The McNamaras, Holed Up And Holding Out.

Felicia and Greg McNamara have been successful Western breeders and trainers for many years. Although Equine Influenza is all around them, their Cobbitty property, Lord Ben Farm, as of the 21st remains free of EI. Felicia explains the situation.

“At this stage we are EI free, but it is all around us. However, we are protected by some natural buffers. One boundary is five kilometers of State Forest, another a two kilometer recreation reserve, another a 95 acre vacant property and another a cattle property. We do have an adjoining boundary with a big Thoroughbred Stud, but we both just graze cattle in the adjoining paddocks. The Thoroughbred Stud, which runs several hundred horses is as yet not affected by EI either.

“If we do get infected it will more than likely be from human contamination. I know it is airborne, but we are reasonably well protected. As soon as we heard of the outbreak, we locked ourselves down. We stopped anyone entering the property except those who live and work here and we even restricted the vets. The vet I allow on the property is absolutely fastidious about his bio-security. We are better off than a lot of people as we have six imported stallions here and all the breeding is AI and I do all of that, and also we are able to do a lot of the medical procedures ourselves too, which reduces the use of the vets.

“Of course the outbreak has greatly affected us like many others. We have 70 horses for sale and have not sold anything for a month, as no one wants to buy a horse if it cannot be delivered. We are offering free agistment to anyone who purchases a horse in the hope of getting that moving. But like others we are finding it tough as we have 180 horses on the property and 140 are on hard feed, and the price of feed due to the drought has been biting for some time. We also do a lot of breaking and training for the Thoroughbred industry and those horses are all turned out now and there is not a lot of money to be made on that. We have a permit and can still ship semen and can breed here on the farm, so we are doing what we can, but we have had to put off 50% of our staff.

“We have been labouring under a downturn in the market, a drought and now this. There is only so much you can carry. I think the reality is, EI is here to stay and it is just going to be a management issue”.