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Mares and foals should be vaccinated according to AAEP guidelines, but veterinarians need to be consulted in order to fit specific situations.
SIDE EFFECTS
“Most vaccines are fairly safe and we don’t see very many reactions,” says Rothacker. “The most common thing we see is mild fever and depression and lack of appetite. We usually treat this with a little bit of Banamine and the horse does fine. Occasionally there may be some local swelling at the injection site, but this is less common.”
After any vaccination, the horse may be dull for 24 hours. “If this happens, contact your veterinarian for advice and monitor the horse by taking his temperature. Rabies is probably the most likely vaccine to cause some reaction. When they were putting it through the early trials, they wanted to make sure they had a vaccine that worked 100% because it is such a scary disease. It is a very antigenic vaccine, and may be the one that horses respond to the most just because it has such a high dose of antigen,” says Rothacker.
“With all vaccinations, but particularly with foals, be careful about the vaccination site and monitor it closely after you vaccinate,” says Wilson. “There is always risk for vaccine reactions, or even worse, a clostridial infection at the site. One of my memorable foal cases was a foal who ended up dying from his tetanus antitoxin. He developed a clostridial infection at the injection site,” she says.
“Make sure the site is clean and monitor it afterward. When giving multiple vaccines, I encourage people to develop a site chart so they always know which vaccine they put where in
case the animal has a reaction to one of them,” says Wilson. Otherwise they may not know which vaccine caused the reaction.
Always keep good records. You want to be able to see that horse’s entire vaccination history from the time he was a baby.
scenario is an infectious disease waiting to happen.” Thus it may be wise to delay weaning foals until they have had 2 doses of vaccine. For most vaccines, a 3rd dose a month later is recommended.
“A disease that’s problematic here in the Midwest is strangles. Obviously, hygiene and separation of different risk groups of horses is important to help prevent the spread of strangles, but vaccination can
be important, too. I spoke with a veterinarian who was faced with a situation where a farm would not follow advice regarding prevention, and babies as young as 4 weeks old were coming down with strangles. This is an example of the need for vaccine recommendations outside the manufacturer’s guidelines to
fit the individual situation. This veterinarian was giving the foals their first intranasal vaccination at the time of the first heat check, or foal heat, on the mares. This is really young, and I would be afraid to do this routinely. But in this situation, this was the only way to keep these little babies who are so vulnerable from getting strangles,” says Wilson. Another situation in which some people get caught is when they make
a decision after the foal is born to send the mare and foal somewhere else to be have the mare bred. They haven’t recognized that the foal might need botulism and rotavirus vaccination before departing if they are going to Kentucky, and then they may lose the foal when it gets one of these diseases.”
Regional risk, if the mare is going to be moved around, should always be addressed when the mare is pregnant so she can give the foal antibodies via colostrum. “Rotavirus risk requires 3 vaccinations during pregnancy, every single year,” she explains. Thus you need to plan ahead.
Other risks for diarrhea are endemic on certain farms, and the veterinarian may have to make
up specific bacterins for those particular disease agents, such as some of the clostridial diseases like Clostridium perfringens.
“All in all, the AAEP guidelines are excellent and should serve as the starting point. They include vaccination of the broodmare. However, I always encourage horse owners to have a conversation with their veterinarian about tweaking the guidelines to fit their own specific situation,” she says.
32 SPEEDHORSE, March 8, 2013
EQUINE HEALTH
Heather Smith Thomas