Buying with no coggins

There’s a pretty cute unhandled draft x near me for sale. However, he has never had a coggins pulled - how dangerous / stupid is bringing this horse home really? My farm is set up for quarantine, but I do have foals and broodmares on the property.

If I do get him, I plan on having my vet pull it from the trailer, so we should know fairly quickly.

2 Likes

This is pretty dependent on where you are in the country, imo.

Can you leave the horse where he is until you get a neg coggins back? If, god forbid, he does test positive, at the absolute very least it would be a very big hassle if he’s residing on your property.

9 Likes

I couldn’t, but I could board him at the vet clinic. Which might take away my status as a favored client. :rofl:

I am in N Indiana.

3 Likes

Since EIA can be transmitted through certain flies, I don’t think there is a way to know if your new horse has ever been exposed. Since horses can carry EIA with no symptoms, I’d say that it is better to wait for the Coggins to come back negative.

There may be a low chance that this horse has EIA. But it isn’t zero.

The real issue is the consequences if he does test positive while at your property. The could have the potential to be fairly devastating to your horse population, depending on how your state acts from there.

9 Likes

My vet clinics have always required a neg coggins to be in house.

Is a same day rush coggins an option?

Do you have non iatrogenic EIA cases in the state (this year/ever)? Do you have history on this guy where you know where he’s been?

Is it even legal to sell a horse in Indiana without a coggins?

4 Likes

Well - new twist. I only asked how far the horse was from a common landmark. Turns out he’s in Ohio. So I will do a bit of digging on quarantine facilities there since I’m not keen to drag him over state lines without one.

The horse is the price of a used chainsaw. So fortunately or unfortunately, I doubt the owner cares much that the horse should have a coggins to be legally sold.

She says she bought him privately from the Amish - that tracks for this area.

8 Likes

Lol omg I LOVE this value. Are you trading a saw for the horse, or was that just a convenient ballpark?

Best of luck, I hope it all works out! Are you going to call him Stihl? Husqvarna is a bit of a mouthful!

21 Likes

My neighbor posted a chainsaw on Facebook marketplace and it is literally the same price as this poor animal. It’s a Stihl. Expensive chainsaw or cheap horse? Maybe a bit of both. lol.

15 Likes

Maybe that is a question to ask your vets, they will know what any regulations are in your area and have ideas how to go about this?

2 Likes

If horse were to test positive, may have to euthanize and all in your barn quarantined and tested and retested over several months until so many clear tests, or something like that is what happens here.

6 Likes

In some states, like mine, it is illegal to sell or transport a horse without a current Coggins. If it were me, I would probably just have the vet out and have it pulled where he is and then wait till it comes back to move him it can’t take that long. We had somebody here near me in Florida that was a relative newbie to horses and didn’t know any better and they got caught transporting a horse they had just purchased without a Coggins at one of the stations. Everything was impounded, including the truck, the trailer and the horse, and they got a huge fine and none of it was released until the negative Coggins came back.

12 Likes

I admittedly am not a risk taker. I do not let anything on the farm w/o a negative Coggins. All horses here get one w spring vaccinations. The end.

12 Likes

I agree with trying to get it pulled where he is, before shipping. Odds are low he’s positive, but it would be such an enormous stress if he is and you only learn that after getting him home.

When I vetted my event horse (who was the price of many chainsaws, though less than half the price of one of those chainsaws they attach to helicopters!), his Coggins had just expired and the seller gave me a bit of a hard time about wanting to wait for it to come back negative before going through with the sale. The vet, who knew both of us, was on my side. Side note: I also learned when I asked for vaccine records that he hadn’t had any in years because “he got lots when he was racing”…six years earlier. This was not a money issue either. It was very weird.

10 Likes

The reason I was hoping to move him is that he’s currently at a facility with barbed wire. He’s also totally unhandled - like going to have to be run into a crush to pull a coggins. So not a simple fix!

It is illegal to sell without a coggins, but the horse is very low 3 figures. It’s a situation of biting off more than they had knowledge for.

Luckily I’ve gotten a few good leads on places he can go and will research them further tomorrow.

6 Likes

There’s vets set up to get the coggins results within hours. I’d ask a clinic that specializes in racehorses. You could probably trailer there, hang out for a hour, and go.
When I was in Ocala last winter a guy came in hauling a racehorse to the clinic I was getting health certs at. He told the front desk he needed it in his email in an hour and 20 minutes; the time it would take him to get to the border!

5 Likes

When I bought my mare, they somehow lost the first vial of blood for Coggins. I do know they redrew it like 3 days later…about 24hrs before she was to get on the transport to me and they had it back before the truck got there.

2 Likes

Yes, we could rush it in Indiana. Not sure about the ability of the local Ohio vets to rush it.

If you’re where I think you are, I wouldn’t bet on the Indiana vets being able to rush it. There’s probably more racetracks in NW Ohio than NE Indiana. OH has the county fair circuit, IN - not so much.

1 Like

There was a case of EIA in WV recently, a vet friend there posted about it. I would not bring anything from that direction without quarantine.

6 Likes

I rushed one a few weeks ago - but as the horse is in Ohio, it needs to be pulled there. I’m not transporting him across state lines without paperwork lol.

3 Likes