I’m not a big fan of the strangles vaccine.
The IM is relatively ineffective (though it does often give a good titer for the colostrum in a pregnant mare, so that might be an exception in a high risk environment.)
The IN works somewhat better, but still not fantastic, and if the horse has natural immunity may cause complications.
@Ghazzu Can the vaccine cause bastard strangles (which sounded horrific)? The vet was telling me about that and thinking back on it today, I wasn’t sure if that was in reference to the vaccine (that was my impression) or to infection.
I’ve seen cases of local abscessation if the intranasal was given at the same time as other IM vaccines, and have heard of cases of purpura hemorrhagica in horses which already had good titers–fortunately this is pretty rare, but enough of a risk that I will not vaccinate a horse that I know has a history of having contracted S. equi in the past.
But I have not heard of a case of bastard strangles from the IN vaccine.
(It couldn’t happen with the IM, because that is a fractionated vaccine made from the M-protein, not the whole organism.)
I have some updates…it’s been a long few days of vaccines and staff shuffling at my barn.
Charlie got his rabies Thursday 10/13 around noon. I preemptively gave him a full dose of banamine around 730AM that morning and a half dose at 730PM.
No fever until:
10/14 2:30PM 103.1 and full dose of banamine
10/15 4:30AM (14 hours post banamine) and 6:40AM (~16 hours post banamine) check were 99.1 and 99.9 respectively.
10/15 12:45PM (~ 22 hours post banamine) check he spiked to 104.9 and got another full dose of banamine and a call to the vet to start a plan moving forward if we needed to use much more banamine.
10/15 Fever subsided about two hours after the banamine and at 10:15PM was 99.2
I am getting ready to go back and check him here in a bit. The banamine seems to be holding the fevers down for at least 16 hours, so I want to check how he is around 18 this morning. If history serves, we should be going down and staying down by now, but, we don’t know until we know.
The game plan with the vet was if we can’t get the fever down and staying down, switch to dex which I have on hand if his fever continues to go back up above 102.5.
Conclusions!
I don’t think splitting up the vaccines is going to get us far. He doesn’t seem to start the fevers until around the 24 hour mark post vax, so I think I will forgo any pre-dosing him until he actually needs it. With him having as bad of a reaction to the rabies as he had to the 6 way, and past combo fall vaccines, I don’t want to put him through multiple rounds/days of banamine trying to split spring up.
He didn’t have any fevers with the flu/rhino intranasal, so Im not sure if it make sense to split that out in the future as a standalone, or just give with whatever else is needed.
I think pulling titers is going to be the next approach. I know that USAWE accepts titer paperwork and those would be the only rated shows we are considering anytime soon. One of the girls I met through my local WE shared that with me, and that she has a friend that titers and hasn’t had to vaccinate for 4 years as all her horses antibodies were still high, so that seems promising as an option.
If nothing else, going into Fall number 3, I am slightly less stressed about this all as it has been very predictable. That 104.9 though…oof. Another plus is that I have become very good friends with the boarder who is a vet tech and seems to have the same mindset/knowledge set as many of us do so that is a huge help that I can ask her basically 24/7.
I will update later this morning/this afternoon with where things are at.
Editing this mornings details:
10/16 6:30 AM ~18 hours post last banamine dose 98.3 (laying down resting)
10/16 8:30 AM ~ 20 hours post banamine 98.9 after (up and had breakfast)
Ill be back around noon to check him again with fingers crossed.
And just like that, we hit Sunday and the fever broke thankfully. Looking forward to seeing if running titers gets us to a better place with all this 
Do either of you know of any research on hard set antibody ranges that would indicate the horse is sufficiently covered or not for the core vaccines? I talked to my vet about this yesterday and he said he wasn’t aware of anything with a hard set confidence level, but that he would look into it. I told him I’d look into it too 
I am not either of those people but I can tell you that I have talked about this with my vet(s) and they too said that with horses there are not any set numbers to aim for with titers. Something to do with testing found some horses with X number seemed fine but other horses with that number were not covered… (stupid layman’s version of what the vet said far better than I did.)
Thank you! Your layman’s version translates very well hahaha.
No “hard” evidence that I’m aware of, but I’ll poke around when I get a chance.
