Preventative Medicine

Horses are very susceptible to tetanus and sadly when they contract it they rarely respond to treatment. Vaccinations for tetanus are effective (and cheap). After the primary course, horses/ponies need a first yearly booster and then a further booster every two years.

Equine Influenza used to be infrequently diagnosed, but the large national outbreak in 2019 emphasised the importance of vaccination. The virus can travel over a kilometre on the wind, so avoiding contact with other horses is not a guarantee that unvaccinated horses are not at risk. Booster vaccinations are required at either 6 month or yearly intervals, depending on competition requirements. Tetanus boosters are usually combined with influenza boosters.

Equine herpes virus (EHV) is endemic in the UK. The majority of horses and ponies in the UK will be exposed to herpes at some point in their lives. Disease is not seen in most cases, but can cause abortion in pregnant mares, respiratory disease, especially in individuals under stress (e.g. travel and competition and paralysis which is the most serious form of EHV disease. This was most recently seen during an outbreak in Spain in 2019.

There is a vaccine for EHV-1 and EHV-4, but the vaccine has not been shown to protect against the neurological form of the disease and may increase risk of it developing if given to recently infected horses. For more information please feel free to speak to one of our veterinary team.

Strangles is a highly contagious bacterial infection of the of the head and neck caused by the bacterium, Streptococcus equisubspecies equi(S. equiequi).  Strangles is transmitted by both direct horse to horse contact and indirectly via contaminated drinking water, feed, equipment and people.  For further information on Strangles and available vaccinations, please visit our Strangles page

Worming regimes need to be tailored for each horse depending on factors such as age, amount of grazing space, number of other horses sharing the field etc. The best method to determine whether your horse needs worming or not is to do a worm egg count on a dropping sample, or take a blood sample to check for evidence of tapeworms. This will quite often show that your horse does not need worming and therefore results in a saving for you. It also reduces the overuse of wormers, which can eventually lead to worm resistance to these drugs.

It is worth noting that more horses are wormed more often than they need than are wormed not often enough. Only worming your horse when it is actually required helps to save you money, helps protect the environment and slows the development of resistance to wormer drugs. Please give the surgery a ring if you would like more advice.

This is another area that has seen huge advances in knowledge over the last 10-15 years. Routine inspections and rasping are very important to allow your horse to eat comfortably and for the early detection of any oral problems. Yearly inspections at the same time as vaccinations are advised as a minimum. Please see our separate page covering dentistry in more detail.

Most horses don’t require routine blood screening, although it can be useful for disease monitoring or for health checks in more elderly patients. We generally use blood samples in cases where a horse is performing poorly or has some sign of disease. In some cases they can be useful to look for diseases that may be developing, for example checking for insulin resistance in overweight ponies or horses and looking for early signals that a patient may be at higher risk of developing laminitis.

Far more horses and ponies are overweight than underweight. This can lead to a range of diseases. The weight of your animal can be estimated with a weigh tape but for accuracy to within 0.5kg the weigh bridge at the practice will weigh any horse up to 1.5 tons. If your horse is on a diet regime to reduce (or gain) weight, regular weight checks can be very encouraging to see that changes are being made, even if the outward appearance of your horse doesn’t seem to have changed!

Body Condition Scoring (BCS) is also a useful way to assess whether your horse or pony is a healthy weight. There is no “correct” weight for any breed as size and shape is so variable. Assessing fat content in various parts of the body gives the BCS which can then be repeated to assess whether weight is being lost as part of a controlled diet.