People are always asking the American Horse Council how many horses are in rescues?  How & Why did they get there? How many horses get adopted and how quickly? – and so much more. The American Horse Council Foundation's staff researcher, Kelsey Buckley - also the Program Administrator for the Equine Welfare Data Collective, will discuss a 5 year project that surveys 1200 horse rescues across the country to find out the answers  to these questions and much more--- all of which helps the industry develop programs to support aftercare.   Listen in...

HORSES IN THE MORNING Episode 3766 –Show Notes and Links:

• Your Hosts: Julie Broadway (President) and Emily Stearns (Health, Welfare, and Regulatory Affairs Liaison) of the American Horse Council
• Guest: Kelsey Buckley, The American Horse Council Foundation's staff researcher
• Sponsors: SmartEquine | Absorbine
• Subscribe to the American Horse Council Podcast - Search American Horse Council Podcast on your podcast player.
• Follow Horse Radio Network on Facebook or follow Horses In The Morning on Facebook
• Follow the American Horse Council on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter)

Time Stamps:

05:11 - Introduction to the Equine Welfare Data Collective

10:25 - Trends in Horse Ownership: Challenges and Resources

14:10 - Introducing the NADPREP Grant

20:05 - Internship Opportunities and Insights

22:40 - The Impact of Drones on the Horse Industry

Takeaways:

• The Equine Welfare Data Collective is essential for understanding the needs of horse rescues and sanctuaries.
• Recent data reveals a notable increase in requests for direct placement of horses within their homes.
• Programs aimed at providing safety net services face challenges in meeting increasing demands for veterinary assistance.
• The American Horse Council is actively working to improve horse welfare through collaborative efforts with various organizations.
• The NAD Prep Grant will enhance biosecurity practices at equine welfare organizations, ensuring better health for horses.
• Increased participation in the Equine Welfare Data Collective surveys indicates a growing commitment to equine welfare among organizations.

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What a beautiful day for Horses in the morning.

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Here is your entertaining look at the horse world and the people in it.

Hello Horse World.

It's time to hear from the American Horse Council in this monthly episode of Horses in the Morning.

Folks.

I'm flying solo this month because Emily Stearns, my usual co host, is out on maternity leave.

Baby Stearns was born on Sunday, August 3rd and she is one of the most beautiful babies I've ever seen.

Not that there's a title for this, but I'm calling myself the Proud Boss Grandma, if that's a thing.

So we are wishing her and the family really well.

They're doing great and she'll be back with us next month.

So this month we have a fantastic topic to discuss.

People are always asking us how many horses are in rescues and sanctuaries, how did they get there, why and how many get adopted and how quickly?

And so many other questions.

So our staff, what I call Resident researcher, which is Kelsey Buckley, is with us today to talk about our five year project called the Equine Welfare Data collective.

And it helps our industry develop programs that will facilitate horses staying at home with their owners and or getting adopted.

So for example, did you know based upon this data that the ASPCA partnered with the American association of Equine Practitioners to offer a program called Vet Direct, which helps horse owners struggling to keep their horses access to discounted veterinary services.

And the American Horse Council foundation has partnered with ASPCA and the American Farriers association on new program that's rolling out probably in October called Farrier Direct Model after Vet Direct.

With the same idea in mind, we're going to help horse owners that need assistance with basic services so they can keep their horses at home.

Home.

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Kick this episode off by introducing you to Kelsey Buckley.

She is our Equine Welfare Data Collective Program Administrator.

But it's a whole lot more than that, folks.

She previously did volunteer work at animal shelters in New England throughout the years as well.

She graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a bachelor's degree in Equine Management.

And along with doing the Equine Welfare Data Collective and the United Horse Coalition, Kelsey was also the outbound manager for one of the largest equestrian goods distributors in New England.

She's going to be leaving that position because you're going to hear later on that we were very fortunate to receive what's called a NAD Prep grant from usda.

A lifelong equestrian, she currently resides in New Hampshire with her family and they have two huskies and two geldings.

So we're excited to have her with us.

Kelsey, before we talk about all the research you've been doing, please confirm to all those in the audience that Baby Stearns is one the most beautiful babies that has been ever conceived.

It is so sweet and cute.

I can confirm Baby Sturms is definitely the most beautiful baby girl.

I have been lucky enough to have received a plethora of smooshy baby pictures so far and I cannot get enough of them.

I'm so excited.

It's nothing like adding a member to our Little American Horse Council family.

So great.

So now let's switch gears and let's talk about the Equine Welfare Data Collective.

Tell everyone why we needed to do this and why it's so important.

It's a collaborative initiative that collects, analyzes and reports data from equine welfare organizations such as rescues, sanctuaries, and organizations that offer direct placement and safety net programs as well.

