Strangles (When to notify Liveries)

If I remeber correctly the advice is to try & group horss into
1) confirmed cases
2) Those that have been in direct contact with confirmed cases
3) Those that haven't
& try & keep each group seperate (including feed, equipment etc) - not always possible though. Disinfect between every group & before leaving the yard. I was disinfecting water container every day & feed bowls after every feed as well as washing my clothes in dettol & showering as soon as I got back from the yard. Talk to your vet & get your own advice about a testing regime & tell YO what you expect to happen. Make sure containers of disinfectant for boots etc get changed frequently or they are useless.
Only my horses were affected when we had it & had had no contact with the others (we had been on the yard less than 2 weeks:() so It was easy to seperate all my stuff. It was months before my online supermarket shop stopped suggesting I had forgotten bleach, dettol & anti-bac hand gel.
 
A bit of an update we now have 4 confirmed cases, 2 tested on the weekend. I am pulling my hair out a little to be honest! There is so much sniping going on about who brought it to the yard and the blame game is rife!

On Saturday our vets came to the yard to give everyone a talk (unfortunately I couldn't be there but was filled in by other liveries and the YO is going to print Q&As for all to see on notice boards). This was after a horse was found in the field on Friday night with green snot running from his nose (he's been tested Saturday morning but seems a definite strangles case).

Vets have said any horse in the field with this gelding is classed as red and should be in isolation, my horses field is next door they can and do touch over the fence so in my mind all horses in my field should also be in isolation for 14 day incubation period to see if any of them start to show symptoms. Other owners on the yard in both fields are continuing to turn out! They have tried to convince me to do the same but in my mind it's crazy to turn them out together when we don't know who is infected! One owner has a mare in our field and a gelding in the infected field, another owner is STILL handling other people horses for turn out and bringing in. I assummed this would stop when we were told we had strangles but then my horse was brought in without my knowledge so I've had to tell them not to handle her until the yard is cleared of strangles.

I feel mean keeping my youngster in but this seems like the safest way forward to me? Maybe I'm being over protective but she's happy in her stable and I feel less at risk? Our barn is the only amber barn, all others are classed as red because they have confirmed cases in them. I go away in a month with work (no choice to cancel) so I am really hoping she doesn't get it while I'm away and my Dad's looking after her.
 
Tbh at this stage I think it will run through the yard until it burns it's self out .
The YOER should double fence your boundary with the other field with electric to keep the horses apart .
I would say it's likely it's going to run through your field and it's defiantly worth considering just turning out but I think it's one of those cases where every decision is bad,
 
No problem in turning red group horses out with red group horses as long as they can't have contact with non red group. My 2 were turned out for their whole quarantine because it was the only way to keep them totally apart from other horses - there was at least 1 empty paddock between mine & others. Ours is a small yard though & no one got silly or snipey. Blame games are silly - if I had posted the symptoms of mine I bet people would have been saying "try soaking hay" not "eek, call the vet it might be strangles" as neither had classic symptoms & those were gone in a few days - before we even got the test result. If we had just tried soaking hay we could have gone round infecting the entire county without anyone being aware (including us).
 
Don't want to read and run as you must be hugely frustrated and worried. It sounds like a long road regardless.

My only experience of strangles was on a really big competition yard but boy, they acted swiftly. They had 3 yards all joining together and the yard was shut down, all liveries notified of the procedures (i.e not allowed to go to any other horse other than their own etc) and all horses moved in a day. We settled quite quickly into a routine but the worst sniping was people who honestly thought they should still be allowed to take their horses out competing because their horses were OK. Yard put a stop to any suggestions of that with a complete lockdown and notification to all local centres. So, it can be done, its a pain in the backside - you really have to think ahead, no nipping to the local tack/feed shop once you have seen your horse etc.
 
Mike007 said:
No ,it is not a notifiable disease.Not so long ago ,my horse looked a bit iffy and there was a possibility of strangles. The vet informed me that testing my horse was only of benefit to the rest of the yard . Nevertheless I asked him to do the test .He said that he was glad that I had made that choice ,though it wasnt up to him to influence me,he felt it was morally right. When he presented his bill, I was surprised at how low it was .He had done it at cost bless him!Then a number of other liveries also chipped in a few quid as they felt it was for them too. This is how strangles should be approached. Great vet and lovely fellow liveries.Edited to add that the result was completely negative which caused some serious head scratching. My horse shows zero antibodies to strangles even though two years before he had spent 4 months exposed to it ,the horse in the next stable to him had it and the yard was quarantined. So either there is a lot more to strangles than we know or it isnt as easy to catch as they say.
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I am amazed it is not notifiable. In France all lab test results are linked to the horse's number on the National Equine Database. When strangles is diagnosed the National Stud email all their registered horse owners with details of the department where is has been diagnosed. The same for other equine virus.
 
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