09.24.11
KHC Equine Industry Planning Session
I had the great opportunity to be a part of the Kentucky Horse Council Equine Industry Planning Session today at the Fayette County Extension Office. This was scheduled as an all day event starting at 8 AM so it was wonderful to see a solid group of close to 50 participants. This was a varied group across all areas of the horse industry from Thoroughbred breeders and members of several Equine Departments of our major Universities and Colleges to small local organizations like myself representing the Fort Harrod Back Country Horsemen.
The facilitator was Colonel Walter Herd (Retired U.S. Army) who is also on the KHC Board. He did an excellent job and was very engaging which set a very positive tone for the day. The primary topics of discussion were coming up with ideas to bring Kentucky closer to that idea of a “haven for horses” that we all dream of by developing the “culture of the horse in Kentucky”. Ultimately in simple terms, we are the Horse Capital of the World, which is derived from the impact of the Thoroughbred Horse, how do we expand that definition to be all inclusive of everything Equine in the State or at least that was my take.
I am not going to go into all the details because there was lots of great discussions and ideas. One tidbit I will report on, we did hear from a member of KEEP that the Kentucky Proud Program was being expanded to include horses and that specific program would be called Kentucky Bred.
At the end of the day we voted on all of these and the KHC is going to digest those results and come up with an action list to start working on in November when they are planning on scheduling the next set of meetings. I will report on what comes out of those meetings as we get more concrete objectives to act on.
Kentucky Colonel
Thomas Demond
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