[Idrivetrotters]

There is a letter going around the racetrack saying that the USDA is looking into the marking of horses for identification. After the Mad Cow Scare the USDA was looking into its livestock tracking and found out that horses have no markings to track them like cows and other livestock does.
The memo is saying that the USDA is looking into a way to freeze brand horses at a early age (before weaning if not much sooner) with a breeders registered brand plus a # for example my filly was born at a large breeding farm so she has a 71 freezebranded on he sternum for identification. The USDA is looking at cracking down on the breeding of horses and being unable to track them after birth. Incase a contagious disease runs through horses they can track possible carriers etc. The breeders the USDA have talked to the large scaled breeder is all for it and a lot of the smaller breeders feel they will be forced out of biz since they have to pay to register their brand and register their horses and show people think it will damage resale since its branded.
I was curious if anyone else has heard of this and what the general thinking is on it. I'm for it, but all of my horses are freeze branded anyway for racing so its no big deal for me but I was wondering what show people think.

[CJ]

I heard something about it on another board, along the lines of the USDA was going to order every horse in the country ID'd. I think it's x-amount of hype propelled into 'possibilty' by bureaucracy. It would be like wanting to microchip everybody in the country. Could they legislate it, yeah. Pull it off? Doubtful. From the backyard farms, to invasion of privacy issue/ holdouts, to who-will-do the Mustangs, there are way too many chances & places for the idea to fall short. Gees, the USDA has enough work assuring the chicken & bugers are safe to eat; how are they ever gonna oversee ID of millions of horses? And what about when a horse come in from overseas temporarily? Does it have to be tagged? How many of us would flip at that prospect in another country? If there are serious proponents of this idea, I think they're way over their heads. It's not practical/ workable.

[LordOfDaReins]

Ituld be nice to be able to check the brand so we could easily tell who bred the horse, and for a knowledgable person, that could tell alot about the horses background... But I have heard of horses getting EIA and Swamp Fever just out of nowhere, and then they have to put their horse down and put their farm on quarentine untill it has been completly sterilized and the horses have all tested negative to the bacteria... I would definitly put up with the brands.. Oh, and I did hear the breeder I work for talking on the telephone about some "tracking system" and I heard him say the word "branding"

[CJ]

Wanna see the Halter/showmanship & A-level show people lose their minds? Use the word 'branded' in reference to their horse/es. And step back.

[spyro1]

I can see both sides of this, I do agree with Cyn on the practicality of it. Money is alwyas an issue as well, who would over see this?? Like was said earlier, the USDA has enough to worry about just keeping animals for consumption safe, since horse meat consumption is illegal in the US, I am not sure how this would benefit americans. Sure, it would help *them* keep track, but what good is identifiying a horse for background info, when it is on it's way to slaughter? (Other than possible stolen horses) "In case a contagious disease runs through them" is a big "In case"! I'm just not sure I see the benefit of forcing poeople to brand their horses. I think that in the show ring, visible brands should be illegal, they aren't so far. I think that having brands that identified the different farms would play right into the politics that are already way out of control, as far as the show ring aspect goes of the branding.

[Idrivetrotters]

The brands would be on the sternum and thus not readily visible without a conceited effort to look. Please do not ban branded horses from showing, all of my racing horses are freeze branded with their tattoo numbers and that would take a lot of horses out of possibly good homes. I don't like hot brands, but I've seen a lot of freeze brands and it doesn't seem to bother than other than its usually a yearling and they don't like being held still. I have a hard enough time showing my nice jumper since his hocks were freeze branded and there is no way to cover them and I have had a lot of judges scream bloody murder over them.

[Abbie22057]

I think that would be a good thing. There is no way to follow a horse other than color or markings, and how many bay horses are out there? Cows have to have their official identification tags, sheep have to have scrapies tags, even dogs need licenses so the government can keep track of them!! Besides, if everyone's horse was branded, then it wouldn't look out of place in the show ring. You'd get so used to seeing it that a horse would look odd without it.

[space_cowboy]

The up would be a lot fo backyard breeding would stop! The down is the smaller breeding farms who still produce quality horses would probably go out of business because of the expense. I don't think I really want a brand on my horses anyways............

<small>[ April 21, 2004, 05:58 AM: Message edited by: space_cowboy ]</small>

[harli36]

I've gone to two seminars on IDing horses. The fact of the matter is that they don't know how they are going to do it yet. Right now they are in the Brain storming phases of planing.

The only thing that I heard said about the putting breeders out of buisness thing is that they don't want to put breeders out of buisness. They want to make the registration of foals as cheap as possible for people. Although I'm against back yard breeding I don't think the government should get into it. If they are going to regulate breeding at all it should be done by the Breed Associations who know what a quality animal of their breed looks like(all politics aside)

As farm as identification of an individual animal they are considering freeze branding, microchiping, and ear tags. WHen I heard ear tags I nearly flipped out!!!! What horse person wants an ear tag on their horse? I personally would not like freeze or hot branding on my horse. One of the reasons I love horses is for their beauty and I personally think that brands detract from this.

They also want to give each place that houses horses an ID number that way you can say that horse #lkasdfgoaiet was located at barn #534847. Or something like that. What these people wanted to do was give each registered horse an id card(much like a human ID card) and then give each barn an ID reader. THen each time I bring my horse home from a show I would have to swipe it in, all this info would then be uploaded to a governing body to keep track of it. THis means that everyone that has a backyard barn would have to buy one of these scanners. All I have to say to that is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

Personally I'm against it!!!!!!

[proBarrel racer]

I would love a way to trace horses back to where they came from. The only problem is, how would they keep track of all of the grade horses? It's kind of like finding stray dogs. wink