Meeting Horse Owners where they live

While Kentucky is widely thought of as Horse Country some may not realize the number of horses and horse owners that are found in each of the state’s 120 counties. Based on the 2012 Equine survey it is known where the horses and horse owners are, but it can be a challenge to reach those owners with the information they want. To meet this challenge a group of ANR agents from Caldwell, Calloway, Crittenden, Livingston, and Trigg counties joined with specialists from UK to develop a field day for horse owners hosted in Caldwell County September 5^th, 2019. When you look at the survey information these counties represented over 1110 horse enterprises and about 6800 horses.

The program developed was based on topics related to the NRCS cost share program, basic health care, establishing pastures, feeding horses, and using the NRCS program to develop a pasture system.

The agents worked with Weber’s Retire Horses LLC to serve as the host for the field day. The Weber’s facility is unique in it provides a place for horse owners to send their retired horses they are no longer competing on and know they will be well cared for. In addition, the Weber’s have been a facility that UK and NRCS has worked with to establish a number of the NRCS program initiatives from pasture management to stream crossing and a dry lot to keep horses off pasture as needed.

Having industry partners such as the Weber’s, and  the local veterinarian along with the county agents from across the area and the specialists from UK allowed  the program to show case a variety of topics that local horse owners were interested in. The over 70 people that attended were able to select the topics they were most interested in and get their questions answered. As one participant commented ‘thanks for bring this program to Western Kentucky, we appreciated you all being here”. It was a team effort with all involved contributing to the success of the field day.