Poison in the Fields
Horse industry veterans hope the worst is behind them, but fear it may be just ahead

The timing couldn’t have been more eerie. While the pomp and jubilation of Derby Week unfolded on schedule just 75 miles down the road, horse farm managers and owners in Central Kentucky were filled with consternation instead of anticipation. Foals were showing up dead at a record rate, with aborted or stillborn bodies filling up available space at the University of Kentucky Livestock Disease Diagnostic Center on Newtown Pike in Lexington.

Soon the scenery would become as spooky as the timing: acres and acres of beautiful prime pastureland, suddenly missing their usual spring population of colts frolicking beside their mothers. At Keeneland, the sales pavilion normally filled with the conviviality of yearling sales was instead filled with perhaps the highest concentration of equine veterinary expertise anywhere in the world. It was also filled with concern for those yearlings’ lives … and for the future of the broodmares, their owners and the industry as a whole.

“On April 26, I examined six mares in Jessamine County,” recounted Dr. Tom Riddle of Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital. “Of those six mares, two had dead fetuses. It was unusual to find two dead fetuses on the same day on the same farm. I contacted the farm’s vet and assumed it was just extremely bad luck.”

But there would be no exotic wager to turn that luck around. More dead foals started showing up, many more than ever before.

The epidemic that’s claimed the lives of so many aborted or stillborn equine fetuses and foals has been dubbed Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome, or MRLS. Between April 28 and May 25, 529 foals had been stillborn or fetuses aborted, according to the official count of bodies brought to the Diagnostic Center. But that doesn’t take into account possible others that have been aborted and never found in the field.

Tom Dixon, 70, retired equine insurance adjustor of Dixon Adjustors Inc., knows what the crisis has meant, in both personal and professional terms. He’s helped handle more than 15,000 claims in his career, but perhaps none of the illnesses he encountered had struck so close to home.

“I have part ownership in a Thoroughbred broodmare with four other people,” he says. “She was bred in February, had a nice foal last year, but during this current period she lost her foal, and we never did find it – so she’s not included in that count of those that went to the diagnostic lab.”

Dixon says that’s not unusual, and wonders if anyone’s compiling a count of foals gone missing. What he does know is that this mare – like many who’ve endured the syndrome – didn’t conceive in a hurried second cover, and therefore will be empty come next February.

While it’s still early to be able to make concrete estimates of the total economic cost of the syndrome, projections have ranged as high as $1.25 billion when all spinoff effects are taken into account. According to The Blood-Horse, there may be a $50-million direct economic impact this year, and a $350-million direct impact in 2002, when the industry will see as much as 25 percent of its expected foal count gone missing. What’s hardest – in fact well nigh impossible – to quantify is the diminution of what is already a highly selective genetic pool. How many future stud fees were lost among those hundreds of foals, and how will their loss affect bloodstock down the road?

The search for answers begun that Derby weekend has produced a story of uniquely damaging circumstance and heartbreaking loss in the region’s $3.4 billion horse industry. Early talk of white clover and mold has given way to one overwhelming theory: Most of the exhausted scientists and researchers agree that a robust growing season, late frost, wild cherry trees and the ubiquitous Eastern tent caterpillar combined in the rarest of possible ways to produce cyanide compounds that were ingested by the impregnated mares and did their damage on the fetuses they carried.

Frank Taylor, general manager of Taylor Made Farm, found that while the live foaling this spring was affected (with seven of 28 foals dying over one two-week period), it’s next year’s crop that will truly suffer.

“From Feb 10 to 28th we were losing over 70 percent,” he reported to the Gluck Center in mid-May. “From March 1 to March 14, those pregnancies that were conceived there, we’ve lost 43 percent of them.”

From that point the crisis subsided among the farm’s 650 horses, but the damage had been done. Scientists likened the syndrome’s arrival and departure to the classic bell curve pattern, yet pesky complications have included a dramatic increase in the occurrence of blindness and other eye problems, as well as the diagnosis of pericarditis (which involves the inflammation of the sac around the heart) in over 60 horses, with about a dozen perishing of the ailment. The levels of these two conditions are about 25 times higher than normal, but the pericarditis has not struck the racehorse and stallions population.

Fungus, caterpillars, poison, frost
The biggest agricultural crisis of the past few years – the persistent drought – may have played a major role in this follow-up crisis. What UK College of Agriculture meteorologist Tom Priddy calls an “explosion of biological activity” occurred early this spring as the number of degree days accumulated. Then there were major frost freezes on the 17th and 18th of April, and again on the 25th.

“April was highly unusual, and replicates in mirror image 1981, when a very similar syndrome occurred, although its cause was never identified,” noted UK equine epidemiologist Dr. David Powell at another full-house meeting on May 24 at the Keeneland pavilion.

Prodded by their observations of the climate and past experience with reproductive-associated health problems, the scientists focused on four possibilities: phytoestrogens in plants, estrogenic mycotoxins, fungal endophytes and cyanide from caterpillars, with the primary attention directed at the endophytes (often present in fescue grasses) and the toxic molds called mycotoxins in the fields.

