Strangles outbreak and quarantine

[sjp963]

The barn that I board at has a strangles outbreak. So far there are 8 horses out of the 60 that have contracted strangles over the last 2 weeks.

The barn does not have a way to completely isolate sick horses, but has isolated horses in their stalls and has biosecurity procedures in place (foot baths, only one person cleaning stalls in PPE coveralls, Clorox wipes, individual thermometers) They are monitoring temps 3 x per day and symptoms, as well as working closely with our vet.
They have bleached all water troughs outside and are trying to contain the spread.

My question is for those who have experienced something like this. As it stands right now all sick horses are in their stalls while they have fevers and snot. Once the clinical symptoms have gone they all will have to do 3 clear PCR tests over the course of 3 weeks. A positive test would mean they are still shedding the virus and would nee to start over.

At the moment the plan is to leave the horses in their stalls until they are clear. This could be 6-8 weeks or longer. No hand walking, no turnout, just locked in a stall for 8 weeks. Is this how this is handled. I can’t fathom horses locked up for that long with no turn out or hand walking.
And yes, I agree it is 100% a very infectious disease, but has anyone come up with a different way to handle isolating horses as the clinical signs stop?

Edited to add: all horses on the property have been vaccinated per the barns rules, except any horse over 15 per the vets recommendation. Out of the 9 horses with clinical signs 6 are over 15. So there might be something to getting the vaccination. The hope is that the others will have a milder case. I can’t tell if the cases we have are mild or not. One 4 yr old has finally ruptured her guttural pouches and no longer has a fever. But that took 12 days.

[Demerara_Stables]

I’ve never experienced this, but IIWM I’d move all sick horses to one end of the barn and fence off a hand walking area with panels just outside, that way they can exit through their own exit and get outside for a few minutes a day.

[LCDR]

Isn’t strangles a bacterial infection? I’ve been through two rounds of strangles in the past 30 or so years with my own horses, and IIRC the treatment was penicillin, plus incision and drainage when indicated.

[sjp963]

that’s a good idea. I’ll suggest it.

[sjp963]

yes it’s bacterial. But the protocol now is just supportive care no antibiotics. All the horses are vaccinated so the hope is not all will get sick, and if they do it will be a mild case. So far out of the 8 only one has had ruptured guttural pouches.

The vets are on it, and the barn really is doing a good job biosecurity wise. It’s just the quarantine protocol that the state needs that is causing worry.

[Obsidian_Fire]

@sjp963

The vets are on it, and the barn really is doing a good job biosecurity wise. It’s just the quarantine protocol that the state needs that is causing worry.

I can only speak to my personal experience when strangles went through our barn. By the time the first horse showed symptoms, how many others had been exposed? There was no way to truly know this, so while biosecurity was put into place in that nobody could come/go from the property everything else pretty much remained the same. There was no point in leaving everyone that was sick in, since their turnout was contaminated before symptoms were present.
But… 15 horse is a long ways from the 60 at your barn. If there is a viable way to know who has the potential to be infected vs. those who do not, then yes keeping the sick ones contained is probably the best way to go. Or, a sacrifice paddock that does not share a fence line or water trough or even near enough to be airborne.
It sucks, I agree. I would err on the side of caution.

[Angela_Freda]

My understanding is that strangles can live in soil {and perhaps surfaces?} for quite a while.
The dealer lot the ‘rescue’ horses I followed years ago had it and it was really bad.

I understand the idea that likely all horses are exposed already, but if they aren’t, as a horseowner, I would prefer they not be. It’s not only a risk to their health at present and future, but costly in time and money if they are infected.

IIRC treating strangles with ABs can cause bastard strangles? That’s my understanding of why not to treat with ABs?

I also believe that the margin that is effective to stop spread is something like 30’, so roping off one portion of the barn for sick horses and letting unsick horses be within 30feet of them, because what barns can offer 30’ distance between the two, isn’t really true, effective quarantine.

I hope those who are more knowledgeable will pipe up if I’ve got any of that wrong, and would appreciate learning more.

[LCDR]

What is the viral shedding you mentioned? Is there a viral infection superimposed on the strangles outbreak at your barn? That sounds worrying.

[SummerRose]

You mention state quarantine rules - just out of curiosity, what are they?

I’ve seen strangles at a couple of barns where I boarded and had one horse who had caught it at the auction barn she had been sold through. Two of the farms were much smaller, and the large farm was able to keep the exposed horses in a separate section of the barn. All got turnout in groups with the already-sick horses, except for the biggest barn where they had removable partition walls so they made the stalls double- or triple-size and kept the horses in. In all three cases that I’ve personally seen, only a few horses per barn actually developed the disease and it was all over relatively quickly. I hope the outbreak is over as quickly as possible in your barn, too!

[stargzng386]

Pretty standard. I was at a big barn where a new boarder came in knowing her horse was exposed and got a bunch of the horses in her field infected. Under quarantine they initially allowed owners to handwalk their horses until one owner was caught letting her infected snotty horse sniff noses with the school horses who were in a totally different barn area. Her negligence infected another 30+ horses that had been completely isolated. Two more boarders left while under quarantine to haul out to a group public trail ride too.

Anyways long story short all horses survived. It was nasty and as one of the barn workers absolutely exhausting. The lesson program almost shut down because they had to stop lessons for the entire summer. After quarantine a number of owners were asked to leave.

[candyappy]

@Obsidian_Fire

I can only speak to my personal experience when strangles went through our barn. By the time the first horse showed symptoms, how many others had been exposed? There was no way to truly know this, so while biosecurity was put into place in that nobody could come/go from the property everything else pretty much remained the same.

