Earlier this year, the racehorse Black Lives Matter received a lot of attention, both for his name and his African-American owners (a relative rarity in this industry). Last week, we learn, the 3-year-old died at a clinic – “mysteriously,” say his owners, after a sperm-collection (for future exploitation) procedure followed by castration. According to the Hatleys, BLM’s owners, when they arrived to pick him up, he was unresponsive in his stall. It is unclear whether BLM was euthanized or simply died.
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Why would anybody want to use the horse’s sperm but have him castrated? It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me! Plus, he’s in the “care” of a veterinarian where the horse is found dead in his stall???? That doesn’t make sense either! It seems like there’s a lot of ‘freak, random bad luck” in the horse industry where a possibility of an insurance claim could be a factor. My understanding is that the Jockey Club does not accept Artificial Insemination in their list of registration eligibility requirements for registering new Thoroughbred foals.
He’s a Quarter Horse, they allow AI.
And the castration may have been because of stallion behaviors, a “lack of focus”, or for health reasons.
Thank you, Marie, I didn’t look him up to see that he was a Quarter Horse. I understand why people get their horses castrated but why is he dead? Why would they want to collect his semen and have him castrated all in the same visit to the vet clinic?
There can be excessive bleeding with castration depending if there is an underlying condition, but if the horse was under the proper care of a veterinarian this “accident” should not have happened. Add it to the piles of sudden deaths and unexplained incidents that plague the racing industry.
It doesn’t sound right to drop a horse off at a vet clinic like you would drop off dirty laundry at the cleaners for one thing. Another thing is that expecting two extreme procedures to be done to the horse in the same visit or appointment is just all wrong. The owners could probably file a lawsuit against the veterinarian involved and the clinic, but the owners are responsible for protecting their horse as well, which I believe they failed at miserably.