Hackie
Well-Known Member
Personally I would not advise it. A british horse would eventually adapt to the climate and flies but she wont have any immunity to many of the varients of virus's and bugs over there.
Immunity isn't a massive concern taking horses from the UK to Aus, that I've heard of anyway. The concern for a lack of immunity is generally around taking horses from Aus to UK and Europe. Aus has VERY strict quarantine laws, and as a result the horses there have lower immunity, whereas coming from the Northern Hemmesphere they have generally been exposed to a lot more and so are generally a bit more resilient.
Aus is far more concerned about foreign viruses coming in - take the EI outbreak of 2007, which crippled the equine industry as we'd never had it before and pretty much every horse on the east coast got it. We dont' really have anything that weird and wonderful thats a risk to incoming horses - the only virus I can think of which would be relevant is Hendra, of which Australian horses have no natural immunity anyway, and if you're in a risk area the authorities will immunise you.
We have an imported Scottish mare, and she suffered very bad itch for a number of years (it was awful,, she suffered very badly and there was next to nothing that could be done) but to be honest it seems to have cleared up the last few years. But that's pretty rare, I knw quite a few people who have imported from the UK as well as Europe, and their horses haven't had any trouble aclimatising.
I oddly worried about my horse getting bitten by snakes and having ridden over there and helped with some horses for me the flues were unbearable and the ticks irritating. This was rural Western Australia though!
I also wondered if my horse would be terrified of kangaroos![]()
Snakes - a defininte risk, you do hear of it happening, but its not that common.
Fear of Kangaroos - a definite possibility!