Posted 2009-04-21 1:05 AM (#103706 - in reply to #103673) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Veteran
Posts: 177 Location: East London South Africa
Wow this is tragic....I actually dont have words to describe how I feel about it. I wouldnt rule out foul play there...it is very competative at that level and a lot of those people (I know I am generalizing here) dont really care for their horses...the only time they see them is when they play...
Posted 2009-04-21 7:06 AM (#103712 - in reply to #103673) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Veteran
Posts: 177 Location: East London South Africa
Hi Retento
I dont really think you could ever replace them....
good horses are born with talent, so the trick is finding them...so you just start buying new horses with the breeding and confirmation you like, then start training them...about 80% or even more will be sold on within the 1st two or three months. If I were to guess, it would probably take about 4 or 5 years for these guys, cos they will most probably have a few second string horses comeing on. The best Polo horses are about 10yrs old and finding suitable candidated can be hard. Most of them are horses off the track, which are trained and brought on slowly....well thats the idea anyway.
Unfortunately Polo does not have the best name when it comes to careing for their horses. Sure they are fed ok and look the part under saddle...but they are just numbers unfortunately. I have bought quite a few horses from Polo and not one of them knew what a carrot was.
Polocrosse on the other hand is a one horse sport - so the individuals actually know their horses name and tend to care more for them.
It is very sad to see something like this happen, no matter in what dicipline....lets just hope the find out what caused it and deal with the senario properly...
Posted 2009-04-21 7:21 AM (#103714 - in reply to #103673) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Elite Veteran
Posts: 648 Location: Coconut Creek, FL
I live about 30 miles from Wellington and trail ride there regularly. During the "season - Nov -April, Wellington is the horse capital of Fla as about 25,000 high calibur horses come in to compete in Gran Prix show jumping (Olympic horses), Dressage, Hunter/Jumper, and Polo. Full board during this time period will run $1,500-$2,000 a month for the seasonal horses.
I have several friends that live there and I trailer up and we'll ride their rather nice trail system and ride past homes and matching barns worth millions. The huge warmbloods will be out in the pastures kicking up their heels and they do ride them on the trail system as well which has over 50 miles in this surburban town.
It's pretty neat how they exercise the polo ponies, as one rider will ride one horse and have 3-5 on a lead trotting them around a huge track.
Palm Beach Equine is one of the top equine faciltiies in the world and they have 20+ vets there. I had to take my horse there last year for surgery and got to mingle with million dollar warmbloods that were also there for various illness. The staff there are VERY caring as I spent the day there waiting for my horse's surgery. His got bumped when a colic emergency came up and I certainly let them take that horse first. I noticed the vet techs grooming horses, kissing them, really loving on them, and it was nice to see how much they cared about the horses.
This has been a tremendous blow to the people there and the local TV stations have shown the strong sad reactions by many of the grooms, vet techs, and the vets.
I sure hope they figure out what went wrong and quickly, but it's gotta be some kind of poison to affect so many.
Posted 2009-04-21 2:20 PM (#103734 - in reply to #103673) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Member
Posts: 21
Location: Poolville, Texas
Betcha a hundred this winds up being an insurance deal. Could only be three things, blister bugs (alfalfa), competitor poisoned, insurance fraud. I have seen/heard of these type deals before and it was either blister bugs or insurance.
Posted 2009-04-22 7:51 AM (#103750 - in reply to #103673) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Location: Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain...
It is hard for me to imagine insurance on 21 horses at the same time...kind of like having all of your trucks and trailers stolen at the same time. Could happen, but logic says no.
The news is still all over the place on it. I read three or four different articles dated today or late yesterday, and they still don't know anything other than it was something put into their system. I have to wonder if they were given any required shots that came from the same batch and were bad. Hard for me to imagine a trainer for a team using something new right before a match and using it on the whole team of horses. Also hard for me to imagine someone poisoning 21 horses.
Posted 2009-04-22 10:14 AM (#103756 - in reply to #103673) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Elite Veteran
Posts: 714 Location: Minnesota
I hate to think the worst before the fact are known. It seems like the principles are not really saying much.
My first thought was maybe something was bad in the feed. Fifteen years ago I lost a bunch of lambs because they used corn with aflitoxin when the feed was mixed. It took three weeks to find out for sure, but we had a good hunch it was in the feed and pulled that right away to limit our loss. We never got anything from the feed company because they were not aware of the aflitoxin.
Aflitoxin is a naturally occurring enzyme that can show up in corn that has been stressed.
My heart goes out to the people who cared for these horses because they will be the most affected.
Posted 2009-04-22 10:21 AM (#103759 - in reply to #103673) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Location: Georgia
There were 60+ horses in the barn. The only horses that died were horses that were going to play that day. Only six were insured and they were sent to the state ag for necropsy. The rest were sent somewhere else. Not likely insurance or foul play, but probably a contaminated solution of vitamins. If it were feed, water, or bedding, the other horses in the barn would be dead. No one is talking because everything is being investigated by the authorities.
Posted 2009-04-23 1:20 AM (#103791 - in reply to #103673) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Veteran
Posts: 177 Location: East London South Africa
When we go to a serious match we dose our horses with vatamine B-Complex...and this is done 4 days prior to the event....not much good doing it the same day.
I'm not sure you could over dose as vits are normally given in 30mm doses...how much more could you give....One thing that could happen is if it was given in the vein....instead of intramuscular.....--- That's a posability
This is really tragic - and yest the grooms are the ones that will be affected the most....
Posted 2009-04-23 7:19 AM (#103800 - in reply to #103673) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Location: Central Arkansas
They are analyzing the supplement to see if it was indeed toxic. Biodyl in not legal in the US but is used widely in Europe. They are investigating the source of it. Rumour has it in the vet world that it was made here in the US by a compounding agency.
Posted 2009-04-24 12:26 AM (#103863 - in reply to #103673) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Veteran
Posts: 164 Location: Delaware
I was reading in Horse.com about this whole mess. Seems to me the team uses a performance enhancer from France that is not legal in the US. A vet got the pharmacy to make up a batch and the formula was wrong. Whose made the recipe? The Vet, the pharmacist? Why do they need to pep their horses up before an event anyway. Sounds like the "milkshake" they give race horses just before they race. Seen this at a track once, horse up and died from heart attack crossing the finish line. Strictly illegal.
Posted 2009-04-24 9:35 AM (#103874 - in reply to #103863) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Expert
Posts: 1871 Location: NY
this is why that drugs that are not approved in the U.S.A. should not be in here. the pharmacy that make the drug is liable for the death. the horse are worth thousand of dollars. the inspector should check the other stable to see if anybody else is using this drug on horse.
Posted 2009-04-24 10:09 AM (#103878 - in reply to #103673) Subject: RE: This ain't good.....
Location: Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain...
What doesn't make sense is why it isn't approved. From everything that i have read, the overseas version is nothing more than a combination of individual vitamins and minerals. It would be kind of like saying you can't feed your horse sweet feed as a mix, but you can feed all of the things in sweet feed individually.
And that being said does anybody know why they don't administer the individual vitamins rather than the mixture? The effect should be the same shouldn't it?
This ain't good.....