So how did the investigation shift from the mycotoxins to the caterpillars and cherry trees? Dr. Lenn Harrison, director of the UK Livestock Disease Diagnostic Center, explained at the May 24 meeting at Keeneland.

“We previously reported caterpillars negative for cyanide,” he said, “because the caterpillars we sampled had probably not consumed any cherry tree leaves. We didn’t realize we had to test them soon after we got them. The caterpillar passes material through its system in six hours or less. A sample of a preserved caterpillar was strongly cyanidic. Low levels of cyanide or a cyanide-containing compound were identified in heart muscle samples from fetuses. After much discussion with experts, we felt a change in method was needed.”

“Cyanide from the black cherry tree, in association with the Eastern tent caterpillar, had some connection,” continued Dr. Thomas Tobin. “It’s well-known that wilted leaves from broken black cherry branches are highly toxic to cattle and sheep. And wilting or damage from frost or insects increases the content of cyanide in the leaves. The caterpillar is highly adapted to cherry trees. It lays its eggs there, and it’s biologically immune to cyanide – it uses the leaves as food and as a defense mechanism. It will even spit a little cyanide at you to discourage your attentions.”

The timing was such that all events promoting the cyanide presence occurred by April 25 … and the first dead fetuses began showing up just days later.

But by the time of the May 24 meeting, Dr. David Powell expressed optimism. “At this stage, there’s no need to be shipping mares out of Kentucky,” he said. “Secondly, we can re-establish mares on pastures they’ve been grazing, albeit they won’t be grazing in pastures under the shade of the cherry tree.”

A matter of teamwork
“Picture a double-sided white jigsaw puzzle a thousand pieces large.”

That’s how the Gluck Equine Center’s Dr. Roberta Dwyer characterized the search for an explanation. Taking the lead in the crisis was an ad hoc team of veterinarians, agronomists, epidemiologists and other scientists, all collaborating under the aegis of the University of Kentucky’s Gluck Equine Research Center. Besides organizing two informational meetings at the Keeneland pavilion, the Center has been information central during the crisis, with its website receiving over 23,000 hits in the past month, no doubt many of them repeat visits from worried farm managers and horse owners. In addition, top labs and experts from Penn St. University and Iowa St. University were closely involved in the high-volume, high-speed testing and analysis.

While Gluck administrators and staff have been quick to make people and data available as quickly as possible, pasture consultant Dr. Roger Allman, speaking at the first Keeneland meeting, was visibly apprehensive about jumping to conclusions.

“I have seen contradictions to every theory I have heard postulated,” he said. “I don’t plan to speculate or make recommendation without hard data.”

But no sooner had he moved from the podium than the speculation began, as desperate farm managers and owners looked for anything that felt like a clue. Their actions on their farms spoke likewise.

“In April 2000, we shipped 945 horses out of Kentucky,” reported state veterinarian Dr. Don Notter at a coincidental May conference in Elizabethtown on the topic of agriculture emergency management planning. “In April 2001 we shipped 1,204. In May of 2000, we shipped 1539, and from May 1 to May 16 this year, 1,723 shipped out.”

But the panic was offset by the professionalism displayed in all quarters. Notter in particular noted the high degree of expertise available to the state at diagnostic labs in Lexington and Hopkinsville, and how that degree of preparedness would serve Kentuckians well should some other kind of agricultural epidemic strike.

Horse farmers need aid too
In much the same way that the image of “Big Tobacco” overwhelms the actual struggle of individual burley farmers, the public image of Thoroughbred farms and owners can be misleading, as if every horse were born and raised in a barn akin to a shrine.

U.S. Congressman Ernest Fletcher, Republican from the 6th District, first heard about the crisis while touring the backstretch at Churchill Downs the Monday morning after Derby weekend, and his office has continued to keep close tabs on the situation with the help of the NTRA and AHC. As a member of the Agriculture Committee in Congress, he also has his eye squarely on the bigger picture.

“We weren’t adequately prepared for this because the horse industry has been viewed differently from the rest of agriculture,” he says in a phone interview. “With the problems we’ve had with tobacco, it makes these other agricultural issues even more critical. This is a wakeup call.”

Fletcher and several other elected officials are pushing for a farm bill that will recognize horses as livestock instead of companion animals, thus opening up lines of aid and assistance available to cattle, dairy, swine and sheep farmers.

In the meantime, spurred in part by the crisis, prominent breeder John Gaines has sounded a similar call at the state level, saying the time is ripe for state economic incentives in the equine sector to rival programs long available in the manufacturing and service sectors of Kentucky’s economy. But at both state and federal levels, that initiative is sure to encounter the stereotypical view of horse people as aristocracy.

“There’s a misconception that horse breeders are all wealthy people,” says Fletcher, “but many are small operators, leveraged substantially. They have a tremendous economic impact, and yet like any small businesses, when a natural disaster occurs, their livelihood can be threatened.”

Other types of Kentucky farmers will find the proposed legislation familiar, as it closely resembles drought-related relief measures sought last year. The idea is to offer low-interest loans to farms that lost 30 percent or more of their foals, with a maximum of $1.5 million available to any given farm. Another criterion outside the foal count could also be considered: “demonstrated financial need.”

