26 Sept 2016
Mark Tabachnik looks at why disease control matters, how to put it into practice and the repercussions of failing to implement it in the final of six reports.
Mark Tabachnik
Job Title
Biosecurity – how can we encourage clients to engage in such an important area of equine disease control?
First, we need to go back to basics and address why they should care about it and its relevance to them.
Good biosecurity not only helps prevent potentially devastating diseases from entering the yard, but also plays a role in keeping horses fit and well; avoiding unnecessary disruption, costs and compromised welfare.
In the author’s experience, some horse owners have little regard for biosecurity – believing it will never happen to them.
If all of this is “boring” to the owner, perhaps spelling out direct consequences of breached biosecurity will help.
An outbreak of contagious disease would mean:
Plan Prevent Protect is an XLEquine collaborative initiative that includes a biosecurity booklet designed to provide a practical guide and demonstrate to horse and yard owners where they are at risk, to what degree and what they can do about it.
Making it clear where holes exist in their biosecurity, the possible consequences and, most importantly, what practical measures they can put in place to reduce risk, is key to engaging clients. The original aim for the booklet was to develop a “top 10 tips” clients could easily follow and, working together with their vet, successfully implement.
A typical yard scenario is:
Key risk areas are:
Some simple measures to get started are:
These measures, which will be easier on some yards than others, depending on available space and layout, are a good starting point.
A good vaccination policy should be at the heart of any yard and include influenza, tetanus, equine herpesvirus and, where possible, strangles, rotavirus, equine viral arteritis and West Nile virus.
Of course, more advanced practical biosecurity measures can be put in place to reduce risk further, such as separate parking areas, boot disinfectant dips and covered dung heaps away from the stables.
Travelling generates a whole separate set of guidelines, which include avoiding sharing horse boxes with other yards, taking (clean) feed and water buckets, avoiding nose-to-nose contact with other horses and washing hands after handling other horses.
Really, biosecurity is all common sense, but many clients will need more than a little encouragement to implement a plan.
It is our job to make sure encouragement is not in the form of an outbreak.
