Horse owners say their beloved equines are suffering after eating tainted feed

Horses at a Davie boarding farm and riding school, worth thousands of dollars, are dying one by one. The apparent culprit: Tainted feed.

The horse owners allege the food they bought from a Lakeland company contains an antibiotic meant for cattle — but toxic to horses. The company is investigating, and has ceased production and sale of the feed.

Debra Buis, a private boarder who owns two of the horses at Masterpiece Equestrian Center, said three equines at the farm developed sudden paralysis and collapsed in October. All three died within a week.

Days later, testing of the feed, conducted at the horse owners’ request, came back positive for monensin, a powerful medication used in poultry and cattle feeds. Monensin is too strong for horses.

Buis said 19 remaining horses at the stable are sick, and many are expected to die.

“We’ll have to make a decision to euthanize at some point,” she said, because of the discomfort of the horses, some of whom are bleeding from the nose.

The feed supplier is Lakeland Animal Nutrition Inc. The nearly 100-year-old feed company, purchased by Alltech of Kentucky in 2012 but separately managed, said Friday in an emailed statement that the feed distributed throughout Florida was recalled after the deaths in October.

No other deaths have been reported, according to the statement by Jonathan Lang, general manager of Lakeland Animal Nutrition.

Lang also said the company is halting production and sale of equine feeds completely. “This business decision … was the result of months of consideration,” he said.

“We are very saddened by the sicknesses and deaths of the horses at Masterpiece Equestrian,” he wrote. “A full investigation is under way as we seek to understand any possible quality or procedural causes of monensin contamination. Our thoughts are with the Masterpiece Equestrian family, and, although their horses could never be replaced, we are committed to doing all we can to bring wholeness to them in their suffering.”

Buis said her family poured considerable finances into her teenage daughter’s ailing Dutch Warmblood horse, Ultimatum, born and bred in Holland. Her daughter, who studies at an online school so she can concentrate on riding, has been training to become an Olympic hopeful. Now she may lose her treasured mount.

The illness is devastating to watch, said the farm’s attorney, Andrew Yaffa, who has offices in Coral Gables and Boca Raton. “It’s like watching a family member deteriorate before your eyes,” he said.

The illness has closed down the stable’s riding business, because the farm can’t risk putting children on sick horses that could collapse. Show horses boarded there can be worth $35,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars, the lawyer said.

lhuriash@tribpub.com or 954-572-2008