Equine specific biosecurity measures should be implemented on your yard to ensure effective disease prevention and to help reduce the spread of viruses in horses.
> Regularly clean and disinfect stables and equipment between horses, and if possible, have dedicated equipment for each horse. Remember to remove as much organic material as possible before disinfection.
> Clean and disinfect horse transport between journeys, which also gives you a great excuse to check your trailer or lorry floors and partitions.
> Ensure that everyone on the yard understands the hygiene protocols in place, thus helping to prevent disease spread to horses at other yards.
> Isolate all new arrivals or introduce horses from properties with a known high health status only. Isolate and pay particular attention to horses from sales /competition yards, from unknown mixed population yards and those that have used commercial horse transport. Verify the vaccine status of new arrivals. Isolation areas can be as simple as an isolated paddock or stable. They should ideally be 25m away from any other horses.
> Avoid horse to horse contact and shared water at shows or events. Wash your hands in-between handling multiple horses.
> Create or check & update your yard protocol in the event of a potential infectious disease outbreak.
> Make yourself and others on the yard aware of the signs of a disease outbreak. Monitoring your horse’s health daily will allow any disease to be identified earlier. Monitoring for a rise in rectal temperature is a good way of picking up early cases of disease.
> Contact your veterinary surgeon if any of your horses show clinical signs of sickness and isolate until a contagious disease has been ruled out.
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