It’s no secret that veterinary treatments for horses can be costly; both direct costs (such as medications) and indirect costs (such as loss of use) can have significant financial implications and be cost-prohibitive for some owners. As such, veterinarians are often faced with the challenge of recommending treatments that might be effective against a particular ailment, without breaking the owner’s bank.

To gain a better understanding of this conundrum, Michelle Kibler, PhD, an assistant professor at Illinois State University, and colleagues developed and distributed an online survey to horse owners in the United States. The survey had two main objectives:

• To estimate the value a U.S. horse owner places on a horse’s daily use; and
• To describe owners’ willingness to pay for various treatments for infectious upper respiratory disease.

In all, they collected 337 usable responses