Grass Sickness Can anyone help? Please Read

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Sulans

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29 November 2011
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Leicestershire
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Last week I lost my lovely homebred 3 year old to grass sickness. I am devastated. It was so shocking how quickly the disease struck her down. Not much is known about it and, apart from keeping horses off grass where previous cases have occurred, there is no way to test for it, prevent it or cure most cases. It was confirmed after death. My youngster had moved a few weeks ago from me to a breaking yard and possibly picked it up there. There is no blame to attach and the vet was called with all speed as soon as it was realised that there was something wrong. The yard is in Leicestershire and I wonder if any of you are aware of any confirmed cases in this county, if so where did they occur?
Grass sickness occurs in all ages from 4 months to over 20 years but the greatest number of cases occurs in 2 to 7 year olds with a peak at 3 to 4 years. For those who want to know more, this is a useful site:http://www.grasssickness.org.uk/ If anyone has lost a horse to this dreadful disease please follow this link and fill in the survey. Perhaps by pinpointing areas susceptible, maybe it would be possible to reduce the cases by prevention, until maybe a cure is found.
 
I am very sorry to hear about your loss. There seems to be so much more to learn about this but one thing that does seem to proven is that horses should not be grazed on land where horses have succumbed to this disease. I know of someone local to me who disregarded this and lost both her horses. If the breaking yard is still putting out horses in the same field then I would be extremely annoyed and actually, would wonder if there is a liability attached if they had knowlingly put another horse onto the same grazing. I am not looking for a "obtain monies" but rather to try to prevent this happening to someone else.

If you are looking for more information or people who would conplete this, you would be better off to put it in the vet threads to get a better response.
 
I'm pretty sure there's someone on here who has also lost a horse to grass sickness. Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh can't remember her name - someone else could help maybe? Think she has an fb page about grass sickness too
 
Thank you for your replies. I will certainly try and find out if this has happened before at the yard, the question is how? I will post it on the vet page too. This is the first time I have used the forum so it is all new to me, but thank you for your interest.
 
I am sorry to hear of your loss. I have lost 3 horses to grass sickness and my friend on an adjacent yard lost 2 of hers. Its a heartbreaking disease.
 
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