So we can take these numbers and see where we can improve the programming for these at risk equines.

We can hear what the rescues are saying, but the EWDC reports give the facts to support what we are hearing.

It's so important to have factual data to have a true understanding of where funding can be directed and what sort of efforts rescues and sanctuaries, granters and donors can be focusing on to support these horses, ponies, donkeys, mules, all the above that we all love so much.

So before the Equine Welfare Data Collective was formed, we used to talk sort of about antidotes like we think there are this many or we think there's this or we think there's that.

And we were just kind of talking off the top of our heads.

So the Equine Welfare Data Collective really came to be because the American Horse Council and the ASPCA and the Right Horse all got together and said we really need to have some hard coal facts.

And we have been so pleased with all of the rescues and sanctuaries that have supported this effort and they've really given us a lot of stuff.

So Kelsey, talk a little bit about what the last report told us.

For that report we saw a 27% increase in increase in participation from the previous year, which was super exciting.

I can give you some of the key takeaways we had in that report.

There was an increase in request for direct placement, which means these owners were keeping their horses in their home and they asked an organization for help finding new owner.

We also saw that programs that offered safety net services had a harder time filling the requests that came into into them, particularly veterinary assistance requests.

Region two, which is made up of New Jersey, New York and puerto Rico.

Region 6, which is made up of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, the Carolinas and Tennessee.

So a bigger region and region.

Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada all reported over being over 100% capacity filled.

So that's so important folks, that if we find pockets of places across the country where they are at max capacity, they have no more room to take on.

We really are trying so hard to create this network of rescues and sanctuaries so that if someone needs to relinquish a horse or surrender a horse, they know that they can't go to a rescue in their immediate area.

But their rescue in the area that they might happen to reside in can network with others in other places and place those horses in places where they stand a better chance of being adopted.

So this is not just about what do the numbers say, it's not just about the facts and the figures.

It's about figuring out how we can create sort of this larger community of rescues and sanctuaries so that everybody can, you know, what did they say?

That's saying, kelsey, you know, all tides lift, all boats or whatever that phrase is.

So that's what this is about, is how do we.

Collaboration, collaboration, how do we make all this happen so that we, you know, are more effective, more efficient.

Stretching our resources, really thinking hard about ways that we can support horse owners who suddenly discover that they have some kind of financial challenge, they have a health issue, maybe they've gotten older and they can no longer keep these horses at home.

We often hear from people who call us and say, mom and dad have passed and the kids have inherited the farm and we're not horsey kids and we need to figure out how we're going to do this.

And a lot of people think, oh, well, I can just donate this horse to a university, I can give it to a school program or a 4H program, or they have all these different ideas of what they can do with these.

And not all horses are naturally fit into that kind of a scenario.

So we spend a lot of time trying to look through all the data that we collect and say, how do we better educate horse owners so they know what their options are, they think ahead, they may put together a better will to sort of stipulate what they want to have happen.

We want them to be responsible and smart about what they're thinking of because oftentimes these horses outlive them and that's, you know, not a bad thing.

It means we have to make a plan.

Exactly.

So, Kelsey, what are some of the trends that you've noticed over the last few years?

What were the surprises you saw and why were they a surprise?

Or what were the things that you really were shocked that were like challenges and what we need to do to try to figure them out.

So this actually follows up on your point quite nicely.

So one of, I think one of the most interesting trends that we've tracked is the why horse owners are having to re home their horses.

The top three reasons are owner related.

These are owner finances, owner health, and owner age.

Everything's just so costly and horses are very expensive to love with costs going up.

I do worry about more owners having to look into rehoming or surrendering their horses and potentially putting more organizations over capacity.

And spoiler alert for report 8, we see that number to go up over 600.

So that means more organizations are offering safety net services and direct placement services, keeping horses out of rescues and sanctuaries and with their owners.

Alongside that, like you mentioned, there are programs like Vet Direct and farrierdirect that are coming together to assist in these efforts as well, to help keep these horses in their home and out of the rescue and sanctuary system.

So if you're out there and you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, so what does all this mean for me?

We want to encourage you to go to the United Horse Coalition website because we have a resource database.

So if you find yourself in some difficult circumstances and you need some help, you can go to the database and you can say, point me to places near me that have hey, banks or feed coupons or can you tell me where I can find these kinds of services?

And I'm not talking about just any old thing.

We have people that call us and say, I need a running shed.

And I'm not at that stage in my life where I can build a run in shed.

I'll buy all the materials, but can you find somebody that can help me build a run in shed?

And we're like, oh, we have a deal for you.

Because we have Eagle Scouts and we have church programs and we have a lot of other volunteer organizations that are happy to come and help with those kinds of things.

So the entire premise behind the database is if you need something, go search.

