Fort dodge is no more… they were bought by BI
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But has anything changed? I mean, it’s good to know there won’t be any more meds labeled FD, but will the FD stuff keep being made the same? Or will everything transitioned to the BI way of doing things?
In other words, will things be labeled BI, but be exactly as FD made them
I believe the Ft Dodge vaccines have landed with Zoetis.
This is my mare too! I’ve never met anyone else who’s had vaccine reactions progress from hives to laminitis, but the last two occasions on which my mare was vaccinated IM (obligatory for the purposes of x-country shipping; different products each time) she went from her usual terrifying colicky-feverish-hives reaction to even more terrifying laminitis. It’s been over a year and we’re still growing out the last of the flared, cracked, unhealthy hoof wall that resulted from the last IM vaccination. We’ve injected her hocks since then, and thus had a long discussion with my vets about the possibility that prophylactic dex could have caused the laminitic episodes (out of fear that the more potent steroid triamcinolone would be risky). Vet was pretty confident that the laminitis was an escalation of the vaccine response and not a steroid response given the amount of dex involved; mare had no pulses after IA triamcinolone so I suspect this is true. She’s been fine with coated needles for the administration of other drugs, and she’s had extreme responses to multiple vaccines and brands so we’re fairly confident that it’s an adjuvant issue.
I’m planning to show more this season, so I’m trying to get vet documentation of the issue so that I can be excused from rhino vaccination (though other biosecurity measures will be required). I did intranasal flu this year, and she got a little depressed for about 24hrs but had zero of the usual systemic reaction symptoms (lying down and trembling, sweating, fever, acting colicky, hives, laminitis) we’ve experienced with all IM vaccinations. I will not ever again do rhino (EHV-1/EHV-4) because it is not effective for very long, is less likely to be a lethal illness, and vaccination is potentially life-threatening if the allergic or laminitic responses get worse.
OP, I was talking with my vet about this dilemma a couple of weeks ago. Our options are no vaccinations, titre and vaccinate for only diseases with low immunity, or vaccinate for deadly diseases only. The titre panel costs about $250 in my region and my vet is pretty uncertain about where to draw the line on immunity vs. vaccine risk. It doesn’t include tetanus (not titre-able) or rabies (which is titre-able but expensive). I’m inclined not to spend the money for information that may not translate into practical actions. My vet is fairly confident that after a lifetime of tetanus boosters, that particular nasty pathogen can be handled by giving a tetanus vaccine and/or antitoxin only in the case of a puncture or other open injury, as long as the horse is monitored multiple times a day for injury (which she is) and treatment started immediately upon finding such an injury. In that case, risk of laminitis or anaphylaxis would be balanced by risk of terrible tetanus death.
This leaves us with rabies and WNV, in my area, as the potentially lethal diseases. CSU is currently doing a study on rabies immunity from vaccines, but as far as I can guess those results may not be available for years, given the nature of the research question. There are fewer confirmed rabies-infected animal cases in my current region than my previous region so I’m debating whether to vaccinate for it at all, or possibly on a reduced schedule… WNV is much more of an issue in my current location than my previous one, though, and I’m struggling to weigh the risks on both side of the equation.
How can one possibly weigh the low-but-terrible risk of diseases like rabies and WNV against the high-but-not-necessarily-lethal risk of vaccinations? Wish veterinary science were a decade or two more advanced before I ever had to confront this!
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It is bittersweet to see people in the same situation as me. On one hand, it’s reassuring to know this IS an issue and it’s being looked at by other people and veterniarians critically. On the other, I feel bad that all of these horses can’t get vaccinated without terrible result! Rabies and West Nile are risks in my area, as is Potomac horse fever - but this horse has lived in the area for 6+ years and likely has had some exposure and has some sort of immunity now. Luckily she’s up to date on rabies (for a few more months) and she got her last tetanus vaccine last year. It is odd that the vaccine itself caused a laminitic episode, I’ve heard large doses of Dex increasing risk but not a vaccine - how long after the vaccine occurred did that happen? My mare got vaccinated for EWT/West Nile last February and was unexplainably lame a few weeks later, cleared up in a day or two so we didn’t look further into it.
I so wish I could vaccinate her for everything. It would really make me sleep better at night. And what is odd is that she wasn’t ALWAYS allergic to vaccines either. It just randomly started. Hoping it may randomly stop? Fingers crossed…
I will recommend you check your horse directly to the horse doctor. So that you can find what is the actual problem.
I have been working with multiple vets on this, as stated in my opening post. They do not want to vaccinate her in a clinic setting due to the fact that travel, a new place etc is stressful on their bodies and being known she has an allergic response it would not be wise to add anymore stress.
On the coated needle subject.
I assume that if there is no reaction to sedation then any coating on the needle is not part of the issue.
Is this thinking correct?
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For my horse, pulses were noted within hours of vaccine administration, with signs of foot-soreness (e.g. lying down more than normal) for days afterward. With early intervention and excellent care she was only out of work for a few weeks, with gradual return to full work a few months after vaccination. It was a best case scenario as far as laminitis is concerned, but hardly something I want her to go through annually.
Mine also had a twice annual comprehensive vaccination routine without issues for about a dozen years before this all started. Once it started it has gotten progressively worse and worse for my horse. I don’t hold out any hope that it will ever stop. I’ve tried using combination vaccines and splitting it up into individual injections for each disease vaccine (e.g. tetanus separate from flu separate from rabies, so on and so forth). My horse has had severe systemic reactions to every IM vaccine administered since she it all started in 2012, whether individual or combination.
