WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pa. -- Hundreds of horses are heading for the slaughterhouse, and that prompted one local woman to step in and do something about it.

The premarin horses are used for the production of the popular estrogen replacement drug Premarin. The drug stands for pregnant mare's urine.

Abigail and Pumpkin are premarin horses, horses that, if weren't adopted by Helen Johnson of Westmoreland County, would have gone to slaughter and be used for dog food or meat overseas.

Undercover video inside Canadian Premarin barns three years ago showed thousands of pregnant horses chained in stalls and hooked to urine collection devices until they give birth.

Their estrogen-rich urine is made into Premarin. The use of Premarin has dropped sharply during the last three years following health risk studies and pharmaceutical giant Wyeth Ayerst, which makes Premarin, has since cut production by one-third.

By cutting production, more Canadian farms are shutting down, leaving pregnant fowls with nowhere to go but the slaughterhouse.

Hundreds of horses are set to be slaughtered by the end of October unless they're adopted, and Johnson is hoping people in the area will step in.

Johnson is a member of the United Pegasus Foundation, a nonprofit group that works to find horses homes and adopted her first horse 10 years ago.

She said another Canadian farm just shut down because Wyeth Ayerst cancelled the rancher's contract, and she is searching for people to adopt the leftover horses.

For more information on the United Pegasus Foundation, visit www.UnitedPegasus.com.

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