That was our experience as well. Made enduring it all much easier.

@Angela_Freda

IIRC treating strangles with ABs can cause bastard strangles

When we bought my daughters mare we kept her quarantined but she still managed to infect my horse and mule who came down with it just 2 days apart.
It was my vet who really cautioned me against giving any antibiotics and for the reason you mentioned- Bastard Strangles. My mule especially scared me as he did swell pretty badly in his face/ muzzle area but we just watched him (obsessively) round the clock and no meds were used.

My vet lived just 5 miles from my house and he stopped by several times to check them and only charged me a $5 farm call , nothing else. He was a keeper for sure.

[walktrot]

Years ago, around 2010, strangles went through the farm where I boarded. There were about 50 horses. About 60% were school horses. There were 19 stalls with boarders in them. The rest were all on pasture board.

The BO had always required strangles vaccine. I ran the annual barn day in March/April with our vet, the BO’s vet, treating most horses. I knew they were getting the nasal vaccine The vet said that was the reason we had a relatively mild outbreak. The BO established a 30 day quaranine where no horses were allowed to enter or leave the property. It contineued when the vet determined that all horses had shown their level of infection. It probably totaled about 60 days.

My horse showed no symptoms, most showed mild symptoms, mostly fatigue. Most did not get antibiotics. The only ones that had problems with infected glands and mucus discharge were a 3-4 weanlings and 2-year-olds foaled on the farm. They were quarantined separately and got antibiotics.

The vet also said horses that were present during the outbreak did not require vacccine. . My horse came from Iowa to Maine as a 7-year-old so we had no idea if he had been infected or vaccinated. This was the only outbreak at the farm. We knew it most likely came from a school gelding new to the farm who was a carrier showed no signs of strangles.

[sjp963]

sorry, just strangles spreading not a virus. And strangles is bacterial
.

[sjp963]

[stargzng386](/t/strangles-outbreak-and-quarant ine/793331/10)
State rules are that the barn is quarantined, no horses out until all the horses test clear. 3 nasal swaps done 1 week apart need to be negative. They want us to test all 60 horses on the property to make sure we don’t have any “shedders”. Bur we are working with the vet to see if we can do a sampling of the horses that have not been exposed. Any horse that has clinical signs must test clear before being able to leave the barn or join the normal population.

the tests are $350 a piece here, so this is not a small undertaking.

In fact while we can say it’s inconvenient, it is pretty horrifying all around.

[Peggy]

@Angela_Freda

My understanding is that strangles can live in soil {and perhaps surfaces?} for quite a while.

Common misconception. It’s 1-3 days.

Survival of Streptococcus equi on surfaces in an outdoor environment

https://vet.tufts.edu/news-events/news/7-facts-about-strangles-you-need-know

I think that people thought it “lived in the dirt” bc it would seemingly pop up out of nowhere.

I had a barn owner talk about it living in the dirt while passing out an article that clearly stated it didn’t. Clearly she hadn’t read the article. That situation was a mess. One set of people were (probably unfairly) blamed. It probably came in via the feed lot ponies that she was stashing for the rescue across the street. The one adult horse that got it, other than the ponies, was vaccinated. It was a mild case, but still a .

[alpine1]

This stood out to me in the conclusion of that study: Additionally, these results should not be extrapolated to areas free of sunlight, such as in a barn, in shady outdoor areas, or within soil or grass.

They tested on feed buckets, wood, etc., but to me it looks like this study doesn’t cover the potential of S. equi to survive in soil/grass?

[Peggy]

The Tufts handout I also linked has a bit on soil and moist environments: “ Strangles can stay active in water buckets and moist areas for four to six weeks, and the bacteria can survive for about one to three days in drier areas such as on fencing or in soil. The bacteria are primarily transmitted through nose-to-nose contact with an infected horse, but horses can catch the illness by encountering something contaminated with the bacteria, such as a water bucket.”

I’ve had a few vets tell me it’s not carried in soil or surfaces for very long. As in, you would want to disinfect something used recently but transmission from year to year (or decade to decade as some have claimed) via blowing dust is very highly unlikely.

[Small_Change]

I wonder sometimes if the “blowing in the dust” myth perpetuates itself as it absolves the barn owner or manager of any responsibility around transmission. There is such stigma around strangles that I would imagine if makes the knee-jerk reaction of boarders etc a little bit less if they think it’s just something out there, and don’t jump to poor management being the reason for an outbreak.

I do understand that outbreaks can happen with even the best of management practices, but there are an awful lot of times that new horses aren’t quarantined, etc.

[Scribbler]

Strangles is a very old disease. In the period where we knew it was bacterial but before we had tests to understand some horses were carriers or silently infected, “it lives in the ground” would have been a plausible explanation for how you could get an outbreak seemingly out of nowhere.

I’ve actually heard people say that recurring lymphangitis (another staph bacteria) also “lives in the soil” but since very few horses contract it, I personally think that the recurrences are about individual immune systems and health. I knew two horses at our facility to have recurring lymphangitis that eventually led to euthanasia, from different barns and different owners, not much in common except late teens. It’s a horrible persistent disease.

Staph bacteria are everywhere as we learned with “flesh eating disease” and cystic acne in humans, but who gets afflicted is a bit random.

[Small_Change]

100% understand, and I don’t think I explained myself well. I just wonder how much of perpetuating the soil-borne story is a lack of education, and how much is because it fits a narrative of it not being negligence, but rather just bad luck when an outbreak crops up. Not that people necessarily are being negligent when an outbreak occurs, just that because of the stigma surrounding strangles, it is assumed that someone wasn’t as cautious as they should be.