Horse owners in Kentucky want lawmakers to stiffen laws regulating the use of fireworks after claiming their horses were injured while reacting to backyard pyrotechnics.

Kentucky had banned the sale and use of so-called consumer fireworks throughout the state. But on July 1, 2011, then Gov. Steve Beshear signed HB 333 legalizing the sale and use of some fireworks, including Roman candles and others that shoot into the air, and allowing the use of those fireworks on private property.

Wendy Winstead, owner of Team Aloha Stables, in Bagdad, said since the law’s passage property owners have used increasingly larger-scale fireworks that put her and her clients’ horses in danger of sustaining injuries, ranging from lacerations to broken legs or worse.

“A couple of years ago we had an owner who had to euthanize a foal because he had run into a fence and another whose mare laid her shoulder open on a fence,” Winstead said. “So, this had been going on for a couple of years but this has absolutely been the worst