LISTENING SESSIONS

July 12, 2005

What are some of the concerns or challenges you face on your farms with respect to insects and pasture management?

Need research on:

The impact of pesticide/herbicide use and runoff into ponds on the health of horses

Organic methods of weed control, particularly the effectiveness of corn gluten - in particular for small farms (Norfield Farm in Versailles once was an organic farm - is it still and how do they operate organically?)

What chemicals are safe to use around horses? What are the recommendations for timely use and quantity? For example, if you treat your fields for weed control, how long should you keep horses off the fields? The package does not give recommendations specific to horses - horses are considered "other livestock"

Evaluating pasture quality

What is the ideal grass to weeds ratio?

What is the cost of control per acre vis-a-vis pasture nutrients and quality?

What are the most efficient and cost effective strategies of manure management for small farms?

Need to determine the proper management techniques for those farms that compost and re-apply to fields so as to assess whether this affects the probability of disease or re-infestation

Weed problems are:

Tall fescue, poke weed, nimle weed (? Not sure of spelling)

What do we really know about fescue?

What are the most effective ways of managing fescue in horse pastures?

How does one estimate the amount of fescue in a pasture? What is a tolerable ratio of fescue to other grasses in a pasture?

How much fescue in a pasture is too much for horses at different developmental levels? In other words, how does a given amount of fescue affect pregnant mares (at different points in their pregnancy), nursing mares, foals, weanlings, etc

What are the best management practices for pastures under stress?

What are the best ways to address soil compaction and root bound fields?

Is aeration effective or is it better to just plow up the pasture and re-seed?

After a winter with lots of rain and the pastures are badly torn up or a drought which hardens the ground, what are the best management practices to restore the fields?

What leads a horse to eat more or less off of a pasture? What influences the patterns of consumption by a horse across a pasture?

Besides a dry lot, is there a "diet" pasture for horses?

This year there have been several outbreaks of contagious diseases on race tracks and in particular areas of the country. Dealing with this raises serious questions that we simply don't have the answer to.

How long do certain disease organisms (e.g. salmonella, strangles) survive in the soil? How long to you need to quarantine field that has held a horse with an infectious disease before you can allow healthy horses back into the field?

What is the best design for a quarantine facility that will minimize transmission to healthy horses on the same farm?

What are the recommended methods for managing a farm that has horses coming in so as to minimize the probability of getting an infectious disease and, what are the recommended management practices to protect healthy horses if you get an infectious disease?

Maybe this is beyond what you are talking about, but we need research on farm ponds. We need to know:

What should we use or not use to clean farm ponds

What is the most effective way to manage plant growth in farm ponds?

What are your sources of information with respect to insects and pasture management and, what kind of assistance would you like from UK ?

Do use the resources at UK by making direct contact with particular faculty based on their expertise (manager of a larger farm)

Would like continuing education for adults with small farms on weed control, pond management, and pasture renovation

UK should establish an information clearinghouse on chemicals and paints used on horse farms. The clearinghouse should provide information on how to use specific products, safe disposal and this information needs to be specific to horses and ideally specific to pregnant mares, nursing mares, developing weanlings and yearlings, stallions, etc - in other words, safe applications of horses throughout their life cycle

UK should establish a facility where research can be conducted and practical applications demonstrated for the best manure management practices for large and small farms

On a more general level, what kinds of program and activities are needed to help build the equine industry and how might UK contribute to addressing these needs?

We need a vet school in KY - at the Race for Education (an organization that provides scholarships to children of race track workers) they received 400 scholarship applications this year and 130 were for students wanting to go to vet school and they have to leave KY - unfortunately this is true for most who want to major in an equine-related area

There needs to be more educational opportunities for equine studies in Lexington - at the Race for Education, most of the applications are not from KY (only 44 out of 400) - young people want to come here because this is the "horse capital of the world" and they think we have undergraduate equine programs

There is a great need for an equine business management program that addresses the full range of professional services required by the equine industry (e.g., CPA, insurance, law, real estate) which require both the specialty knowledge but also an understanding of horses and the industry itself

There is a need for an educational program on horse farm/facilities management - includes business management, equine husbandry (nutrition, anatomy, disease), pasture management

What is needed is estate management - not just the fields but the entire estate - horticultural management (lawns, gardens, pastures) because the large breeding farms are "show places" with show place barns for visitors. They are as much "public" places as they are private places which affects how you manage the farm

UK needs an equine management undergraduate degree and it must include internships

[Question] Would the horse farms be willing to have interns?

We already use interns from KEMI and other programs. We are open to interns - we just need to know that the interns have the essential skills and a commitment to the industry

I tried to hire someone in Ag communications with a strong interest/background in horses but couldn't find anyone - equine journalism is a very large area of professional work - someone who has strong sports journalism training combined with basic foundation in agriculture

Someone - maybe UK maybe someone else - needs to provide education/training that enables people to transition into the industry -

Master Horseman's program with certification
Horse handling Certification

A new area of opportunity opening up - in fact there is an international association in this area - is equine guided personal development - this includes places that are offering executive management and leadership development programs that use horses to assist in the developmental process

This is in addition to the rapid growth in therapeutic riding, hippotherapy, equine-assisted psycho-therapy and equine-assisted behavioral therapy

KY should be at the forefront of innovative programs that use the horse as a component of treatment and/or development

We should have the premier equine-assisted executive management training program right here in KY and at UK

Is there an interest within the industry for staff or communications development programs to enhance the effectiveness of farm teams?

There needs to be much greater involvement of Extension in the equine industry and horse activities around the state. Sometimes it seems like if you call a county office, no one knows anything about horses

There is a desperate need for economic research on the industry

Can the TB industry stand on its own because the breeding industry is getting upside-down and it's not clear what is needed to save it

The opportunity for a breeder's incentive program - what is the best possible form for such a program that would enhance the survival of the industry?

How much revenue is generated by the sales tax on stud fees?

What is the direct and indirect impact of the TB horse industry on KY's economy?

We need to know what needs to be done to build/expand the entire equine industry in KY - What is it going to take to attract and keep stallions and mares as well as performance horses of all breeds in KY?

We need to know more about the best strategies for marketing KY as the place to be for all breeds of horses

This means we need to know the current and potential impact of the entire equine industry on KY's economy

Given the loss of tobacco and the fact that more and more farmers are looking for other sources of income and we want to expand the number of all breeds in KY as well as performance horses, someone needs to develop plans for how to convert a general farm into an equestrian facility

Also need to develop economic models for a performance horse or equestrian facility? These need to be developed for different sized facilities

I think there is a program in North Carolina that provides mares to tobacco farms and technical assistance to convert to an equine facility

We need to find ways to help people match their level of knowledge and farm type to the type of equine facility they might convert to

We need to find other ways to use horses - to integrate them into our lives and our work - in one state they are using horses for ecological logging - why can't we develop this and find other ways for environmentally sensitive uses of horses

How much do younger kids know about horses and the equine industry? We need to help them start thinking about careers in the industry as early as possible.

What do youth learn about the equine industry in school? What do they know about career opportunities in the industry?

We need to develop materials that can be used in K-12 to introduce KY students to the industry and its possibilities

We just need to develop a better working relationship between UK/Gluck/TB farms to identify/resolve key issues - we need to find ways to share information and help each other address key issues

Part of this is learning how to ask and say what we need - for example, if researchers need us to help gather data on our farms - we will if you tell us what you need

We just simply need to increase our interaction and our communication

Maybe a monthly newsletter on equine issues - that includes reports on current studies seeking horse farm partners