Are Horses Used To Make Glue? (Revealed!)

I was watching an old movie the other day, and there was a scene in which a big old horse was taken away to be made into glue.

I’d heard of this practice before, and heard many different versions of how it is achieved.

I wasn’t sure how it exactly worked, whether it was ever real in the first place, or if so whether it is still common practice today.

I finally decided to put the question to bed and do some research for myself.

So, are horses used to make glue?

Yes, horses are used to make glue. Horses’ bodies contain a lot of collagen, a key protein in connective tissues like tendons and ligaments. This collagen can be made into a gelatin which is sticky when wet but hardens when dry. Nowadays, glues are generally created through other processes, but it does still happen.

So, as awful as it might seem for us horse lovers, it is unfortunately true that horses and indeed many animals have for thousands of years been used to make glue.

Let’s look further into this question.

Do they still use horses to make glue?

For the most part, no.

Horses, and animals in general, are no longer used to make glue.

In the past, many parts of animal tissue would be used to make glue—bones, hides and other tissues would be washed and then soaked in water to begin releasing collagen.

The collagen would then be collected up and treated with other chemicals in order to produce a strong glue.

Horses were particularly favored for this simply because of their size.

Horses are huge, muscular animals with a great deal of tissue to make use of, so they were a popular choice.

Other animals included pigs and cows, but they had significant other uses like food, which were far more profitable a use of the animal.

Nowadays, glue is generally made from pure chemical formulas.

Animal products are no longer used, since it is much easier and cheaper to maintain stocks of shelved chemicals than it is of livestock.

Globally, there are very few manufacturers still producing glue made from horses.

Some of those still active in Canada still use animals such as horses, but whereas it was once the most common woodworking adhesive for thousands of years, it has fallen almost entirely out of use now.

What brand of glue is made from horses?

There are one or two manufacturers still using animal tissues to make glues.

As I said, many of them are in Canada.

Almost none use actual horses anymore, since horse tissues are just more expensive to acquire.

One company named A.S. handover still offers art supply glue made from rabbit skin.

Titebond, an industrial adhesive brand, still uses a variety of animal hides and tissues to make various glues.

Undoubtedly, they use horses among other animals.

As you can see, though, the fact is that animal glues have fallen almost entirely out of use.

There are far easier and cheaper ways to produce quality glues that don’t involve needing to either raise or buy and kill a horse or any animal.

Is glue made from horse poop?

This is a very common misconception, so the answer is no.

Glue is not made from horse poop, and never was.

Horse manure does not contain any special adhesive quality.

There is, however, one historical use of horse manure which is vaguely similar to glue.

In the ancient and medieval world, houses were built with manure almost acting as cement for the bricks.

While this might seem unpleasant to us, it works very well; when it dries out, it creates a very strong interlinking support for the wall.

However, this isn’t the same as an adhesive.

You couldn’t use dried manure to stick two things together.

You have to layer it and essentially coat the whole wall in it, so that it forms its own separate wall.

Are horses killed for glue?

Again, nowadays, not really.

Horses and animals in general are not used for glue anymore, and one big reason for this is the fact that the animal needs to be slaughtered and butchered.

This is simply far more money and effort than finding a chemical formula which can be synthesised in a lab.

Of course, when horses were used for glue, they were killed.

There was no way of extracting collagen without killing the horse.

Whether the horse had to be euthanized for a health reason or it had been specifically bred to be slaughtered for glue, either way, the horse had to die.

Though the practice is not as common as it once was, many manufacturers around the world do still use animal tissue to make glue.

There are not many of them any more but they do still exist.

Animals have had many uses for humanity over the millennia, and it’s only in the last couple of centuries that we’ve begun using other processes to manufacture many common tools and materials.

Glue is no different, and adhesive is one of the oldest substances we’ve been making.