Columbus Dispatch
Kentucky agriculture
Horse biz in slump
Poultry set to exceed equine-industry sales in Bluegrass State
Saturday, January 2, 2010 3:05 AM
By Burt Schreiner
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kentucky’s slumping horse industry appears to have been overtaken by poultry farming as the king of the state’s agricultural sector.
In a state where racehorses are a mainstay of the cultural and economic lifeblood, the new top perch for chickens in the pecking order once seemed unlikely.
But the equine sector has been battered by deep recession, and the poultry industry has enjoyed years of steady growth. As a result, University of Kentucky agricultural economist Lee Meyer predicted that 2009 receipts from the poultry sector outpaced those from the horse industry by about $180 million.
Poultry production, concentrated in western Kentucky, is expected to have generated about $930 million in receipts this year, Meyer said. The equine sector is projected to have generated about $750 million, down from more than $1.1 billion in 2007, he said.
That projection was seen by former Gov. Brereton Jones, owner of a Kentucky horse farm, as further proof that the state’s horse industry is in decline and needs a boost.
“You can go anyplace around the world and tell people you’re from Kentucky, and the first thing they want to talk about is the Kentucky Derby and the Thoroughbred industry,” he said. “We risk losing that if everybody refuses to pay attention.”
Jones supports expanding gambling at Kentucky’s horse-racing tracks. A measure to allow video slot machines at tracks was passed by the Kentucky House but died in a Senate committee in 2009’s special session.
Thoroughbred sales and breeding stud fees are the two main income sources for the industry, and both have taken a big hit from the global recession, University of Kentucky economists said.
Sale prices at the major Thoroughbred auctions at Keeneland, a racetrack and horse-sales center, continued a downward spiral last year, especially at its premier yearling sale in September, when totals were down 41 percent from a year earlier.
Results weren’t as bad at November’s breeding-stock sale, where proceeds fell 14 percent from 2008, but that sale was helped by a dispersal of 148 horses from the great Kentucky breeding operation Overbrook Farm.
Several prominent Kentucky horse farms also reported declines in the stud fees they charge for a live foal. Lane’s End Farm announced it was cutting A.P. Indy’s fee from $250,000 to $150,000. There are also major drops in stud fees for other top stallions, including Distorted Humor and Giant’s Causeway.
The weak economy also has hurt demand for recreational and show horses, the economists said.
Poultry production, meanwhile, has been growing for years in Kentucky. In 2001, poultry receipts totaled about $260 million, but doubled by 2003 and mushroomed to $918 million in 2008. Meyer projected poultry receipts of $976 million in 2010.
“I can’t imagine a scenario where horses would come back to predominance for three years,” he said.
“You can go anyplace around the world and tell people you’re from Kentucky, and the first thing they want to talk about is the Kentucky Derby and the Thoroughbred industry. We risk losing that if everybody refuses to pay attention.”
Former Gov. Brereton Jones
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