In foaling season just concluded, disease that kills foals appears to have been the second worst ever

University of Kentucky chart, with labels placed by Midway Messenger; click on it to enlarge.

The original version of this story, in May, was based on data that were misinterpreted by the Messenger, and it has been revised. We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience.

By Hayley Burris

University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media

The infection that causes Thoroughbred foals to be aborted or born dead or underdeveloped is slacking off as this year’s foaling season nears its end, but it appears to have caused the second most documented cases ever.

Nocardioform placentitis can cause the placenta to detach, causing premature birth or stillbirth.  Foals that live usually have a compromised lifespan due to being underdeveloped or undersized. 

Every year, at least a small number of horses in Kentucky are affected by this infection but this year the numbers set an apparent record, with 310 cases through April.207 cases through May. That was second only to the 328 cases in the 2010-11 foaling season.

University of Kentucky chart

Woodford County had 21 cases this season.  Fayette County has had 163 cases and Bourbon County has had 13. Cases in other counties were Scott, 5; Harrison, 2; Oldham, 2; and Shelby, 1.

The Midway Messenger was unable to identify any particular Woodford County farms with cases. Research suggests it is likelier on larger farms.

In a typical season, Kentucky has 20 to 50 cases, according to the Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center at UK. The cause of the infection remains unknown, and so does why there have been so many this year.

The Gluck center is researching that through submitted placentas, mares, and foals, with the help of $132,000 in emergency funding from the foundation that supports the center. The money comes from an endowment created to address such emergencies.

“We are very fortunate to have had the help of local practitioners and farm managers/owners to obtain samples of normal and affected placentae for research given the extremely difficult situation we all find ourselves in with the coronavirus pandemic,” Emma Adam, an assistant professor in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment said in an email.  “Our vets and farms have been amazing in still submitting samples in spite of these challenges.”

Kentucky tends to have more documented cases of nocardoioform placentitis, because it produces about 40 percent of the nation’s foals, but also because it does more research on horses, UK professors say.

Disease that threatens foals worries horse industry; 12 cases have been found in Woodford County (updated)

Chart from University of Kentucky Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory; the current total for 2020 is 121.

This story has been updated to include numbers as of March 7, and corrected monthly numbers.
By Hayley Burris

University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media

               The horse industry in the Bluegrass is worried about a higher-than-usual number of Thoroughbred mares with a disease that threatens their foals.

               Nocardioform placentitis is a bacterial infection that causes separation of the placenta, keeping oxygen and nutrients from the fetus and causing it to be aborted, born dead or underdeveloped.

               This foaling season, 102 121 cases have been identified by the University of Kentucky Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory: 76 91 in Fayette County, eight 10 12 each in Woodford and Bourbon counties, two each three in Scott and, two in Harrison, and one in Shelby. Not all the cases involve Thoroughbreds.

               In only five three years since 1991 have the numbers been higher than the number of cases already reported during this foaling season. Other spikes occurred in 1998, 1999, 2003, 2011 and 2017. (See chart.) The highest number, 328 cases, was in 2011. In 2017, 132 cases were identified.

               The number of cases typically peaks before the foaling season peaks, and that seems to be the case this season. In December and January, respectively, there were 28 16 and 57 40 cases. So far this month, there have been 14, and if that rate continued, the month’s total would be 21. In February, there were 61 cases, but only one so far in March.

               The eight Woodford County cases so far through Feb. 19 were have been one abortion, six stillborn foals, and one placenta that was confirmed with the bacteria that cause the disease.

               The Midway Messenger was unable to identify any particular Woodford County farms with cases of the disease. Two of the large farms that were contacted declined to make immediate comment; another said it had no cases. So did one small farm.

               “Analysis of affected farms indicates larger farms with more pregnant mares and higher stocking densities are at great risk,” said Jackie Smith, an assistant professor of veterinary science at UK. “Preliminary data indicate that mares that spend more time in the barns are at risk of developing the disease; increased grazing times appear protective.”

