MIDWAY — Researchers hope a new environmental monitoring program will give them the clues to solve the most devastating mystery that the state's $1 billion thoroughbred industry has ever faced.

        They still do not know after nearly a full year of searching exactly what caused more than 500 foals to die and thousands of pregnancies to end prematurely on central Kentucky horse farms.

        As a pre-emptive measure, a dozen farms are being closely monitored by researchers this year for abnormal molds, bacteria and fungi, mineral levels in soil and grasses, cyanide sources such as clover, and weather patterns similar to those that occurred last year.

        Blood and urine samples also will be taken periodically from mares, analyzed and stored for later comparisons.

        Fayette County extension agent Wayne Long and University of Kentucky graduate student Andrea Reinowski spent much of Thursday afternoon at Three Chimneys Farm, clipping clover and other pasture grasses and digging up small soil samples to be bagged, marked and sent out for analysis.

Henning

        “We want to be ready — on farms and on sites on a continuing basis — to have some ongoing data in hand,” University of Kentucky agronomist Jimmy Henning said Thursday. “That way, if we start to see a change, we'll be able to say, "OK, this is how it was before we had the problem and this is how it was during and after problem.'

        “We didn't have that information last year. This should allow us to make better conclusions about what, if anything, is going on.”

        Last year, as thoroughbred racing's premier showcase — the Kentucky Derby — approached May 5, pregnant mares began delivering sickly foals that needed days of medical treatment to survive, if they lived at all.

        By the time the deaths subsided, 3.8 percent of the state's 2001 foal crop and a staggering 15 percent of the foals that would have been born on Kentucky farms this spring were lost.

        Economists from the University of Louisville's Department of Equine Management have estimated the economic loss at about $336 million.

        There have been no indications that Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome (MRLS) will again appear out of nowhere to stun the industry.

        “We're in contact with veterinarians who are on the farms all the time tracking mares and seeing how they're foaling,” Mr. Henning said. “They're all happy, so that makes me happy.”

        According to the university's Livestock Disease Diagnostic Center, 328 abortions from horses of all breeds were delivered for examination between Dec. 30 and March 16.

        During the same time period the year before, 344 equine abortions were submitted. The annual mean during the same period from 1996 to 2000 was 320.6.

        “We're seeing nothing out of the ordinary yet,” said Nancy Cox, the College of Agriculture's new associate dean for research. “But everything seemed normal at this time last year before the trouble started.”

        Ms. Cox said efforts to pinpoint the cause of last year's mysterious outbreak are not limited to the environmental monitoring project.

        Researchers also are working on projects to determine the extent to which suspected causal agents like cyanide, Eastern tent caterpillars and mycotoxins — fungus-based poisons in pasture grasses — were involved.

        “These projects are designed to give us some definitive answers,” Ms. Cox said. “Does cyanide play a role in MRLS? Do caterpillars really contribute to the problem in some way? That's what we're hoping to discover.”

        One innovative project will thrust the caterpillars — at first thought to be at the heart of the problem — back into the forefront and into living quarters with pregnant mares.

        Scientists originally thought the caterpillars, who feed on cyanide-laced wild cherry tree leaves, somehow transmitted the cyanide to the pregnant mares through their droppings. They have since backed off from that theory.

        Beginning in mid-April, researchers will place pregnant mares into small stalls and pasture spaces infested with about twice the density of caterpillars found on farms throughout the region last spring.

        By midsummer, they hope to know if there really is a strong correlation between caterpillars and foal deaths, Ms. Cox said.

        “The leased mares will be at about the same stage of pregnancy as those that had problems last year. Although all of the conditions will not be replicated exactly, we should be able to get some kind of indication if caterpillars are really involved or not.”

        Ms. Cox said all of the research done this spring, including the environmental monitoring, will give the industry a treasure trove of information that was sorely lacking when the syndrome hit last year.

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