It'll give you some ideas.

And if you don't find what you're looking for, we now have a new oh, we're so excited.

We call it the Lifeline.

It's a chat bot.

And what it does is it allows you to tell what you're looking for, ask some questions, it'll give you some directions and help you find what you're looking for.

And if it can't help you, then you can file a trouble ticket.

And our good friend Ashley Harkins over at the United Horse Coalition will get back with you with some other suggestions and those kinds of things.

We partner really closely with state horse councils, a home for every horse, a lot of different organizations.

So we're really leveraging the power of all of these groups that are really focusing on after care for horses and trying to find ways to help horse owners figure out how they can keep a horse at home if at all possible.

And if they can't, how to gently surrender that horse to a place that will take it and maybe do some retraining, give it a second career, find it a new home, all kinds of things like that.

So check all, all that out.

Okay, so we've talked a little bit about the Equine Welfare Data Collective and the United Horse Coalition.

But I want to get Kelsey to talk a little bit about our new project, which is called the NAD prep grant.

The U.S. department of Agriculture offers these grants and they have several different categories.

And we were very fortunate that we outlined what we thought was a really great project and they accepted it and we got, okay, Kelsey, $268,000 I think to do this over the course of the next couple of years.

So tell everybody a little bit about the NADPREP grant.

Yes, we are so excited and so thankful to have received this grant.

Our project that we're doing is titled Assessing and Improving Biosecurity at Equine Welfare Organizations.

And that is exactly what we will be doing.

We know that though some rescues might already have protocols in place, some might not have gotten to the point in running their resc.

Have the knowledge or the means to standardize their biosecurity protocols yet.

With this project we want to raise awareness of just how important it is to have biosecurity measures and improve the accessibility of resources and supplies to rescues and sanctuaries.

This project will help improve the welfare of at risk horses and the programs that are supporting them in a whole new way that hasn't been done before.

It will also help horse owners as a whole throughout the United States prevent disease outbreaks in the national herd as well.

So we're very excited for this.

Stay tuned.

It's very exciting work.

So if you are a rescuer sanctuary out there listening to this, a couple of things you should know.

The first step in the process is going to be an online survey to help assess your knowledge about biosecurity and what your current practices are.

There'll also be some online learning and you'll go through the process and at the end you'll sort of test out to make sure we've, we've learned about this.

They were also going to do a handful of on site follow up assessments.

So you told us what you did and we're going to come out and work with some partners like the Thoroughbred Aftercare alliance and the Standard Bread alliance and others to go out, sort of assess real time what that is.

So we're figuring that out a little bit and then the final stage of the project is we're going to offer micro grants.

So if you are a rescuer, a sanctuary, and you need help with biosecurity, you could apply for a grant and, and get ppe, which is protective equipment like gloves and wash stations and different things that will help you ensure that you have good biosecurity practices.

Now, the reason we chose this project was because when horses are surrendered to a rescue or sanctuary, they come from lots of different places and we don't know their medical history.

So you can't just throw a brand new horse into the herd at a rescue because you never know what you're going to expose the rest of the horses to.

So you have to think really smart about how you disinfect your stalls, your trailer, how do you quarantine horses?

What are the ways to ensure that you're not injecting a horse who has been surrendered to you into a herd where it might give them, I don't know, strangles or something else that they brought along with them?

Not intentionally, but it ends up becoming a much larger challenge.

So the whole premise behind this is let's ensure that where we have horses that are commingling that we have good biosecurity practices.

We have worked really hard on this project with the United States Equestrian Federation, the League of Ag and Equine Centers, naca, which is the National Animal Control association, to say, what are the vulnerable points where horses get thrown together and they can give each other something unintentionally?

And this.

We're excited about this project to see if there's some ways that we can make a big difference in the overall herd health.

Because we're putting in these biosecurity practices that will ensure that we're at least being proactive and smart about, you know, sort of how we go about this.

So, okay, so what else, Kelsey, do you want our listeners to know?

So I think I will leave you with this.

Number one, stay tuned.

Free WDC report eight.

Eight.

I can't believe there's eight of them already.

It's in the works right now and I'm super excited to see what comes out of it.

With yet another increase in participation.

We are off to an incredible start.

If you're an equine welfare organization listening today, get your submissions in for survey number one.

If you're a UHC slash, a home for every horse member as well, you will get some incredible benefits by participating in the EWD survey, including a booklet appearing of food coupons by going to the unitedhorse coalition.org submit submit-data.

You can find the button to submit your data to us.

And number three, I am so excited for all the wonderful projects ahc, UHC and EWDC has going on.

We are some very busy gals, and I could not love it more.

Well, we'll also close with this.

So I talk about this a lot, but at the American Horse Council, we are a small but mighty team, and we all really are passionate about what we do, and we really lean in.

