RE: [RC] Strangles vaccine - Susan E. Garlinghouse, DVM
JMO--- although I personally haven’t ever had a bad
reaction to the intranasal vaccine in any of the many horses I’ve
vaccinated, I *have* had to pretty aggressively treat horses that were
unvaccinated and had contracted the clinical disease. Yes, it most
certainly CAN be fatal, more so in young horses. For a rather graphic
description of strangles disease prior to vaccines and good antibiotics, read
Steinbeck’s ‘The Red Pony’.
I have also seen some pretty horrible abscesses in horses
that were administered the nasal vaccine, but one way or another, some of the
vaccine got into a scrape, wound, etc---the vaccine is a LIVE (if modified) bacteria
and if under the skin, it absolutely, positively will abscess. You have
to be VERY careful of that, even to the extent of almost doing a surgical scrub
on your intramuscular injection site prior to and after injecting other
vaccines if you’re also doing the IN strangles vaccine---just in case the
horse snorted some onto the next injection site, or some got onto your hands or
whatever. I know of one horse that was vaccinated by the owner, she didn’t
adequately understand that intranasal really means ONLY intranasal and injected
it into the neck muscles. The whole thing abscessed horribly, a bunch of
muscle ended up sloughing off entirely. While the horse survived, it was
out of competition for a year and had a permanent divot in his neck you could
put your fist into. Not pretty.
For my *own* horses, I do the intranasal vaccine as
babies and once a year until they’re about four or five or so and had a
chance to be out and about a bit---after that, I make a hopeful assumption that
they’ve been exposed to the pathogen enough that they will do okay even
if they do contract the clinical disease. I don’t vaccinate again
during a breakout---it’s too likely that they have already been exposed,
may have had some very mild, passing case that didn’t result in
significant clinical disease, but if revaccinated with a live vaccine could
result in purpura hemorrhagica.
JMO, JME. YMMV. J
Susan Garlinghouse, DVM
From:
ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Horseraser@xxxxxxx Sent: Monday, August 13, 2007 8:14 AM To: Spottedracer@xxxxxx; ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: [RC] Strangles vaccine
So what do you all think of NOT giving the vaccine at all and
dealing with the consequences?
Micki
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