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CNN Live Saturday

Kentucky's Horse Breeding Industry Is Threatened by Mysterious Disease

Aired May 12, 2001 - 13:23   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DONNA KELLEY, CNN ANCHOR: A medical mystery is threatening one of Kentucky's best known industries. Something is wrong with the health of some horses in the state's big-time breeding business. We get the story from CNN's Eileen O'Connor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

EILEEN O'CONNOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dawn at Keenland race track, millions of dollars of thoroughbreds running through their paces. Beauty in motion.

Success here at the track can bring hundreds of thousands in prize money. Later, breeding winners brings even more. Stud fees can go as high as $400,000. Their offspring, millions.

(on camera): In Kentucky, horse breeding is a $1.2 billion industry, but for people here it's so much more. It's their life.

(voice-over): But this year, they have lost over 300 foals in Kentucky and a number of others lost in the early stages of pregnancy, nearly three times the normal rate.

A foal born this morning, too weak to walk, is brought to Dr. Bill Bernard who says whatever is striking the young and unborn, it is not contagious.

DR. BILL BERNARD, VETERINARIAN: So, it's not a disease that is going to leave this area and be transmitted to others parts of the country or other horses, and it's very, very, very likely that is a mycotoxin.

O'CONNOR: A mycotoxin is a kind of poison to horses, from a fungus that seems to have grown in the grass after an unusual drought followed by freeze. The likely cause, but not sure. Over 1,000 breeders came to a meeting of scientists from the University of Kentucky, vets and nutritionists.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Has the infestation of caterpillars been ruled out as any link whatsoever?

KYLE NEWSMAN, NUTRITIONAL MICROBIOLOGIST: Nothing is being ruled out, and we don't know what is going on. O'CONNOR: At Gaulstown stud farm, they are still sending mares like Irish and Foxy for breeding, but are giving them a supplement that binds to the toxin, reducing its effect. Those already pregnant they keep in stalls overnight and on mowed fields.

(on camera): The first horse they ever bred they named Mystery of Faith, and they say that is what they are going on now, faith that this won't happen again.

Eileen O'Connor, CNN, Versailles, Kentucky.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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