Strangles .. do you do anything differently?

[diluteherd]

There's been loads of reported cases of strangles around at the moment, well it seems to be, perhaps they are just closer to home so it seems like there are more..

Do you do anything differently with your horses when you know that it maybe in the area, such as not venture out too far, stop new horses going on to the yard etc?

Sorry might be a dumb thing to ask but im just interested, having my own place I dont get many people coming and going and I've never had any experience of the infection other than reading up on it so am very interested to hear what people do and think.

 

[Littlelegs]

If its in the area & I know which yard & that precautions are being taken by them, I just avoid the yard & any people from it. If I'm not sure where exactly the case is, I avoid any contact with other horses out hacking. Still go to shows etc but again avoid contact. Luckily the two times there's been a case near me the yms have been very responsible. Also my oldies been on yards with cases twice so pretty sure she's immune. All different areas so its not a recurring problem in my area!

 

[lannerch]

Strangles is around and local to you all the time you may or may not get to hear of it.
Always take precautions and never over react

 

[Cedars]

The yard about two minutes up the road (literally) from us has it and depending on who you ask depends on how responsible they're being. Certainly they're still hacking out, still having riding lessons and then you get the further rumours too which I wont post on here.

We are not hacking out our eventer at all - its not worth the risk of bumping into a snotty nosed pony and ruining our event season. We are keeping totally away from the yard and anything to do with it-this means our muck heap is overflowing as our gardener keeps his tractor up there! When our 4 horses were split between two fields we disinfected in between fields (hand wash and foot dip) but now they all are on the same yard we're just disinfecting on our way onto the yard.

However, the biggest thing we are doing is TAKING TEMPERATURES. We take temperatures at least twice a day. Anything abnormal (above 38.8) we would ring the vet - above 40 is strangles temperature. Ours have varied in temp from 36.6 to 38.6- but we're using 38.8 as our golden 'ring the vet' temperature. By doing this, if they DID get strangles, we would have caught it ridiculously early-early enough that we might be able to use antibiotics etc and therefore horse would recover quicker= we might salvage something of an event season.

The biggest importance is to talk about it. Shout about it. Yards that keep quiet are the reason strangles is so prevalent. Yards that admit they have strangles but then lie about protocol are equally as bad if not worse. If we shouted about it, cracked down on it, we could certainly contain it and limit its spread.

Final thing to say-to quote my vet-STRANGLES IS HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS, BUT ACTUALLY VERY HARD TO GET. You HAVE to pass mucus from an infected horse to an uninfected horse-this cannot happen from over a duel carriageway or through air pressures. The most common by far is through water-water troughs, buckets, puddles on hacks. It can only live on something dry for 4 hours-but it starts to die almost instantly-so fence posts etc are safe. However it can live on paddock floors for weeks because obviously the grass is wet. But again, it has to be mucus to mucus.

Hope this has helped, as you can probably tell we're really unimpressed with it being so close! But it's been well over a month since we were told about the first outbreak and all our four are still fine x

 

[Thistle]

Strangles is around and local to you all the time you may or may not get to hear of it.
Always take precautions and never over react

totally agree llanerch

it's endemic in the uk, many horses have already been exposed to it and have some immunity.

Yes yards that are known to have it should be on lock down but there is no need for the scaremongering that goes on.

My horses still go out and about, they are never allowed to go nose to nose with another horse, I don't allow them to graze at showgrounds and I would never let them drink from a strange trough.

Strangles is spread by droplet infection. It's can't escape into the air and run across he countryside spreading it's self about.

It's always there and we just seem to hear more about it in the spring when everyone starts going out and about