FHANA confronts fee increases each and every year from the KFPS. These increases (9.1% since 2012) apply to every category of membership, inspections and registry transactions. While we are very reluctant to raise fees and have not done so since 2012, we cannot continue to operate while absorbing these increases. Therefore, we voted today to increase inspection fees to $135 in each category. This was already the fee for Categories 5 and 6, so now all categories will carry the same entry fee.
We also voted to apply a $25 fee for those who wish to participate in our USDF All-Breeds awards. FHANA currently has to pay the USDF $18.00 for each eligible/declared member, and we have a large number of members who participate in this program. The extra $7 collected will help to offset the actual costs of the awards we present.
The KFPS is urging us to do whatever we can to encourage members to have all fillies and mares tested for carrier status for hydrocephalus and dwarfism. This is an important issue as mating two carriers results in a 25% chance of producing an affected embryo or foal. Such foals can result in early pregnancy losses and can even jeopardize the well-being of the dam. The KFPS would like for us to make this testing mandatory. At this point, we are not going that far, and we hope to get enough voluntary participation to obviate the need to do this. Since these tests became available in 2014, we have required mare owners to have a vet out to check the mare's microchip and supervise the pulling of the hair. We still feel this is desirable to make certain that no mistakes are made in the identification of the mares, but we realize the added cost of requiring this to be done is a considerable disincentive to having the testing done.Therefore, we have voted to eliminate this requirement in the interest of getting more of the mare population tested sooner. We anticipate that filly foals born in 2017 and hereafter will be able to have the test run on the same hair sample submitted for parentage verification, and we hope all breeders will take advantage of this. These test results will be conveyed to the owner of record but will not be publicly available.
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