So I just found out that the horse stalled right next to my pregnant mare has pigeon fever. He was removed yesterday morning and the vet checked my mare and my gelding. My gelding was directly across from the infected horse as well. They were showing no signs I guess (i understand the barn isn't trying to scare people but they should have told me yesterday and not waited until today!).
I'm still worried sick my mare is due September 12th!
The vet is coming again today but all the shaving and flies are still in that effected stall right next to my horses. Their supposed to be bagging it all up today.
What do I do! I'm so worried Posted via Mobile Device
No ****! How irresponsible of the barn owners! Can you move your horse to an isolated area? Vet said they are fine but if by chance they are not, you would not be putting other horses at risk. Why on earth isn't the area being disinfected and cleared out? Humans treating the horses can transmit it to other horses. Omg....
Yes I know there are two whole barns shut down to quarentine now so no horses can be moved. I'm at work now or else I'd be there bleaching everything down.
I just prey my mare doesn't have it! Posted via Mobile Device
Well the vets coming out again tonight at 7:30 so I should know more at that time. I don't know much about pigeon fever other than what I've looked up on the Internet. Posted via Mobile Device
If I were you I wouldn't worry way too much. Last year we had a yearling and a pregnant mare get it. Albeit we didn't know the mare was pregnant at the time, but her foal is healthy as can be.
The yearling got better super fast. From my experience pigeon fever isn't gonna kill the horse. Whenever they got the swollen bump we would slice it open, drain it and then flush/treat it every day.
I just googled pigeon fever and those pictures are way more intense than the normal case, and our vet only made a 1/4 inch or so incision to drain the pus.
It is not very contagious if it is at all. We have had two cases this year in two different closed and isolated herds. One young mare on a leased pasture just got over it and one young gelding got it earlier this spring on a pasture near the house. Both got over it with no complications. The mare's abscess got HUGE and was in a horrible place right behind her elbow with a drainage tract that went way up between her forearm and her rib-cage. It went into the lymph nodes above her' arm-pit'.
I think the only life-threatening cases are those that are like bast*rd strangles that is when the abscesses are deep in the internal organs and cannot break and drain to the outside. They often die if a horse is not put on high doses of very powerful antibiotics.
Ordinary cases are best left alone as antibiotics just makes them take longer to come to a head, break and drain. I have never heard of it bothering pregnant mares.
We never had any of it around here before, but after 2 years of horrible droughts, I guess it is here to stay.
I have not seen abortions in mares getting the common form (the abscesses that break and drain to the outside).
I looked up the information I had last night. That also only said abortions were a factor if a horse gets the internal abscesses and then, death is also a major possibility.
Since the causative bacteria is in the soil and environment all of the time, it is not extremely contagious. My two recent cases involved two different horses running with two different groups of horses, 4 or 5 months apart, and only one horse in each group even got it.
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