DAN: "There was an outbreak of strangles
at horse shows in my area.
And a horse at my barn got it before moving
to my barn three weeks ago.
And now multiple horses have it.
I'm thinking about moving my horse to a new barn.
But I'm not sure when it'll be safe to do so,
considering the disease stays with the horse for a while
after the horse no longer shows symptoms.
What would your recommendation for moving be?"
DR LYDIA GRAY: That's the first question he asked?
DAN: That's the first one.
DR LYDIA GRAY: All right.
DAN: And then the second one he asked on YouTube--
DR LYDIA GRAY: He's clearly worried
about this, as he should be.
DAN: He should be, absolutely.
So then the second question was, "Our barn recently
got a new horse, who is a carrier of strangles.
And a few of the horses have been infected.
What would you recommend to clean everything?
And what would you get rid of and replace, i.e.
halters, leads, water buckets?
Also, I heard horses can be carriers
of the bacteria for a long time, sometimes years,
after they are fully recovered.
What would you do if that was the case?
And are there any further cures to preventing that?"
Ooh.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
These are-- so I'm glad that he wrote back in and said,
and another thing, with these extra questions.
Because they're really good.
Now, the good news is-- there is silver lining.
Someone just wrote a really, really good,
comprehensive, detailed article about strangles.
Do you know who that might be?
DAN: Was it you?
DR LYDIA GRAY: It was me.
And it's in the Horse Health Library.
And it's called "Strangles."
And I printed it out because I want
to just hit some highlights to address
his particular concerns.
So one of them is this notion of horses being able to shed it,
and you can't tell that they're even sick.
And so experts believe that one of the greater
sources of strangles is horses that
are in the early signs of the disease.
They're in the early stages of the disease,
and they're not showing signs yet.
So they've caught it.
And it's incubating.
But they haven't--
DAN: But the symptoms haven't expressed themselves yet.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
And then the next one is they're in the early stages
of recovery, but they're still harboring the bacteria.
And then the last one is the one that this person
is really concerned about, the persistent, long-term carriers
of the disease, which is unique to strangles,
who remain asymptomatic.
So they don't show signs themselves.
But they can shed the bacteria to other horses
for months or years.
DAN: That's a scary thought.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
So when strangles gets on a property,
it's unfortunately on the property.
Experts estimate that 10% to 40% of horses
who have had strangles silently carry the disease
and are able to transmit it without showing signs.
DAN: And 40% is a high number.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Four out of 10, yeah.
DAN: Yeah.
DR LYDIA GRAY: That's a high number.
That's unfortunate.
So he asked about, are there any recent advances
or technology or something?
DAN: Yes, further cures to preventing that.
DR LYDIA GRAY: As far as cures, no.
But there has been a lot of recent advances in diagnosis.
So now vets are able to screen horses
as they come onto properties.
They can also-- when a horse has recovered,
and there's no signs showing, and it's resolved,
they can test the horse and say, are you
still harboring the bacteria?
So that has become now the gold standard, or best practice,
of when a farm can be cleared to be reopened
for horses moving in and out.
Strangles is now a reportable disease,
which means your veterinarian by law
is required to tell the state authorities.
And they will shut down a property.
So moving in and out is not really an option.
And it's not a good idea anyway.
Because the same thing will happen to the new place
that happened to your place.
It's the movement of a horse that has it and shedding it,
and then they have an outbreak.
DAN: And that's what I like is, in this question,
really was not only just concerned about his own horse,
but how to stop the prevention of it going forward
and the moving of it.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Right.
Yeah.
And he knows that horses have it, harbor it, silently
and can shed it at will.
It sheds.
And it doesn't stay around a lot.
Horse-to-horse contact, what we call direct contact,
is one way that it gets spread.
But the other is indirect contact.
And that's by one of my favorite words, fomites.
So a fomite is an inanimate object.
It can be anything, can be brushes, tack,
equipment, cleaning equipment like manure forks.
It can be blankets, water buckets, feed buckets.
I mean, you name it that the bacteria could get on.
Because remember, horses with strangles
are coughing and snotting.
There's a lot of stuff to get on.
And that's what he asked about.
How do you clean it?
What do you clean, and what do you throw away?
DAN: Yes.
