Stallion owners must determine if their stallions have what it takes physically to make a good breeding prospect, including good semen quality, before the start of the breeding season. In his presentation at the sixth annual Equine School at the Alltech Symposium, Peter Sheerin, DVM, Dipl. ACT, a theriogenologist at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Ky., asked the audience: “What

In today’s competitive equine market, developing strategies to succeed and grow can mean the difference for an equine business. Michael White, an equine advisor for Teagasc in Tipperary, Ireland, spoke about promoting growth of the Irish equine industry in the global market at the sixth annual Equine School at the Alltech Symposium in Lexington, Ky. The suggestions he gave the audience can be

One equine case of West Nile virus (WNV) in Florida had been confirmed by serological testing as of May 1, according to Leroy Coffman, DVM, Florida’s state veterinarian and director of the Division of Animal Industry. This was the first reported equine case of WNV in the state this year, and possibly the first in the United States this year.

The WNV case was confirmed in an unvaccinated

An outbreak of African horse sickness (AHS) detected in late March in South Africa has killed 300 horses, according to a Pro-MED report. African horse sickness is a lethal virus spread by the Culicoides bolitinos midge, a species of small fly. Although AHS is endemic to all parts of Africa (except the Western Cape), rain has increased the midge population.

The outbreak began in th

Ten cases of Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) and one case of West Nile virus (WNV) have been confirmed by serological testing as of April 3 in eight Florida counties, according to Leroy Coffman, DVM, Florida’s state veterinarian and director of the Division of Animal Industry. This is the first reported case of WNV in Florida this year, and possibly the first in the United States this

An outbreak of African horse sickness detected last week in South Africa has killed 300 horses, according to a Pro-Med report. African horse sickness is a lethal virus spread by the Culicoides bolitinos midge, a species of small fly. Although African horse sickness is endemic to all parts of Africa, except the Western Cape, rain in the region has increased the midge population.

The researchers developed a molecular test to detect the cream gene in DNA found in the blood or hair. Guerin says the test will help owners identify heterozygous carriers of the gene (those able to pass on the cremello gene to offspring).

A lot has happened in the field of equine nutrition research in the last five years.

Botulism in foals less than six months of age is readily treated, with a survival rate of more than 95% in appropriately treated foals. Treatment can include nursing care, intravenous fluid support, nasogastric or nasoesophageal tube feeding, broad-spectrum antimicrobials, oxygen therapy, and the administration of botulism antitoxin.

Peripheral Cushing’s syndrome (PCS) is a recently named problem seen in middle-aged horses and ponies with obesity-associated laminitis. These horses tend to accumulate fat in the crest of the neck, over the rump, and in the sheath of males. It was first proposed that classic Cushing’s disease–a pituitary gland disorder that leads to excessive cortisol levels in the blood–was causing the

Many of us have seen the daring and exciting rescues of horses shown on television–such as rescuing a horse hanging from a bridge, or one trapped in a river. Then there’s the famous scene of a horse being rescued by helicopter. However, many of these rescues cause further injury or death of the horse.

Veterinarians have a variety of ways to look inside your horse to see what might be bothering him. One of these methods is gastroduodenoscopy, which allows the veterinarian to see the interior of the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum with the use of a gastroscope.

Vitex agnus castus extract (Chaste Berry) has been reputed to have therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of Equine Cushing’s syndrome. However, results of a study at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center repudiated these claims.  Jill Beech, VMD, professor of medicine in the School of Veterinary Medicine and chief of the section of large animal medicine at the New Bolton

Pneumonia caused by the bacteria Rhodococcus equi is an often-fatal disease that can be difficult to eradicate from affected farms. “The impact of this disease can be large because prevalence and case-fatality rates are often high; treatment is prolonged, expensive, associated with adverse effects, and not uniformly successful; the disease may diminish future performance; and farms

Despite the high incidence of murmurs in racehorses, they are very hard to diagnose. Heart murmurs are usually low-frequency sounds at the lower limit of human hearing which are difficult for the human voice to reproduce accurately.