News

Animal welfare survey gives voice to the voiceless

By Amy McCraw, Published: November 22, 2025

The members of Henderson County’s Animal Services Committee kept one goal in mind when they set out a couple of months ago to survey residents about their concerns and priorities surrounding animals in the community.

“Animals can’t speak for themselves,” Committee Chair James Lyon Jr. said. “We wanted it to be a voice for the voiceless.”
The committee intended to find out from county residents what they want the committee to focus on as the county grows and less land is used for agriculture.
Lyon said he thought the county needed a survey of its own concerning animal welfare after a similar survey in the city drew many responses from people who lived outside the city limits of Hendersonville.
“It said to me that people wanted to be heard,” he said.
The committee launched its Animal Welfare Survey in September and has to date received nearly 1,000 responses, which Lyon said is a large number for a government sponsored survey. He estimated several thousand more people looked at the survey without responding.
Results from the survey were both expected and surprising, said Teri Bentcover, a member of the committee who worked on the survey with Lyon.
The primary concern for people who responded was overwhelmingly the availability and affordability of veterinary care, including vaccines, she said.
People were also overwhelmingly concerned about the county’s spay-and-neuter program.
“There was great support of that,” she said.
Multiple veterinarians who answered the survey responded to a question that asked on a scale of one through five how concerned they were about the vaccine status of animals in the county. Results averaged only around a three, Lyon said.
“It was something to be mindful of,” he said.
When asked what species of animals they wanted to address, people most often said dogs and cats but respondents also mentioned horses, chickens and roosters.
“The vast majority said they were pets, even if they had a flock of chickens,” Bentcover said.
Many people were also concerned about preventative care, she said.
While the survey did not receive many responses from people who raise animals for agriculture, Lyon and Bentcover said only 10 percent of people expressed concern about noise associated with farm animals.
In the future, the two said they would like to see more responses to the survey from the farm community.
The committee intends to present the findings of the survey to Henderson County’s Board Commissioners in December or January.
Commissioners should be able to use data from the survey to make decisions concerning animal welfare and agricultural issues involving animals, Lyon and Bentcover said. The survey is at https://www.hendersoncountync.gov/animalservices.