Donella, this won’t ease your concerns any, but the Provincial Veterinarian released a correction to his statement. The confirmed case of nEHV1 in Alberta was previously thought to be from a horse who had attended the cutting show. It now turns out this horse had NOT attended the event.
So this means this confirmed case in Alberta got it somewhere else. That’s a little disheartening. The only good news is that so far it is just ONE confirmed case. We can all cross our collective fingers and toes that it just stays at one case.
The people in Vernon, BC, who attended the cutting horse show have voluntarily closed their facility and all horses are quarantined. I have not heard of any specific confirmed cases. They’re just watchfully waiting. I have very strong ties to the Okanagan Valley since I lived there for 40 years.
Because we’re all breeders and most of us have concerns regarding exposure contacts while breeding, myself included, I sent a direct question to Moore and Company about breeding with AI
(1) How and when a stallion could be actively shedding virus in his semen,
(2) How to know if he was a latent carrier and if a latent carrier was a risk to our broodies, or…
(3) if a latent carrier was not a risk at general, then how to know when a latent carrier became an active shedder?
Moore and Company notified me directly that unless the stallion has active symptoms, he is not shedding the virus in his semen. So, even if he is a latent carrier, he has to be symptomatic before his carrier status changes to shedder, i.e. Once he has first sign of fever. It appears that once a horse has been infected with nEHV1 (and EHV1), it’s a virus that never really goes away. It tends to rear it’s ugly head when a horse is stressed. EHV1 is a prevalent disease in the horse population and Equine Herpes is pretty much found in the entire population, it’s just held at bay because our horses are healthy and vaccinated. In other words, most horses are latent carriers of EHV1.
The nEHV1 has been likened as behaving similarlly to the chicken pox (varicella zoster virus) in people - - once you have had chicken pox, you are a latent carrier of it. You are not actively shedding virus and you are not contagious, but if you go through a period of severe stress - whether that be due to illness, physical stress, emotional stress, etc. - it rears up in the Neurological form commonly called SHINGLES which always traces a nerve pathway - down your spine and across your arm,face, ribs, belly, down a leg, wherever the impacted nerve travels, and it is extremely painful, not to mention disfiguring with the big blisters that come out.
So those are the guidelines we have for now to follow regarding breeding practices. The biggest piece of advice we got from Moore and Company, was keep your horses in prime healthy condition, vaccinate for all recommended diseases, and deworm regularly and appropriately. This helps the horse’s immune system the best.
So, I’m quite sure the majority of stallion owners are guarding their stallions carefully from exposure, just like all of us mare owners are calmly, yet carefully, guarding our broodies and taking zoosanitary precautions. Also, larger stallion stations like Dreamscape Farm, Hilltop, Rainbow Equus, just to name a few, have their stallions isolated from the rest of the horses and are watchfully taking zoosanitary precautions and temperatures daily.
If we all just stay informed and correctly educated as to what precautions to take, how to isolate, how to sanitize, and we stay calm (we can’t think straight if we’re panicking), we can all get through this as a horse community. Education is EVERYTHING. Get good quality information.
UC Davis has excellent educational information about the disease, how to take precautions, etc. This is the link. Sorry if it has been posted elsewhere, but it never hurts to have it repeated anyway.
http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/ceh/ehv1_general.cfm
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