Exactly.
What do you recommend replacing?
DR LYDIA GRAY: So clearly, they're
involving their veterinarian in this.
And you have to.
Because your veterinarian has been
trained in the quarantining of new arrivals,
and the isolation of sick horses, and all
sorts of biosecurity practices.
So he or she knows the answer to this question and can help you.
We'll say things like, in order to disinfect something,
you must clean it first.
The disinfecting is not the cleaning.
So you clean with soap and water, and then you disinfect.
DAN: Got it.
DR LYDIA GRAY: And you can only do that process
on things that are not porous.
So wood is a terrible medium.
It's a great medium for bacteria.
Like they tell you not to use wood
for cutting boards anymore.
DAN: Yep, because they harbor everything.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
You can't clean them.
So wood stalls and--
DAN: Everything at the barn, basically.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, was tough to clean, disinfect.
Things that are plastic, your feed buckets and your water
troughs and wheelbarrows, I mean, all these things
get contaminated.
The plastic manure forks can be cleaned.
The wood part is a problem.
Brushes I guess I would toss.
Lead ropes, there's no way.
One of the things you can do--
I found this really interesting--
is there's three distinct herds at a farm,
at a facility that is having an outbreak.
There's the healthy horses that were not exposed.
So some barns are big.
And there might be three different barns.
And say the sick horse is only at this barn.
These horses might not have been exposed, especially
if the help doesn't move there.
But if the help cleans all three barns--
DAN: Then you've contaminated everyone.
DR LYDIA GRAY: And they don't have one training barn,
a completely separate training barn with all different people,
that's the best.
But if personnel moves from building to building,
and they take their equipment--
DAN: Then it doesn't really matter
if the sick horse is in this barn
because you've kind of contaminated everyone.
DR LYDIA GRAY: No.
Then you're in the next herd.
And that's-- they're still healthy,
but they've been exposed.
And those horses, you have to temp every day.
Because fever is one of the first signs
that something is brewing or cooking.
And then the third group obviously
is the sick horses, the ones that are showing signs.
So the healthy, not exposed, you can label everything.
Put a piece of green tape on that barn.
All the equipment in that barn's green.
The healthy, but exposed, would be yellow or orange.
And then the sick are red.
Yeah.
So you've got a system of tracking
which equipment that is to be thrown away afterwards
or to be disinfected, or all this stuff is good.
DAN: And I don't think you realize how much equipment you
use on a horse until you start to have to be aware of it.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Oh, yeah.
I mean, your shoes, your shoes can become contaminated,
can become fomites, if you walk from a sick place
to a healthy place.
So the rule is if you're cleaning, feeding,
doing anything, you move from healthy, healthy exposed,
to sick.
That's the order of touching horses.
DAN: So end with those ones last.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, the sick ones last.
Yeah.
DAN: We didn't really touch on the last part of this question,
though.
So I think what he was trying to get at
was if you have a horse who's a carrier
but doesn't show symptoms of it, and you want to move barns,
how do you kind of be a good steward in the community?
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yep, yep.
I have the answer for you.
DAN: Oh, yes.
DR LYDIA GRAY: It's in this article.
So I would encourage Pete and Barkley and anyone
who's interested to read this article
and spend some time with it.
And I'll just read a quote.
"In order to identify long-term carriers
of the bacteria, these long-term carriers that appear outwardly
healthy, experts recommend that a sample be obtained
from the guttural pouch."
These are pouches on the sides inside the horse,
left and right.
They attach to the middle ear.
Yeah.
"Using endoscopy, as then the area
can be visually examined for inflammation, even for pus,
at the same time that a sample is taken for testing.
So once you have that visual examination via endoscopy
and the testing, then a horse can be cleared to be moved."
DAN: So it's not like your horse who's
going to be a carrier can't go anywhere.
Just do your due diligence.
Get the testing done.
And then you're good to go from there.
DR LYDIA GRAY: And then you can relax and be relieved, yeah.
DAN: And I'm sure we can put a link for this article
in the description.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yes.
DAN: I'm not sure if that's something we can actually do.
But we'll make it happen, I'm sure.
[LAUGHTER]
DR LYDIA GRAY: Making promises here right and left.
We don't know.