But in addition to that, we have spring, summer, and fall internships.

So Kelsey is going to benefit from having, I think, two interns help her with the NAD Prep grant.

So we're really excited about that.

They'll get to do some data analysis.

They'll get to do a lot of fun things with that.

Right now, we just announced our fall internships, and we have a lot of different projects going.

I think I counted eight or nine at least, Kelsey.

I mean, wow.

And we're busy.

We're very busy.

And these are great opportunities for students.

They are all remote.

And we assign you a project.

We outline what the scope of the project is.

We assign you a mentor who meets with you probably for 30 minutes once a week, make sure things are staying on track.

And at the end of the semester, you produce a report and you share that report with the staff and with maybe some of our committees.

And I have to be honest and say, just this week, we had a report from two interns that worked all summer long on one of our hot button issues, which is trying to address unsanctioned horse racing because there's a lot of disease involved and a lot of illicit drugs and medications that are given to horses that are in unsanctioned racing.

So it's dangerous for the horses, it's dangerous for the jockeys.

It's not a good picture.

And they did such a fantastic job that the racing committee met with them and said, will you stay another semester?

So generally our interns come.

They stay one semester.

But I think going into this fall, we have a couple of interns that are going to stay on because they really enjoyed the research that they were doing, and it was.

It was really worthwhile.

So, Kelsey, thank you so much for the update.

If people want to reach you, what email address should they correspond with you at?

They can reach me@ewdccorseconsult horsecouncil.org okay.

Awesome.

Okay.

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Whether it's helping soothe muscles or joint pain, protecting your horses from biting or nuisance flies, caring for their hooves, or helping them just look like a champion.

Absorbing is dedicated to horse care, so for more information you can visit absorbing.com okay, so our legislative and regulatory update today is that the Federal Aviation Administration, also known as the faa, and the Transportation Security Administration or the tsa, have jointly published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the federal registry, which is where all new rules go that you can go out and look at that could reshape how unmanned aircraft systems, commonly called drones, operate in the US Airspace.

The proposal is titled Normalizing Unmanned Aircraft Systems for Visual Line of Sight Operations, and it outlines the steps to expand drone operations beyond the operator's direct line of sight, while integrating new safety and security measures.

These proposed rules are a significant implementation challenge for the horse industry and rural communities as drone technology becomes more prevalent.

Equine operations, training facilities Rural landowners have increasingly reported concerns about low flying drones disturbing their horses.

They're buzzing the pasture.

Horses are getting themselves worked up.

It's not necessarily the most comfortable thing to look out and see a drone flying over the top of your horses out the back window of the house.

So it creates some safety hazards and it causes some privacy concerns.

So conversely, drones are also being adopted for a lot of beneficial reasons, such as pasture management or perimeter monitoring or even event photography.

So why does this matter to the horse industry at all?

So the first issue is safety.

Horses are flight animals and they can spook easily.

So like I said, low flying drones can pose risk during training, transport, or competition.

The second point is privacy and property rights.

So expanding these operations could lead to more drones operating over private properties without an owner's knowledge, which causes people a lot of concerns.

And the third issue is what we call opportunities.

A clear regulatory framework could encourage responsible use of drones for farm management, equine event coverage and emergency response.

So I say all this to invite you to let us hear from you.

The American Horse Council is going to be submitting comments on behalf of the equine industry, but your input is just crucial.

Please share any experiences, concerns or recommendations related to drone use around your horses so that we can ensure your voice is represented.

You can send an email to Emily Stearns.

She'll be back from maternity leave in a few weeks and she's at E Stearns S T E A R n s@horsecouncil.org that'll be in the show notes and she's going to compile what we hear back.

In addition to us filing comments, you may also file your own comments because the FAA and TSA are also accepting public comments directly through the docket on the Federal registry, and that's at www.federalregistry.gov and comments must be submitted before the deadline that's noted in this notice.

So take the opportunity to kind of reflect on how drones might impact you and your facility and either send us a note or file your own comments so that we are very loud and very clear about how we would like to see this implemented.

Thank you for joining us today.

We'll provide more numbers and links in our show Notes.

We invite you to support our beloved industry and join the American Horse Council.

You can earn a free subscription to our monthly newsletter in addition to a lot of other discounts on great products and membership now also includes your choice of a couple of different magazines that we offer.

So we share our latest in legislative happenings, both federal and state, as well as a lot of other information that horse owners like you need to know.

You can follow us on social media and you can find us on Facebook, Instagram X, which is formerly Twitter, and LinkedIn.

And you can also subscribe to the podcast RSS feed.

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Stay tuned.

Next month we've got another great podcast planned and we're really excited to introduce you to some new folks.

Have a great day.