Kazakhstan farmers rally behind man accused of shooting 17 horses

Farmers in the Karaganda region have rallied in support of a villager who is facing criminal charges for shooting 17 horses.

The agrarians are demanding protection of their fields from stray livestock, Caliber.Az reports, citing Kazakh media.

According to investigators, at the end of September, the man allegedly shot 14 animals and wounded three more after they strayed onto his farmland.

Meanwhile, other farmers from two rural districts in the Nurinsky area of Kazakhstan say they understand their fellow villager. They complain that for the past five to six years, in addition to dealing with saiga antelopes, they have been forced to fend off herds of other people’s horses that wander into grain fields and destroy crops.

“My outermost fields cover 700 hectares. I harvested about 4 quintals per hectare this year, though it should have been around 14. I lost roughly 70 million tenge because of those horses,” said farmer Hermann Lee.

“Someone clearly couldn’t take it anymore, snapped, and shot the horses. Look what it’s come to. I tell the horse owners directly: guys, it’s your fault, you drove the man to it,” agreed another farmer, Leonid Polevodin.

According to the farmers, their neighbour who keeps livestock owns about 500 horses—200 of his own and the rest brought from across the district for grazing. However, there is only enough pasture for about 70 animals, forcing the horses to wander into neighbouring fields.

“After harvesting, we usually let our horses graze on the cut fields. There was a low strip of unharvested land left, not visible from our side. There are around 1,500–2,000 horses, and they don’t all graze in the fields, but all the land around our winter base is farmland,” explained Dulаt Musapirov, the owner of the killed horses.

Grain farmers believe that horse owners should hire herdsmen to watch their animals around the clock, while livestock owners argue that field owners should fence off their land and employ patrols to keep animals out.

Local authorities say the issue is difficult to resolve.

“At present, this settlement lacks more than 4,000 hectares of pastureland. However, owning slightly more livestock than the land allows is not prohibited by the Land Code,” said Kambar Kadyrbayev, head of the Nurinsky district land relations department.

The only solution offered to herders is to lease land in remote areas for grazing. But according to the law, to claim compensation for damage caused by horses, a farmer must film the animals in the act, catch them, drive them into a specially built pen, and call representatives of the local administration and the district police officer—something that farmers say is practically impossible. Some have gone to court, but lost their cases.

Meanwhile, the 53-year-old farmer accused of shooting the horses has been arrested for two months.

By Vugar Khalilov