Why I Can’t Afford to Breed an Ontario-bred Horse

Arika Everatt-Meeuse of Shannondoe Farm discusses the challenges facing Ontario Thoroughbred breeders: Despite the uncertainty since the end of the Slots At Racetracks Program (SARP), our farm committed to standing three stallions in Ontario in the hopes that the government would follow through on their promises to fix the mess they created. We even grew our broodmare band to 63 mares in 2015/16, but as the breeding industry continues to “circle the drain” we have aggressively cut mares so that we are down to 28 this year with the plan to have just 15 by the end of November, 2019. On top of that economic loss to Ontario, two years in a row now we’ve sent mares to New York, and this year we also sent four mares to Pennsylvania. All of those mares would have foaled out in Ontario. All of this is completely because of the situation in…