               Smith also said in the interview, “We really don’t know how nocardioform gets into the mares in the first place.”

               To help find an answer, the foundation that supports the Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center at UK recently released extra emergency funding of $132,000 for research on the disease. The money comes from an endowment created to address such emergencies.

               More nocardiform cases are reported from Kentucky for at least two reasons. First, the state has around 9,000 Thoroughbred foals a year, about 40 percent of the foal crop. Second, the state has “highly tuned equine-health surveillance mechanisms” that catch cases, said a UK news release about the university’s response to the outbreak. UK scientists publish every case they identify, while other states may not due to their smaller populations of horses.

               Of the 75 cases identified this season, 14 were from placentas submitted for testing and 61 were foals assumed to be aborted.  The number only includes finalized cases and not any ongoing or pending.  It also does not include unreported cases, such as foals that survived, or cases that were diagnosed elsewhere than the UK lab.

               Also, some small farms may not ask for tests because of the cost. Testing a placenta at the lab costs $100, and the fee for a post-mortem examination is $175.

               UK is starting to provide test kits for veterinarians to use on farms to help them monitor mares in foal.  Veterinarians enroll mares that they think may have the disease, and a mare on the same farm is also tested, as a control for research purposes.

               UK scientists say mares should be constantly checked throughout pregnancy and evaluated after giving birth.

               The UK news release said, “This is an extremely complicated disease, primarily because there does not seem to be a simple causative relationship between the pathogen(s) and the condition. Another contributing factor is that identification of affected mares is difficult and often delayed,” so harm is often done before a case is identified.

Ashley Fowler's talk on horses wins Toastmasters award

Ashley Fowler with her contest master, Cynthia Lanham

Ashley Fowler of Midway placed first in Midway Toastmasters’ International Speech contest with her speech, "Straight From the Horse's Mouth,” and now she advances to the area contest in Lexington Feb. 22.

Fowler is a researcher at the University of Kentucky, where she earned her Ph.D. in equine nutrition. She is a post-doctoral scholar in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences in the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment.

In her speech, Fowler shared three lessons she has learned from working with horses since she was 10 years old.

First, horses respond more positively to someone who is confident. Second, different horses have different personalities, a communication style that works for one horse may not work for another.

Third, it's important to be empathetic and try to understand why a horse is pinning its ears back (a sore back?) or refusing to step in a puddle (fear that the puddle is too deep?). Fowler said she's found that these principles also apply to interactions with humans.

Chef Ouita Michel of Midway recognized at UK football game for championing Kentucky's local-food movement

News release and video by University of Kentucky Public Relations and Marketing

The accolades for Kentucky’s food scene have been rolling in the last several years, and few leaders are as responsible for growing the state’s culinary landscape as University of Kentucky alumna Ouita Michel.

Before UK's home football game against the University of Louisville on Saturday, the celebrated chef and restaurateur was recognized on Kroger Field for her work as one of the original champions of Kentucky’s local food movement.

Saturday's rain didn't keep Ouita Michel off the football field.

A James Beard Foundation Award nominee as Outstanding Restaurateur and Best Chef in the Southeast, Michel has built a regional restaurant empire that now includes such popular establishments as Zim’s Cafe, Honeywood, Holly Hill Inn, The Midway Bakery, Smithtown Seafood, Wallace Station, Windy Corner Market and Restaurant and Glenn’s Creek Café.

Michel majored in political science at the UK College of Arts and Sciences and was a member of the debate team, the honors program (now Lewis Honors College) and the first class of Gaines Fellows. In 1986, she became only the second woman to win a national debate championship.

After earning her bachelor’s degree, Michel moved to New York where she graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and met her husband, Chris. The two returned to Kentucky in 1993 for their wedding, and opened their first restaurant, Holly Hill Inn in Midway, in 2000 where she became one of the state’s pioneers of using local-sourced products.

