It’s amazing what a full belly will do for a starving horse.

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Samantha Laos, who works in animal cruelty/rescue with the Humane Society of North Texas, feeds one of the 76 horses seized last week from Renazans Arabians near Pilot Point. All the horses are doing well, Laos said Monday.

View larger More photos Photo store

Seventy-six Arabians seized by the Denton County Sheriff’s Office on Friday from the Renazans Arabians horse ranch southwest of Pilot Point are doing well, said a representative of the Humane Society of North Texas, which is overseeing the care of the horses.

“Everybody’s going to be great. Even the worst ones are doing great,” said Samantha Laos, a supervisor with the organization. “They are calm and happy and not scared anymore.”

A visitor looking at the ranch, which is for sale for $1.7 million, saw thin animals in fields near the road Thursday and called the sheriff’s Crime Stoppers number to report possible abuse.

Gordon Dennis Key

When sheriff’s animal control officers visited the ranch, they found horses in a barn and in back pastures in even worse condition, and obtained a judge’s order to seize the horses and arrest the owner, Gordon Dennis Key, 66.

Key surrendered Saturday at the jail and is free on $10,000 bail on one count of cruelty to animals. He could eventually be faced with 76 such charges. Each charge carries a jail sentence of up to one year and a fine of up to $4,000.

Laos said there has been a heartening outreach from a number of people who are concerned about the horses and want to help. And she welcomes that help.

“They’ve been lining up left and right to give us feed and we’re eternally grateful for that,” she said. “We’re in desperate need of monetary donations, grain for feed and square bales of hay.”

Nearly 20 of the horses were found locked in barn stalls, standing in several inches of their own waste. Their hooves needed care and some had sores from lying in the waste. None of the horses had undergone veterinary care for a long time, Laos said.

“They had awful feet, their teeth have not been worked on in a long time, and he [Key] didn’t even bother to really socialize them either,” she said.

Two veterinarians are working with the horses without pay, and some members of the rescue group have been certified to provide certain health care.

The equines were split up into male and female groups. The mares went to a rancher in Ponder who is providing his property as a free place to hold them, Laos said. They are being fed with donated hay and grain. The stallions are being held at another location.

“The stallions are quite manly,” she said. “If we had put a bunch of males in here with the females, we would have had a bunch of kicking. They are so territorial over their women.”

DRC/Barron Ludlum

All the horses seized from Renazans Arabians on Friday are doing “great,” according to Samantha Laos with the North Texas Humane Society. The mares and stallions are being held at separate locations.

View larger More photos Photo store

Laos said a few people have called saying they were boarding horses at Renazans Arabians but none so far have been able to provide proof of ownership. All will be part of a civil seizure action Aug. 26 that, if granted, will hand over ownership to the sheriff’s office and allow the humane society to begin adoption procedures.

“We love the offer for foster parents. But we are looking for people to give them a permanent home,” Laos said. “Everybody will be put up for adoption if we win custody.”

People who want to adopt the horses must fill out applications and pay an adoption fee, she said. The horses cannot be sold or bred. They are to be pets.

“The awful, really sad thing about this is if the owner himself had just provided yearly vet care and feed, this wouldn’t have been necessary,” Laos said.

“The crazy thing to me is that he took $10,000 to post bail but he didn’t feed his horses on his $1 million farm. The logic is not making any sense.”

DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885. Her e-mail address is dfielder@dentonrc.com.