Hooved Animal Humane Society

The Hooved Animal Humane Society (HAHS) was founded in 1971. It is HAHS' mission to promote the humane treatment of hooved animals through education, legislation, investigation and if necessary, legal intervention (impoundment). We provide physical rehabilitation to animals that have endured severe neglect and abuse and then adopt them out to compassionate forever homes. Our farm is located in Woodstock, Illinois on 34 acres with five barns, and an Educational Center that houses our office and tack store. The Center is a place for people to learn about proper care for hooved animals. We host in-person and virtual seminars with equine professionals such as veterinarians, farriers, equine dentists, and trainers.

Our vision is to eliminate hooved animal abuse.

Goal One: Our goal is to focus on providing a training and rehabilitative framework that allows hooved animals in need of rescue, or those already rescued, to find loving forever homes.

Goal Two: We would like to increase our educational content to better inform the public and prevent neglect and abuse occurring from lack of education.

Goal Three: We would like to improve our facility and reconfigure our farm to enhance our ability to take in more animals.

We have developed an educational mentorship with our staff allowing them to have a flexible work schedule and on the job experience in order to enhance their equine studies.

We collaborate with many other animal welfare organizations including Animal Control agencies, the U.S. Humane Society and the State of Illinois Humane Investigators. We invite animal welfare organizations to our events to educate guests about their organizations, provided legislative input on strengthening animal abuse laws and coordinated with our local Fire Department to educate about barn safety. We have an Educational Seminar series providing information about proper care of animals and we publish a bi-annual magazine with articles promoting the well-being of hooved animals. We coordinate team building events at our farm, provide data for the Equine Wellness Data Collective which maintains statistics on rescue horses and have written articles for other animal welfare organizations. We are active on Facebook, Instagram and Constant Contact and provide tours of our farm, introducing the guests to our animals and informing them of our mission.

We made many adaptations this past year due to the pandemic. Our largest adaptation was the selling of some of our property to attain the funds necessary to house, feed, rehabilitate and medically take care of our animals. Many of our office staff began working from home and our farm workers agreed to work more hours to make up for work that had previously been accomplished by our volunteers. Since the pandemic began we have employees who have learned to effectively work from home, increased our visibility on ebay to help sell tack items we previously had only been trying to sell in our Tack Shop and have begun giving educational seminars, investigator training and Volunteer Orientations on-line.