Grass Sickness Can anyone help? Please Read

[Sulans]

Following good advice, I am re-posting my sad tale here. 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.
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[flintfootfilly]

So sorry to hear about the loss of your mare. EGS is my most feared equine disease.

I remember seeing a distribution map of grass sickness cases a few years ago, when a friend lost four ponies to it. So I've just googled equine grass sickness distribution map, and come up with this, which dates back to 2008:

http://www.aht.org.uk/skins/Default/pdfs/equine_vol4_2_focus2.pdf

Personally I don't think any area can be considered safe from grass sickness given the distribution shown on here.

But the better informed we are to reduce risk factors as much as we can, so much the better.

Sarah