26 April 2023

Katie's story

Year of outbreak: 2019
Location: Essex
Horses infected: 4

Katie and Albie's story

Albie came in from the field in the morning with what just looked like a bit of a dirty nose.

As we’d had the scare prior to this I didn’t want to take any chances so I took his temperature straight away to see if there was any sign of infection. His temperature was very high for him, his normal is around 37.4 and that evening it was 38.9.

Despite the temperature, he seemed pretty happy in himself. I then gave him his dinner, and as he put his head down all of the nasal discharge started to drip out, so I called the vet immediately and had an emergency call out that evening.

He went into immediate isolation and the buckets of disinfectant came out. We then had two more horses come down ill, taking the total infected up to 4.

The vets then advised us to to put the 4 infected geldings into an isolated field together and that's where they remain.

We're now waiting to see whether any of the other horses come down with it, and also for the poorly ones to stop showing symptoms. We'll then have to wait a few weeks before we can retest them to ensure they're clear of being strangles carriers.

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