Former Messenger intern explores communication in Midway; social-media posts can drive news events

Sarah Ladd discussed her research on April 29.

By Al Cross
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media

For a town of 1,800 and a ZIP code of about 3,000, Midway is well covered by news and information media. The Midway Messenger provides continuous online coverage of events and issues, with a print edition about twice a year; The Woodford Sun regularly covers City Council meetings and other events in the town; and the Midway Musings social-media site has a large following.

All that was ideal grist for the mill of Sarah Ladd, who interned as a Messenger reporter last summer, recently graduated with honors from UK, then joined the Louisville Courier Journal as a reporter.

For her honors capstone course, she studied mass communication in Midway. The town is a good test bed for “The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism” defined by Steve Outing of The Poynter Institute in 2005, Ladd said in presenting her study after the monthly community dinner at Midway Christian Church on April 29.

For Midway residents, some of her more interesting findings were the results of an online survey she conducted. It had 62 respondents. Asked where they get daily news, 22 said the Midway Messenger and 22 said Midway Musings, a “secret” Facebook group that has almost 700 members and has become an important communication platform for the town.

Chart by Sarah Ladd; for a larger, clearer version, click on it

After the top two, at 35 percent, came The Woodford Sun’s print edition, at 16.1% (10 people); the Residents of Northridge Estates closed Facebook group, 6.45% (four people); other social media, 3.23% (two people) and the Sun online, 1.6% (one person).

The impact of Midway Musings was illustrated in late July when Mayor Grayson Vandegrift said he would appoint a City Council committee to study changing the official name of Main Street to Railroad Street, which it was once called and is still called by some people. The idea was proposed on Midway Musings by local historian and merchant Bill Penn.

Vandegrift told the Messenger, "I hesitated to bring something from Midway Musings straight into potential policy without appearance by an individual at a council meeting, but this really isn’t the first time the idea has come up, and the Musings post helped show how much support this might have."

He told Ladd for her paper that he primarily gets news from the Messenger and The Woodford Sun. “I follow Musings and Northridge as well, but consider it communication more than news.” Ladd put it this way: "It’s a nice platform that people are using to facilitate news."

In her paper, she noted that the Northridge site spread word of a burglary and the official response, "breaking news." Midway Musings discourages political content, but a posting encouraging members to attend a City Council meeting to support resolution welcoming refugees to Kentucky stirred such controversy that city leaders delayed action until they could hold a public forum on the issue.

Ladd told the after-dinner crowd, “It was really interesting that a social-media group and a newspaper tied for first place,” she said. Anticipating that, she included in her survey this question: “If you used social media more than five years ago for any reason, how has it affected your knowledge of what goes on in the Midway area?” The result: 82 percent said it had increased their knowledge.

Musings founder Blake Jones said, "I want to always support forums where people can disagree without being disagreeable. I love Midway so much, and I think it is a town of exceptional people. Our diversity is our strength. "Social media gives people an anonymity at times that is not healthy, in my opinion. . . . We must all remember to measure our words, and remember that they can have consequences. Even online."

Midway Musings’ competitive impact, at least among people who voluntarily took the online survey, has been greatest on the Sun. Asked whether they had paid more or less attention to the Sun in the last five years, 39% said they paid less attention, 43% said they paid the same amount of attention, and 18 percent said they paid more attention.

Asked the same question about the Messenger, 68% said they paid more attention to it than five years ago. Ladd didn’t provide exact figures for the other respondents, but had a chart showing that by far, most of the rest said they paid the same amount of attention.

Ladd's paper noted that Sun Editor John McGary used "open sourcing" through social media to get sources for a story. "It’s so much different than having a straight, pre-approved list of experts you might call for something," she told the dinner crowd.

Ladd concluded in her paper, "The success of Midway’s current communication systems seems to be largely thanks to its size. The education levels and the sense of community trust cause the level of quality communication the small town enjoys."