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Horse groups trying to limit reproduction
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Published: June 15, 2009
LEXINGTON, Ky.
Publicity campaigns in Kentucky and elsewhere are urging owners of male horses to have them castrated as a way of reducing unwanted foals.
The Kentucky Horse Council has become the latest group to start an education campaign. Owners who show financial need can be reimbursed up to $100 to have their horse gelded. Similar campaigns have popped up from California to North Carolina.
Though breeding expensive racing stars is a signature industry in Kentucky, animal-welfare groups say that horses with far less-impressive pedigrees are being bred in backyards and it is creating an overpopulation crisis.
Rescue and adoption programs have fought the horse overpopulation problem for years, but lately the focus has shifted to castration, both through education campaigns and, where possible, financial help for horse owners who otherwise can't afford the vet bill.
"It's a problem we've had with dogs and cats for decades, and now it's starting to be a huge problem with horses," said Susan Lurz, the director of Stallion to Gelding Support, based in China Grove, N.C. "People are putting stallions and mares together in the same pasture, letting them be, and they're just producing foals like crazy."
Since February, that group has provided reimbursement for the castration of more than 30 colts and stallions nationwide whose owners proved they couldn't afford to geld them. Lurz estimates that about 130 unwanted pregnancies were averted.
The latest campaign by the Kentucky Horse Council provides vouchers that would reimburse state residents up to $100 of the estimated $200 cost for the castration procedure.
Kim McLaughlin of Florence, Ky., was one of the first approved for the voucher. She recently rescued two stallions, finding a home for one but not the other. McLaughlin said that the cost of owning multiple horses adds up and even a $100 voucher toward castrating the stallion will help.
"I can afford to keep him here, but I just can't afford to keep breeding my mare," she said. "Average people like me who normally could afford to have several horses, it's really hit us."
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