I'd call her lucky
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
Preventative action is an action taken to reduce or eliminate the probability of specific undesirable events from happening in the future. The undesirable event happening in the equine industry right now is overpopulation of unwanted horses. The preventative action that needs to be taken is increased awareness and expansion of sterilization programs.
“The journal of Animal Science estimates that up to as many as 100,000 horses may go unwanted per year,” said Dagmar Caramello, director of the Unwanted Horse Coalition.
The unanswered problems of what to do with the current population of unwanted horses and how to prevent a future population of unwanted horses remain. Overpopulation and indiscriminate breeding is an ongoing issue in the horse industry, she said.
Unwanted Horse Coalition contributes to the efforts to reduce overpopulation by raising awareness and educating owners about indiscriminate breeding and overpopulation through its program Operation Gelding, Caramello said.
Operation Gelding, which offers castration of male horses to owners at a low cost, helps prevent over breeding, Caramello said. Castration of a male horse also produces a gentler horse that is more rideable, trainable and sellable, she said.
Several of these types of programs are available throughout the country, Caramello said. However, no such programs exist for spaying mares. Aside from therapeutic purposes, removing a mare’s reproductive organs is relatively unheard, said Saundra Ten Broeck, University of Florida assistant professor and equine extension specialist.
The procedure of removing a mare’s ovaries is currently done laparoscopically through two flank incisions. The horse remains standing for the procedure with a light sedative and a local anesthetic, Ten Broeck said.
The question open is why the equine industry does not expand sterilization programs to include spaying mares as a preventative action to reduce overpopulation.
“There is no easy, perfect solution that is going to make everyone happy,” Ten Broeck said.
Currently, this procedure is not taught in vet schools and few places offer the service. The idea of spaying mares as a means of population control is a foreign idea and would require a lot of marketing and education to become a standard practice, Ten Broeck said.
If the horse industry would support research being invested in vet schools to develop safe, affordable spaying programs, the procedure would become more available and owners would begin to do it, she said.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Ten Broeck said.
From a selling standpoint, spaying a mare also improves the marketability of the horse, Ten Broeck said. Mares are typically known for their inconsistent behavior, due to reproductive cycling. Removing the ovaries essentially turns a mare into a gelding, which is much more desirable, she said.
“A large number of mares do not need to have ovaries in the same way a large number of stallions do not need gonads,” Ten Broeck said. “They do not need to reproduce.”
However, promoting the idea of spaying mares would have little if any effect on indiscriminate breeding, Ten Broeck said. Similar to the idea that all the dog and cat spaying and neutering programs available still do not eliminate indiscriminate breeding of dogs and cats, offering spaying of mares would not eliminate indiscriminate breeding of horses, she said.
“The solution is in figuring out how to affect these people,” Ten Broeck said. “Education is key.”
