Racehorse welfare is a prominent, public issue which affects nearly every aspect of the racing industry. Thoroughbred care after race career completion has garnered increasing attention from the equine industry, general public, and animal welfare groups alike. As the average racehorse's career lasts just 4.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe novel COVID-19 virus caused a global pandemic disrupting lives, industries, and economies. The result was an impact on prices due to challenges with production and supply chain distribution. This study investigates the financial strain COVID-19 had on equine owners and leasers, what the market for equine care would bear if costs for care increased, and what factors contribute to their willingness to pay (WTP) for increasing cost of equine care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEctoparasites, such as cattle fever ticks, and the diseases they carry pose a risk to the global cattle population in reduced productivity and in livability. Tick infestations carry significant economic implications through losses in productivity, increased morbidity, and control costs. Cattle fever ticks were eradicated from the United States through concentrated efforts across state and federal agencies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFForeign animal diseases can cause severe and lasting economic impacts to producers, directly and indirectly. Understanding producer investment cost structures can provide industry and policy makers better tools to encourage biosecurity adoption. Consistent with the literature, many factors can contribute to an individual operator's decision to invest in biosecurity based on individual characteristics, perception of disease likelihood, or expected losses associated with a disease event.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEconomists are often tasked with estimating the benefits or costs associated with livestock production losses; however, lack of available data or absence of consistent reporting can reduce the accuracy of these valuations. This work looks at three potential estimation techniques for determining the value for replacement beef cows with varying types of market data to proxy constrained data availability and discusses the potential margin of error for each technique. Oklahoma bred replacement cows are valued using hedonic pricing based on Oklahoma bred cow data-a best case scenario-vector error correction modeling (VECM) based on national cow sales data and cost of production (COP) based on just a representative enterprise budget and very limited sales data.
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