While legislators are meeting in special session to consider, among other things, a controversial proposal designed to “save” Kentucky’s signature industry — the breeding and racing of thoroughbreds — the Kentucky Horse Council has launched a campaign to discourage the overbreeding of other, less desirable types of horses in the state.
While the council’s campaign is about the responsible ownership of horses, the same arguments can be made about other types of domestic animals in the state, particularly dogs and cats.
The horse council’s campaign — copied from similar campaigns in California and North Carolina — urges owners of male horses to have them castrated as a way of reducing unwanted foals. But the council goes beyond mere words. It is offering to reimburse horses owners who can show financial need up to $100 to have a stallion gelded. That’s about half the cost of castration.
Animal welfare groups say horses with far less-impressive pedigrees than the Kentucky-born thoroughbreds are being bred in backyards and it is creating an overpopulation crisis.
The problem is not a new one. Too many times officials have discovered malnourished and neglected horses on farms in the state. Rescue and adoption programs have addressed 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.
That’s the wisest approach. Instead of trying to find a home for an unwanted horse that is in need of medical attention, it is better to prevent the horses from being born.
“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, 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.”
That needs to stop. While Kentucky wants to be known throughout the world for its breeding of champion race horses, it does not need to be known for the breeding of horses no one really wants. The Kentucky Horse Council is taking the right steps to discourage irresponsible horse breeding.
Editorials
Overpopulation — 06/18/09
Horse council encouraging owners to castrate stallions
- Editorials
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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