Part of the problem is that titers only measure humoral immunity, which is only one piece of the immune response.
Also not either of those people, but Dr Ramey posted an article on vaccinations recently that talks about titers:
While I can’t access behind paywalls, I’ve looked into this several times, and everything points to there being no numbers that infer actual immunity, for the reason Ghazzu mentioned - antibody levels are only 1 measure of a body’s response/protection.
Funny enough, tetanus titers are the most reliable, but being that it’s a different type of vaccine than the rest, it’s almost always very well tolerated, so there’s really no need to avoid it
Spring vaccines have been on my mind recently and I just got a reminder email from my vet
A short recap…we know flu/rhino intranasal as a standalone didn’t give him issues in the fall; rabies as a standalone was pretty bad with fever up to 104.9 22 hours after a full dose of banamine and the 6 way in the spring was the same level of reaction.
This was his fall reaction timeline
Do I…?
We also skipped Potomic in the fall since the timing makes no sense, so he should have that at some point this spring as well in addition to the 6 way.
If there were a way to get him down to one vaccination time/ year, that would also be great if that could be possible though I hate hitting him with so much plus extra. If we could knock a couple off, once a year wouldn’t be so bad.
And ideas?
What’s in thee 6-way?
Because most of them have flu and EHV, so if you’re doing the IN separately, you may not need that.
EEE/WEE/WNV and tetanus +/- Potomac fever and a rabies vaccine would likely do it for the injectables, and I’dprobably split that up a bit in a horse w/a history. although it sounds like the rabies vaccine is the problematic one.
Have you tries rabies vaccine from a different manufacturer?
We haven’t tried rabies from a different manufacturer, it is definitely not just that as he has reacted with high fever to every injectable vaccine he’s gotten since I’ve had him (July 2020); 6 way, rabies+potomic, standalone rabies. That was why we tried splitting off rabies this past fall after his spring reaction and he was just as bad with that as the other injectables.
In the spring here the 6 they get are flu/rhino, EEE/WEE/WNV and tetanus. Rabies and Potomac plus flu/rhino booster are done in the fall, but we are off the Potomac in the fall.
Weeee! Bumping this. Vaccine reactions. Last year (following the year before’s reactions in which both Buddy and Bella had high fevers, no appetite, lethargy) we gave Banamine with all the shots: Rabies, Tetanus, EEE/WEE/WNV/Rhino. Everybody was happy. But, was it necessary? Well…
This year we have split them. The young boy, Sunny, is going out for training and we just had a couple rabid animals in the vicinity. So, Sunny got Rhino/flu/rabies. Everyone else got Rabies only. In April they will get the rest.
But we decided to see what would happen with no Banamine.
Well, Sunny has no reaction to anything. Whatever Buddy reacts to is probably in the EEE/WEE/WNV group and not Rabies. However, Bella? Bella clearly reacts to the Rabies shot. High fever, no appetite, colic symptoms, and severely reduced poop output for almost 24 hours. Fun times. A stupid amount of Bute (I had no Banamine, it was snowing hard, and the vet felt that Bute would work as well) dropped the fever and reduced the overall discomfort so she just stood around being miserable until it passed. She then made up the poop output with a vengeance.
So ends that experiment. I’m just going to give all horses Banamine with all shots from here on out…
Could you test them for titters and maybe do the vaccines less frequently?
This was explained to me by my vet, that for horses there are no known safe numbers to aim for.
She is more than willing to run titers and more than willing to say if the numbers are thought to be good enough, but with horses there really is no set numbers since there have been horses with high numbers that have gotten the disease and horses with low numbers that have never gotten the disease.
At least that is how I understood what she was telling me.
I have a horse who had a very severe vaccine reaction many years back so we have discussed this more than once.
That is my understanding as well. It’s talked about further upthread and there is some linked research. I was all about it before I realized it would be quite costly to do with no real understanding of what the numbers mean.
I may reach out to OSU and see if they have any research going on or additional insight as well.
Ah ok thanks! I didn’t know that, as I haven’t looked into it, but wasnt sure if it was an option like it can be with dogs
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You may also receive promotional emails from The Chronicle of the Horse. You can opt out at any time.
For Customers
Company
Terms of Use
