Allen County farmer left with vet fees after horse eats deflated balloon
ALLEN COUNTY, Ky.- An Allen County farmer’s horse is recovering after coming in contact with a balloon that landed in her horse pen.
“You would think of one balloon…well if everyone releases one balloon, it’s a lot of balloons out there,” Laska Brown, a farmer in Allen County.
Brown said her horse was injured after reacting to a deflated balloon getting tangled on her face. She said this is a problem that many people are not aware of that farmers and ranchers endure.
“We probably find at least one balloon a week,” she said.
Balloons are a staple of celebration that range around 1 dollar but cost Brown a pricey vet fee after her horse ran through a fence injuring herself trying to free itself from the string.
“After everything was said and done, it was around $800 dollars,” Brown said.
Brown’s baby horse, whose name is registered as ‘Bing Bop Boom Bam’, is next up to be a show horse like her dad but she might have suffered a career-altering injury after picking up the balloon she saw in the horse pen.
“They’re curious by nature. She went over and picked up the balloon with the mouth and actually got it caught in her mouth running around and ended up crashing through the fence. Thankfully we were around. We were able to help her get the balloon off of her, but she did hurt herself in the process,” said Brown, her owner.
Bing is now recovering from her injury.
Balloon releases are a nationwide trend that people are leaning towards to celebrate a loved one. Due to the environmental impact because of what the balloons are made of, certain states like Florida have banned or restricted the gesture.
Kentucky lawmakers have introduced bills to stop the releases but have not passed such as house bill 53, house bill 287 and house bill 295. All of the bills aim at limiting the number of released balloons and non-biodegradable materials entering natural spaces.
Brown says one balloon could also cause harm to all animals. “I mean everything that goes up must come down and unfortunately a lot of times that comes down into our pastures and it puts not only the horses and cattle, goats and domesticated life stocks, it’s also detrimental to wildlife.”
From latex to foil and their attachments, according to the Wild 4 Wales Foundation, in 1998 a balloon from the Olympics in Nagano, Japan ended up in Los Angeles 49 hours later which is nearly a 5,400-mile flight.
Brown says using biodegradable material would be an eco-friendly form of celebration.
“There’s lanterns. There’s also tissue paper that will float up and biodegrade and it’s not harmful to the environment and it won’t cause unnecessary suffering to personal livestock and wild life,” Brown said.
