Tuesday, May 15, 2001
Owners, vets cope with foal illness
No concrete reasons why so many have died
By Steve Bailey
The Associated Press
VERSAILLES, Ky. — By sunrise, equine veterinarian Chet Blackey already is well into what eventually will turn out to be another 18-hour day.
He's used to being busy from February through June, the annual thoroughbred breeding season across Kentucky. This year sleep has come at a premium as a silent killer has stalked the region's foals.
The foals are dying and mares are losing fetuses at a staggering rate. Blackey is one of dozens of vets and scientists trying to determine why.
Mares have suffered late-term miscarriages or delivered foals that were stillborn or born weak and survived only a few days. Other mares appeared to be pregnant at between 40 and 60 days, but later ultrasound tests revealed a dead fetus or empty womb.
“I've never seen anything like this — nobody has,” says Blackey, who has spent the last 17 years taking care of broodmares and their babies across central Kentucky. “I went through a stretch where it seemed like just about every foal I saw either didn't make it or needed to be hospitalized and just about every pregnant mare I examined turned up empty. Disheartening doesn't begin to describe it.”
Blackey starts his day at 4:30 a.m., walking on his treadmill while shuffling through paperwork to try to organize another hectic day. He spends from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. bouncing from farm to farm to check newborn foals and examine pregnant mares.
In a typical year, Blackey would work 10- to 12-hour days, telling most farm managers that their foals are strong and healthy and that their mares are pregnant and on a normal 11-month breeding cycle. This year nothing has been typical.
Blackey insists the sleep deprivation doesn't bother him. It's the look of sadness and disappointment in his clients' faces as he tells them the grim news, a routine he's had to perform far too many times this spring. “Everybody has a deep emotional investment in their animals,” says Blackey. “You can only tell so many people that their foals probably aren't going to make it or that their mares, for some reason I can't explain to them, are no longer pregnant before it starts to get to you a little bit.”
Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome
Scientists have a name for the mysterious condition — Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome — but no concrete reasons why foals are dying and mares are aborting their early-term pregnancies at an alarming rate. Between April 28 and noon Monday, the University of Kentucky's Livestock Disease Diagnostic Center had received 442 dead foals and late-term fetuses for testing.
Last season, the center received fewer than 70 during the same period.
In addition, as much as 25 percent of the region's mares in the early stages of pregnancy have spontaneously aborted.
Researchers theorize that a warm, dry spring followed by hard freezes and subsequent drought-like conditions spawned a fungus or toxin in the pasture grasses eaten by horses. But until they can say with certainty that is the cause, nothing has been ruled out.
Although it is too early to determine the blow to Kentucky's billion-dollar thoroughbred industry, the numbers indicate that as much as 6 percent of this year's foal crop and up to 21 percent of next year's foal crop might be lost.
“Everybody in the industry is going to feel this, whether it's immediate with a dead foal or next year when there's not as many foals,” says Tom Evans, co-owner and farm manager of Trackside Farm in Versailles. There won't be as many horses to buy or sell at auction. Maybe farmers won't need to buy as much feed as they have in the past, or maybe they won't have as many jobs available. It's going to trickle down until it hits everybody.” Evans began hearing the unsettling talk about the growing number of dead foals and early-term miscarriages the week before the Kentucky Derby.
By May 6, the day after Monarchos sprinted into the record books at Churchill Downs, Evans had two foals born dead and another taken to the hospital that died within 48 hours.
“When you rush a foal to the hospital and hear it was one of 17 or 18 admitted that same night, that certainly wakes you up,” says Evans, who manages 100 mares on three central Kentucky farms.
The following Monday, Evans had Blackey begin using ultrasound scans to check his pregnant mares. He found about 75 percent of the mares bred in February and past 60 days of gestation had aborted their fetuses. Another 50 percent of those bred in the first half of March also came up empty.
“It's extremely disappointing with those mares that were supposed to be in foal,” Evans says. “You think when they pass 60 days that you're done with them until they deliver the following spring.
“It's just a sickening feeling to put that much work into something and then, in the time it takes to do an ultrasound, you realize you're late in the season and back to square one.”
Evans says some of the mares who miscarried their early-term pregnancies, including one bred to 2000 Kentucky Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus, are back in heat and may be able to be bred again before the season ends. Many will have to wait until next year.
“All you can do is keep working and push on,” he says.
Disheartening scenes played out
The tiny chestnut foal lies listlessly on its side on a makeshift foam bed in its stall at Lexington's Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital while its mother hovers protectively nearby.
Intravenous feeding tubes from a machine outside the pen snake their way through the bars and into the nostrils of the sickly colt, whose short, labored breaths punctuate his battle to survive.
Every few minutes, the mare bends down and nudges her baby with her muzzle. Upon getting no reaction, she circles and returns to her position as guard. It's a scene Dr. Bill Barnard has become all too familiar with since owners and farm managers began delivering foals to the facility en masse the last week of April.
“We were getting 15 to 20 a day the first few days,” says Barnard, the hospital's internal medicine specialist. “All of them were extremely weak and dehydrated. Many of the ones in that first wave didn't make it. In a typical year, we'd maybe get four or five coming in on the same day. It was obvious we had a huge problem on our hands.”
By Derby day, the hospital's intensive care unit was beyond capacity and nearly 80 stalls were filled with other foals that were too ill to remain on the farm.
Like the veterinarians in the field, Barnard and the rest of the hospital staff also are working 12 to 16 hours a day, forsaking sleep and their families to slow the body count.
“This has been the most trying period in my 16 years of practice,” Barnard says. “It's frustrating to see the anxiety and fear in the faces of worried owners and farm managers and not be able to say to them, "Look, this is what's going on and this is how we're going to fix it.”'
By Saturday, the number of foals coming into the hospital had slowed to between three and six a day.
“You just continue working hard to keep these foals alive and hope you've seen the worst of it,” Barnard says.
Evans can't suppress a smile as he speaks about the two most recent additions at Trackside: a filly and a colt born before daybreak Saturday. In the hours after birth, Blackey finds both to be in good shape, healthy and strong with no signs of being affected by the syndrome.
“This filly's mother, Lite Light, won the Kentucky Oaks in 1991 and her father is Deputy Minister,” Evans says as he helps steady her so Blackey can take a blood sample. “The colt's mother is Darby Shuffle, a graded stakes winner that finished second in the 1988 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies, and his father is Grand Slam. “After what we went through last weekend, this is a very welcome sight.”
After nearly two hours at the farm, Blackey has checked nearly two dozen mares and found nothing out of the ordinary. Those who were supposed to be pregnant are pregnant, and several mares who lost early-term fetuses appear to be in heat again, ready for another try at breeding.
“I'm seeing a lot more healthy foals and normal pregnancies than I did a week ago, and that's encouraging,” Blackey says. “I'm extremely confident we're going to get through this, maybe not unscathed but a lot better than a lot of people thought we would initially. Only time will tell.”
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Owners, vets cope with foal illness