Why Not Horses?

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Mountain of manure at Tall Firs Barn in Federal Way, WA from 20 horses over a period of several months. 2011, Walsh.

A horse usually eats about 25 pounds of food, drinks about 15 gallons of water, and produces between 15 and 35 pounds of manure every day.  Farmers no longer pay for manure for use as fertilizer.  The lack of demand for horse manure destroyed its market value.

"The market was so glutted, that stable owners had to pay to have the manure removed."
                                                   -Elizabeth Kolbert,  The New Yorker 2009

_Horses are messy, slow and unreliable.
"....he (horses) put riders and pedestrians at 'risk of death' or 'maiming' through his 'misconduct' and 'skittishness.'"
    -New York Times editorial, July 24, 1881

_"Iron Horses," or trains, were invented in 1822 as a substitute, but were not practical for short trips, especially in cities, because of limited mobility and the infrastructure required to 
support them.
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Horse-drawn bus. old-photos blogspot. 1908.

In the late 1800s, cabs, buggies, and wagons all required horses.  Buses were pulled by twelve horses.  There were approximately 100,000 horses in New York City in the 1890s producing 2.5 million pounds of manure everyday.