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Working together with your veterinary surgeon this booklet will allow you as a horse or yard owner to:
Plan
- know your risk level and the threats and use them to set up a plan;
Prevent
- help to prevent contagious disease;
Protect
- help protect the welfare of your own horses and the wider horse population.
“Guide to preventing equine contagious disease”
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Common contagious equine diseases in the UK
Contagious diseases are diagnosed in the equine horse population on a daily basis. Depending on the cause the signs may range from
a mild short-term infection to a potentially fatal illness. All of these diseases will result in time out of work for the affected horses and
significant associated costs.
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Contagious diseases of foals
Foals are particulary susceptible to disease. We focus on three diseases: rotavirus diarrhoea, rhodococcus pneumonia and lawsonia; seen
specifically in foals and weanlings particularly when housed on large yards.
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Disease risks from abroad
With increasing movement of horses worldwide and climate change, disease risks from abroad are an ever present threat. We provide the
key points on African horse sickness, West Nile virus, equine infectious anaemia, equine viral arteritis and contagious equine metritis.
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Yard risk assessment
Designed to be completed in discussion with your vet; this risk assessment is a scoring system to gauge the overall risk level for an
individual yard and highlight areas of particular risk.
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Setting up a yard biosecurity plan
Our step by step approach guides you through the process.
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Yard biosecurity plan: preventing disease
Biosecurity is the cornerstone of disease prevention. A simple set of management practices can be implemented in every situation to
decrease the chance of diseases entering your premises. We talk about protocols for newly arriving horses, the importance of isolation
facilities, basic steps you can take when travelling to shows and vaccination strategies.
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Dealing with a disease outbreak
The final section deals with what to do in a disease outbreak; how to recognize the signs of a contagious disease, and how to manage
the horses affected by it.
Contents
Welcome to the XLVets Equine
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Plan. Prevent. Protect