Administering IN Strangles Vaccination Orally

[Texarkana]

Has anyone been utilizing this practice?

Tonight my herd got their annual IN strangles booster. The donkey is quite well behaved, but too smart for her own good and knew what was coming. She was NOT cooperating. It’s somewhat ridiculous I have to give a companion donkey IN strangles in the first place, but I digress…

The vet said we could just give it to her orally because it has been demonstrated to be effective. This was news to me, but I went along with it.

So of course, I had to check into this when I got home. I did find a thesis that was eventually published in the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science that indicates that oral administration of the IN vaccine does elicit an immune response, however a lesser one than when the vaccine is given IN. It also notes that it is unknown if the oral immune response is “enough” to provide protection and obviously endorse using the product in its directed manner.

So… as I ponder if I just flushed money down the toilet, I wanted to see if anyone else out there has utilized the oral route of administration. If so, has it proven effective? It certainly would be practical for the difficult ones if it can offer protection…

[Amy3996]

My vet does administer it orally if the horse won’t cooperate for IN. She had both shoulders dislocated by a horse who wigged out getting the strangles IN, so she doesn’t want to fight with any horses about it anymore. I don’t know if it alters the effectiveness of the vaccine at all, but I have seen my vet do it.

[AKB]

You can have a blood titer run to see if the vaccine was effective. If the titer is negative, I would talk with the vet about sedating before giving the vaccine.

[mountainbells]

I use a clamping twitch for strangles. Every time. Maybe donkey is too smart for that also. They can be that way