Mattb125
Active Member
I am positively fuming about what happened this weekend.
Early saturday evening on yard checks a horse was found to have an openly weepy absess under his chin (possible strangles alarm bells ringing).His glands were swollen on both sides with small pre erupting lumps on both sides.Although the horse had not been out anywhere recently he is fairly new to the yard and we have had a recent cold spell.No high temp but off his food.
He lives on part of a yard slightly separate to the main yard with fifteen other livery horses so I naturally thought they would close the yard and isolate immediately.
Myself and five other staff keep our own horses five minutes down the road in a ten box yard that belongs to the same people.Immediately on arriving at the entrance to the staff yard that same night to do our horses we laid down straw and jeyes fluid and disinfected out hands etc to prevent any possible infection as those proceedures had not yet been put in place at the main yard.
Now the best bit!!!
I pop down the road on my break the next morning and to my horror find the horse with possible strangles had been moved from the main yard and had been placed in the staff yard next door to my brand new throughbred!
Immediatly I called my fellow staff members and we marched our horses out of their boxes to their own paddocks to be left there for however long now! The horse had been put there 5mins before I arrived it then transpired.
We then on mass marched up to our boss and demanded to know what was going on.She said we were being hysterical and we had no proof to show it was strangles until the swab came back on Thursday.Our arguement was it doesn't matter what the swab says the main yard should have been closed and the horses on the infected yard isolated immediately liveries or no liveries.Instead they have risked the health of all the horses by not telling any of the liveries what was going on so these people are blissfully unaware there horses may be ill.Secondly without discussing with the staff or offereing us the chance to turn out they walked the horse through the fields to stable him with our horses!
I just can't believe that someone as qualified as my yard manager would put money before controlling a possible strangles outbreak.
Your thoughts please
Early saturday evening on yard checks a horse was found to have an openly weepy absess under his chin (possible strangles alarm bells ringing).His glands were swollen on both sides with small pre erupting lumps on both sides.Although the horse had not been out anywhere recently he is fairly new to the yard and we have had a recent cold spell.No high temp but off his food.
He lives on part of a yard slightly separate to the main yard with fifteen other livery horses so I naturally thought they would close the yard and isolate immediately.
Myself and five other staff keep our own horses five minutes down the road in a ten box yard that belongs to the same people.Immediately on arriving at the entrance to the staff yard that same night to do our horses we laid down straw and jeyes fluid and disinfected out hands etc to prevent any possible infection as those proceedures had not yet been put in place at the main yard.
Now the best bit!!!
I pop down the road on my break the next morning and to my horror find the horse with possible strangles had been moved from the main yard and had been placed in the staff yard next door to my brand new throughbred!
Immediatly I called my fellow staff members and we marched our horses out of their boxes to their own paddocks to be left there for however long now! The horse had been put there 5mins before I arrived it then transpired.
We then on mass marched up to our boss and demanded to know what was going on.She said we were being hysterical and we had no proof to show it was strangles until the swab came back on Thursday.Our arguement was it doesn't matter what the swab says the main yard should have been closed and the horses on the infected yard isolated immediately liveries or no liveries.Instead they have risked the health of all the horses by not telling any of the liveries what was going on so these people are blissfully unaware there horses may be ill.Secondly without discussing with the staff or offereing us the chance to turn out they walked the horse through the fields to stable him with our horses!
I just can't believe that someone as qualified as my yard manager would put money before controlling a possible strangles outbreak.
Your thoughts please