“Without loan guarantees, those people would end up having to file for bankruptcy or go out of business,” observes Fletcher. “Sometimes they have to be refused on two or three loans to qualify. In fact, it’s identical to the drought legislation.”

Meanwhile, outside of the immediate relief need, he and others see this crisis as an opportunity to advance the agenda of the horse owners.

“We’re putting together a $5-billion to $6-billion agriculture supplement bill, and this is another crop,” he says. “I think in fairness we need to treat it like we do other ag industries.”

The general business and equine community has banded together with financial support as well. One of those donors, National City Bank of Kentucky, gave $25,000 through the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation to UK’s Gluck Equine Research Center in order to support research and testing associated with the fetal and foal loss problem.

“We understand the considerable humane and economic impact this current crisis will have on the thoroughbred industry, which is so vital to the state of Kentucky,” said bank president Harry Richart.

Insurers and lenders asses new rules
According to Business Insurance, most of the foal losses have been either uninsured or self-insured. The publication quoted an estimate by Chubb Corporation’s managing underwriter Ron Kirk that only $25 million of the losses are covered by insurance.

Very few stallion operations buy insurance for their stud fees. And while some were hopeful that rebreeding would eliminate many claims, results so far have been poor.

Tom Dixon notes that the cost of live foal insurance is quite prohibitive already.

“You might be looking at 20 percent-plus to buy prospective foal insurance, “ he says. “We’re all thinking about 2001, but the big repercussion will be in 2002, for several reasons. First and foremost, are these mares like my mare going to become pregnant on their cover by the stallion in 2002, or have they perhaps been permanently lost as broodmares? Second, a lot of people in 2002 will be thinking about 2001, and will be buying prospective foal coverage, but how many underwriters, knowing full well the experience in 2001, will want to underwrite full coverage in 2002?”

Bloodstock insurers are destined to pay out millions of dollars this year, severely affecting their own horizons. Even if underwriters do write the coverage, Dixon says, they might put in an exclusionary clause regarding MRLS.

“These companies, being profit-making organizations, are not going to write fire insurance with smoke coming out of the roof,” he says. He also says that doubts about a definitive answer to the syndrome will continue to surface as variations occur in symptoms and conditions.

“The idea that there’s some sort of ‘mystery disease’ is just a part of what we have to live with when we have this kind of situation,” he observes.

The epidemiology of rumor
Image and reputation count for a lot in the horse business. It’s true when things are going gangbusters … and it’s just as true when they’re going badly. So as the industry bemoans the economic spinoff effects that will mean fewer farm jobs and fewer hip numbers at auction, horse people are doubly concerned about the spin effect that MRLS will have on the attraction of future breeding, training and tourism business.

“When the outbreak occurred, we got a deluge of calls for a couple days wanting to know how quickly they could get their horses out of Kentucky,” reports Rich Thompson of Bob Hubbard Horse Transportation in Versailles. “We had one woman from Idaho who was adamant, so we moved six mares and five foals out of state, and she had us buy Montana hay and bottled water to feed them.”

But Thompson says the panic response came to a “quiet halt” thanks to the reassurances of farm managers, and the normally busy spring in the horse transportation business has proceeded apace.

Because of the relative scarcity, yearling prices may go up at the auctions this year and next. But there’s also no discounting the panic effect of almost 100 news stories appearing in 31 states, all the leading U.S. newspapers and in countries like the United Kingdom, France and New Zealand.

“On a national basis, we’re looked upon as the horse capital, and we want to make sure that we keep that fine reputation and not allow this to move those mares out of the district,” says Ernie Fletcher. “If they go out of business here, they more likely will go to other regions, which will have a deleterious effect on Central Kentucky.”

Suzi Shoemaker of Lantern Hill Farm sounds like any farmer in waxing philosophical about the crisis.

“I think anyone in farming is well aware that we deal with incredible risks from weather and viruses, diseases, every kind of natural disaster,” she observes. “We’re the first ones to feel it but it seems like the bad things come but so do the good things, and I think most of us are going to do just fine.

Kentucky Department of Agriculture Commissioner Billy Ray Smith was gratified by the maintenance of free movement of horses, with the only hiccup a brief permitting process instituted by the state of Florida.

There has been a constant line of verbal communication with bordering states and other states where we routinely ship horses,” he told the Keeneland audience. “It’s been equally important to bring horses into equine events with the assurance that participants would be able to return home with their horses. We’ve been able to nip the rumors before they’re able to cause us harm.”

Dr. Roger Murphy, President of the Kentucky Association of Equine Practitioners and the Kentucky Veterinary Medical Association, expressed both gratitude and pride at the level of professionalism demonstrated by everyone concerned, beginning with the equine veterinarians.

“The level of involvement and dedication and care for these animals has been inspiring,” he told the assembled. “Without them this situation would have been a much greater problem. I’d like to thank the horse owners and farm managers too, for bringing to us the pertinent facts, and their willingness to accommodate their normal schedules to help solve the problem. It makes me very proud to be part of an industry that can collectively unify in the face of adversity.”

Adam Bruns is associate editor of The Lane Report.
editorial@lanereport.com


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