Its symptoms include: “high temperature, nasal mucous secretions, coughing and loss of appetite.”
For prevention: “Implementing biosafety and quarantine, avoiding mixing, and sanitary disposal of abortion and hygiene products.”
Specialists in the research of equine family vaccines define infectious abortion in horses as the viral infectious disease that affects the equine family and is characterized by four symptomatic cases: “respiratory symptoms of foals, miscarriage of pregnant mares in the last third of pregnancy, death of newborn foals, or neurological disorders in old horses” What is known as “spinal encephalopathy”.
The horse “herpes” virus, belonging to the “Alphaherpesvirinae” branch of the “Herpesviridae” family, is of the genus “varicellovirus”. The “virus” first appeared in Kentucky in America in 1932 and then spread in Britain and the rest of Europe and Australia, to spread afterwards to most of around the world.
The virus appeared for the first time in Egypt in 1998, causing storms of miscarriages and respiratory symptoms, as it infects all the equine species, which include “horses, mules, donkeys, sissi and striped donkey.”
The danger of the disease lies in the fact that it affects all ages and causes heavy economic losses, especially in Arabian horses, as it causes the death of the foals resulting from either miscarriage or their death during the first year of life affected by respiratory symptoms followed by a secondary bacterial infection in addition to the neurological symptoms that affect older ages in Age.
The “herpes” virus has a latency characteristic inside the animal’s body, “Latency”, with no pathological symptoms appearing on it, and with stress conditions such as “pregnancy and the animal’s movement from one place to another or the animal’s immunity deficient,” so the virus turns into its active form, which is the main reason for the spread of the disease. .
Among the sources of infection: aborted fetal membranes and fluids, aborted fetal tissues, or nasal secretions as a result of respiratory symptoms, and the disease is transmitted through direct contact between healthy and infected animals or during the recovery period from the disease.
Among the most important ways to spread the infection is also indirect mixing by using water, feed, or tools contaminated with the virus, or the rotation of clavin from an infected animal to another healthy one, as it bears normal weather conditions for a period of 6 weeks, preserving its ability to cause infection, as the incubation period of the virus It ranges from “3 to 14 days” and may extend to three weeks.
Symptoms of infection
Respiratory symptoms, which are the rise in temperature to 40 ° with the presence of nasal mucous secretions that turn into purulent as a result of secondary bacterial infection in addition to coughing, secretions from the eyes and loss of appetite, often in foals less than a year.
Miscarriage:
It is the most dangerous symptom of the disease and it occurs in mares from “6 to 11 months”, of pregnancy, and it can be in an individual or group form what is known as a “abortion storm”, which is often and miscarriages occur in apparently healthy pregnant mares suddenly and the fetus is complete inside the fetal membranes. .
The premature death of newborn foals during the “first 24 to 48 hours”, as a result of acute pneumonia. The emergence of neurological symptoms that begin with a rise in temperature of up to 40 degrees, after which symptoms appear that begin with the sudden staggering of the animal and then a tremor, followed by paralysis in the back legs of the horse, which results in drip in the urine and lack of control and the animal cannot stand and the symptoms may be severe and the animal A nervous frenzy and he dies within “24 to 48 hours.”
protection
One of the most important means of animal protection from the virus is the application of strict biosecurity measures in horse farms, and every animal coming to the farm must be quarantined for a period of not less than 3 weeks before joining the herd, with the horses divided into groups according to age and age and avoiding direct or indirect mixing between The resident horses on the farm, especially pregnant mares, are isolated in the last trimester of pregnancy.
The miscarried mares must be isolated with the healthy disposal of the products of abortion and the wastes of sick animals, and the stables must be subjected to strict measures of hygiene and disinfection after childbirth and abortion.
It is noteworthy that for virus immunization, a “2 ml” dose is injected into the deep muscle and another booster dose after “4 to 6 weeks”, and the immunization is repeated after 4 months and repeated every 6 months.
In foals at the age of 3 months, if they are from unvaccinated mothers, or racing horses, or from “4 to 6 months” if they are from vaccinated mothers, while for pregnant mothers they must be vaccinated with three additional doses at “9, 7 and 5 months” of pregnancy.
Special for horse site
