Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Sick Horses

Yesterday we noticed Valiant cough, then today he just seemed lethargic. He was taken into the stall and his temperature taken.  Sure enough he is sick, he has 103.8, normal of a horse is 101. Then today Evan, Killian, Ayanna, Indy, and Zalena started coughing with Ayanna having a snotty discharge. Evan's temperature was taken he is just slightly above normal at 101.4 but Ayanna is 104.8. Ayanna and Valiant were both given banamine which is a fever reducer and both left inside. I'm praying this flu bug hitting the horses will not cause a problem with any of our pregnant mares. They were all vaccinated 3 weeks ago but who knows what strain this is. Reading up about the equine flu on google it looks like they caught this from the IL Horse Fair.  The disease has a very short incubation period (time from infection to symptoms) of two to six days. BUMMER, what else could go wrong at that fair. We will not be able to have any outside mares come in for breeding for at least 3 weeks once this has run its course. Next year we will get each horse vaccinated 2 weeks before we head down and not let anyone bring their horses next to ours.
Then when leading Evan back to his paddock I see a huge puddle in the foals paddock, they have pulled the plug to their automatic waterer and lost it. After spending some time digging around in the mud puddle to find the plug getting soaked and frozen I gave up, went inside and brought out a couple of quart sized freezer bags which were stuffed in the empty hole. This isn't much of a fix, just may hold enough water for them to drink until we can come up with a plug. Mike was sent a text to see if we have any extra. The foals were given a couple of buckets of water to hold them off.
None of the mares were covered today, I don't want to expose Lily and Rosalie to what ever Valiant has.
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