18/03/2025
⚠️ A message for all my clients ⚠️
There are several cases of strangles in the local area. There is no legal obligation for yards to publicly state whether they are currently dealing with a case of strangles. I will undertake my usual bio-security measures, sanitising hands after sessions and cleaning down equipment.
However, I do urge all my clients to be extra vigilant with their horses and contamination - I will not be penalising any clients for cancelling appointments, if they believe there is a potential contamination on their yard.
I actively encourage all owners to be transparent with me or any of their other professionals. This is to best protect a greater outbreak!
The post below discusses the disease and symptoms very well. I encourage you all to have a read!!
Most will know by now that we have Strangles in the area (NW England). It appears several yards already have it and it is already spreading quickly.
Please, please let me know if your horse or any horse on your yard is suspected or has tested positive so I can rearrange your appointment.
If your horse is under the weather, depressed, lethargic or off their food, please take their temperature and call your vet as your first point of contact. A horse with dental issues will try to eat and struggle resulting in quidding or pulling weird faces (beyond their normal weird faces 😅), a horse with a fever won’t try to eat at all.
Strangles is a bacterial infection, there is some strange dogma about it and people like to hush it up, don’t! It is nothing to be ashamed of, it is a bug like any other bug. Isolate the whole yard, isolate the infected horses away from others and let everyone know to stay away.
Strangles is highly infectious. It does not travel in the air like flu and other viruses though. It travels in the discharges so snot and pus from abscesses. The problem is it can live up to 6 weeks outside of the horse. This is unusual and the reason it is transmitted so easily. It rarely gets chance to move horse to horse because affected horses are isolated so it’s mostly transmitted by the people going between them, buckets and tools (brushes, barrows), in the transport carrying them and on professionals. All it takes is someone walking through a bit of sprayed snot from a sneeze and the bacteria can end up at the local feed store, at a competition or at the rug wash etc. Someone skipping out and taking the barrow or brush to another stable, or borrowing someone else’s grooming kit. So easily done!
Although it is a bacteria, Strangles can’t be treated with antibiotics in the first place because this makes abscesses more likely to form and some suggest it makes a horse more likely to become a carrier. So do not self medicate your horse, you truly do need your vet.
If you are worried about the risk then there is a vaccination available through your vet. These days the vaccine isn’t given into the lip like it use to be. Anyone that had that done will remember how awful it was!! But those days are gone. Now it is in the muscle like a normal vaccine. 2 vaccines 4 weeks apart will cover the horse. BUT the horse is only protected after the second vaccine so if you wait until strangles is on the yard, it’s too late. It is a yearly booster like normal although some may choose to do 6 months if the horse is vulnerable. I would dare to say, you don’t need to keep it up if the risk has passed so don’t feel like doing it now means you are stuck always having to. It’s been many years since we’ve had an outbreak like this. Some may choose to, just in case, of course.
Be sensible. Any horse that’s looking poorly, isolate immediately and get them tested. Especially if they have a high temperature, a snotty nose and/or swellings between their lower jaw bones. If you don’t have a thermometer, get one! Doesn’t need to be a horse specific one, any will do.
If you have a livery yard, make sure you have isolation facilities. Somewhere away from other horses, somewhere that people aren’t walking past. Whilst the risk is this high it would be sensible to isolate every new horse moving on to the yard for 2 weeks. Strangles takes 2 weeks to incubate. Meaning it’s 2 weeks from contacting the bug until they start showing symptoms. Make sure you have a hand sanitiser and boot disinfectant outside the isolation box too.
Once a horse has had Strangles and recovered there is a risk of them becoming a carrier, the bug can hide dormant in a space inside their heads called the gutteral pouch. Then every now and again the horse discharges the bug without showing any further signs of being ill themselves but infecting those around them. It is very important you allow the vet to test your horse to make sure they have not become a carrier or you put everyone else’s horse at risk. This is done either with a scope or swabs.
Stay safe everyone and I hope this helps!
