughterhouse might pay per pound, while the seller may not actually have the ability to ship the horse across the border, a regulated process.
Animals’ Angels Inc., a non-profit incorporated in Maryland, released an annual “state of the horse slaughter industry” in March 2025. The organization reported that while more than 148,000 U.S. horses were sold to slaughter in 2014, the number dropped to more than 20,000 in 2024. The organization reported that O’Dwyer Investments, which appears to hold contracts with one or more slaughter plants in Mexico, was the largest exporter to that country in 2024, making 130 shipments of horses and donkeys.
“At this year’s sale, this buyer who signed the tickets as ‘David O'Dwyer’ was not a suspected kill pen buyer to us, but as soon as we got wind of what may have been going on, we ejected him from the sale, and he is banned from making any future purchases with us,” a statement posted on the Texas Thoroughbred Association’s Facebook page Wednesday, attributed to executive director Tracy Sheffield, said. “Unfortunately, by the time we suspected the activity, he had purchased and, as a result based on the terms and conditions of our sale, legally owned the yearlings he had purchased.”
O’Dwyer posted a four-minute video to the Bowie Livestock Facebook page on Thursday in which he said that sales officials approached him midway through the sale.
“It is a public auction,” he said. “I went down there, I wasn’t hiding anything. I gave them my name, I wore this hat that says Bowie Livestock, people knew who I was. . . . Just because I buy a horse doesn’t mean I’m going to kill them. I buy from lots of different disciplines, whether they’re donkeys, ponies, English-type horses, Andalusians, Belgians, or even these Thoroughbreds – it doesn’t make a difference, it’s a public auction. I’m allowed to go in and buy. So I got called out halfway through this auction, saying that they wanted to know what was going to happen with these horses. I was up-front, I told them exactly what I do. I buy horses, I put them online, and I sell. I wasn’t hiding that. They said, ‘Are they going to the kill pen page?’ I said, ‘I run one.’ ”
O’Dwyer claimed that he offered the horses back to the TTA, but that the company – seemingly in keeping with its statement about the terms and conditions of sale – turned down that offer.
“I offered all those horses back to them, and they didn’t take them,” he said. “They said, ‘No, they’re your horses.’ I said, ‘Fair enough, this is what I’m going to do.’ ”
O’Dwyer claimed that all 11 of the yearlings have now been sold on, reporting the buyers are from Texas, Virginia, California, Kentucky, and Canada.
“So I put them all online yesterday, they are all now sold . . . Buy low, sell high, that’s the name of the game,” O’Dwyer said in his video.
O’Dwyer’s claim appears to be corroborated by the Texas Thoroughbred Association, which posted thanks to all who had expressed concern about the horses, and by various connections of the consigned yearlings. The Texas-based Highlander Training Center consigned four of the yearlings that O’Dwyer purchased.
“When Highlander Training Center was made aware of the situation with the yearlings purchased by David O’Dwyer from the Texas yearling sale, we took immediate action to reach out to Mr. O’Dwyer and secure the four client-owned yearlings from the Highlander consignment that he purchased,” the consignment company wrote Thursday. “Those yearlings have been relocated and are safe, healthy, and in great hands.
“From communication we have had this morning with both the Texas Thoroughbred Association and the Bowie Livestock Sale Barn, it is our understanding that all 11 yearlings purchased by a BLSB representative at the TTA Yearling Sale have been purchased now by responsible horse owners who will provide good homes for the horses.”
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