The most frustrating part is that the risk of deadly diseases can’t really be managed through biosecurity and herd immunity. Rabies risk is largely from raccoons, skunks, bats, etc., west nile travels with birds and is transmitted by mosquitos, tetanus lurks all around waiting to colonize wounds. No closed herd or biosecurity protocols or vaccinations to herd-mates can offer any real protection from these. I don’t mind the high maintenance associated with some of my horse’s other quirks, but the vaccine thing is a real quandary…
My horse foundered after a tendon sheath injection! I know this is very rare but after that my vet understood my nervous nature in vaccinating him myself she will leave them for me to do so I can spread them out and we now use a different brand if we have to do his hocks or bursa it takes a little longer to kick in but I’d rather wait 7-10 days than just give him whatever is convenient and find a rotated founder. I would try one at a time if that’s what your vet recommended and also call the manufacturers some of them have no idea this is happening where you are from or are only aware of it in certain states. Plus sometimes they comp you on a couple of competitor vaccines or a different/similar brand for your trouble which is always nice. I live in North Texas so the heat plays a big role in my horses problem.
Needles (and syringes) lubricated with silicone are routinely used for all sorts of injections, and my vet seems to think that because my horse hasn’t had this sort of reaction in response to sedation, administration of other IV and IM medications, IA injections, etc. that the silicone is very unlikely to be the cause of my horse’s systemic reactions. I don’t think there is any actual scientific study of any of this, though, so this is just second-hand transmission of one vet’s speculation. Others with confirmed silicone-sensitive horses may have more to say about this.
There are a lot of diseases that limiting exposure to other horses would not prevent (rabies, West Nile, tetanus). And it is almost impossible to prevent your horse from picking something up at a horse show, even if you bleach the stalls down and bring your own buckets/tools/etc. My fully-vaccinated mare got a snotty nose after Championships last year, and I didn’t “expose” her to any other horses than her barnmate. Didn’t share buckets/equipment, didn’t let her physically touch other horses, etc. But if they are staying overnight in a show situation, the possibility for them to pick something up is there.
I agree that not vaccinating this horse would be safest, but as she shows, saying that she can just keep the horse away from other horses at shows is not a realistic suggestion. She can not vaccinate and take precautions, but the possibility of the horse still picking up a serious illness is there.
Since I (and my horse) live in a more rural, heavily treed area, I would be worried about no rabies shots most of all. My mare has a reaction to vaccines, no where near like the horse in the OP (knocks on wood furiously), but she goes off her feed and is listless with a big lump on her neck for a few days after. My vet and I have managed to narrow down rabies as the specific culprit, so we split her vaccines up into two visits and make sure she has lots of recovery time after the rabies.
So I think its super interesting that rabies is the one vaccine that caused the least trouble for the OP and it is the one that triggers my horse the most!
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If I had to cut down on core vaccines, WNV wouldn’t be the one I kept at the expense of EEE and WEE. The latter 2 are more likely to be fatal than WNV.
I too find it interesting that rabies is the least offensive!
Tetanus should be the least offensive of all, as it’s not a vaccine in the way that the others are, in that it protects against a bacterial, not a viral disease, so its MO is different.
She did receive the tetanus in a combo vaccine so it potentially could have been from the WNV vaccine that went along with it. I found it very peculiar that rabies did not cause any issue. My vet says reactions to flu/rhino are pretty typical, but normally not as severe as her’s. She is currently up to date on WNV, strangles, rabies and tetanus. But has not received any vaccines this rotation yet… hoping to be able to wait until I can get my trainer’s vet’s hands on her.
I am crossing all my fingers and toes hoping it’s just a reaction to the combination vaccines, as that is all she has reacted to but I’m still very nervous to vaccinate her again.
Good point, JB!
EEE has a higher mortality rate than WNV, but WEE is less lethal (~25% mortality I believe) and also hasn’t been reported in horses since the 1980s (vaccination works! yay!). The >75% mortality rate of EEE has to be factored in with the risk of contracting the disease – for horses living in regions where EEE has never been found that can dramatically change the risk equation.
Since I live west of the presumed range of EEE and there haven’t been any cases in my specific region in the era of disease reporting, I am a lot more worried about locally problematic WNV and its ~34% mortality rate. WNV has been reported in horses in my county many of the last several summers.
For OP and anyone else unlucky enough to have a horse with such serious systemic vaccine reactions, the USGS and CDC disease maps and the EDCC website are useful tools for assessing regional variation in the risk of infection for fatal diseases:
USGS: https://diseasemaps.usgs.gov/mapviewer/
CDC (rabies example): https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/index.html
EDCC: http://equinediseasecc.org/
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@x-halt-salute - you did a much better job expounding on my intent. I forget that EEE isn’t an issue everywhere (and yes, I realize that EEE does not mean it’s ONLY in the East lol) since there are several reported fatalities due to EEE here each year (both vaccinated and unvaccinated horses). I’d never actually thought about it, but can’t recall the last time I heard of a horse around here even diagnosed with WEE, much less dead from it.
Definitely take a look at what’s prevalent in a given area when deciding which core vaccines to ditch, along with which risk-based vaccines to include.
