Latest News – The Horse
2003 West Nile Virus Updates
The West Nile virus (WNV) 2003 season is well underway. Reports of equine cases are steadily rolling in from states where the virus has been detected before, and veterinary and public health officials in those states that haven’t experienced cases in the past four years are likely readying for their first detection of WNV. The USDA reported Aug. 11 that 309 equine cases of West Nile virus
High-Tech Horse Raising
Tracking the growth of young horses is going high-tech with a computer program called Gro-Trac. Developed by Kentucky Equine Research (KER), the program allows breeders to compare the growth rates of horses on their farms to others of the same age and sex on farms in various states and countries.
By using a database of growth records created by KER over the past 10 years, farm manager
EEE in Wisconsin: Officials Say to Take Precautions
Eastern equine encephalitis has struck again in northwest Wisconsin, two years after a major outbreak that killed at least 42 horses (see article #2852), prompting the acting state veterinarian to urge horse owners again to vaccinate and re-vaccinate their animals.
Tests at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and the National Veterinary Services Laboratory showed that an
First Texas Case of Anthrax in 2003
Texas officials have detected the state’s first case of anthrax for 2003 in a white-tailed deer near Del Rio. “It’s not unusual to have a few cases of anthrax in livestock or deer each year in Texas,” said Bob Hillman, DVM, state veterinarian and executive director for the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC), the state’s livestock health regulatory agency.
Anthrax naturally occurs
Expansion Plans Will Lead to More Jobs at Alltech
Alltech has announced plans for the expansion of three of their corporate facilities located in the United States, Mexico and Great Britain. With the expansions, the company expects to add 350 new jobs in areas ranging from operations and research to marketing, sales and finance
The expansion of the company’s corporate headquarters in Nicholasville, Ky, will take the facility from
Remaining Saddlebred Recovering Well
Cats Don’t Dance, the remaining injured Saddlebred under veterinary treatment at Hagyard-Davidson-McGee (HDM) Associates in Lexington, Ky., is recovering well and might be returning home sometime next week, according to his treating veterinarian.
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Edited from track reports Jockeys Tyler Baze and Jose Silva suffered serious injuries Monday in a five-horse spill which marred the running of the fourth race at Del Mar. Xrays disclosed that Baze sustained fractures of the great toe on the left foot and the top of the foot itself, while Silva suffered a fracture of the L-1 lumbar vertebra, but no nerve damage. Result It’s dark out. You can’t see, but you know the drill. You’re used to it because it’s always dark at 5:00 a.m. when you feed the horses. Yet, something is different about this morning. The title of “Tallest Living Horse in the World” went to an 11-year-old Percheron horse named Goliath on July 24. He stands 19.1 hands high, or 6″5′ at the withers, weighs in at around 2,500 pounds, and is based in Mount Pleasant, Texas. A “horse ripper” suspected of killing more than 40 horses in Germany struck again on Aug. 5, according to The Guardian, an online newspaper in London. The two horses killed were mares kept in Helmstedt, near Hanover, and another two horses were badly injured. All victims’ stomachs had been slit open with a knife. Police suspect the cases are the work of an equine Five Thoroughbred fillies scheduled to be sold at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale were killed Aug. 7 when a fire believed caused by lightning destroyed a barn at Oscar Penn Jr.’s Penn Farm near Lexington, Ky. Farm manager Sam Penn said the fillies were not insured and had total value of between $150,000-$175,000. Two of the fillies were sired by The Deputy, one by Wolf (Reported by The Blood-Horse, 7/25/03) Ferdinand, the 1986 Kentucky Derby winner who went on to capture the following year’s Horse of the Year title with a dramatic victory over 1987 Derby hero Alysheba in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, is dead. The Blood-Horse has learned that the big chestnut son of Nijinsky II died sometime in 2002, most likely in a (Published in the Aug. 2 issue of The Blood-Horse) In the wake of the disturbing news of Ferdinand’s demise in Japan, letters and e-mails from fans expressing both regret and anger have flooded in-boxes. It is likely, however, that the legacy Ferdinand leaves by virtue of his unseemly death will rival his achievements on the racetrack. The death of Exceller in 1997 What would you do if your horse got stuck in the mud around the pond or at a river crossing? What if he were trapped in an overturned trailer? Those are just two of the scenarios that will be addressed in free equine rescue seminars sponsored by Hagyard-Davidson-McGee Associates at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Ky., on Oct. 23 and 26. The world’s first cloned horse, created by Italian scientists from a single skin cell taken from a mare, has been born, according to a Washington Post article. The birth of the healthy foal, announced in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature, brings to nine the number of mammalian species that scientists have cloned from adult cells, along with sheep, mice, rabbits, The first positive cases of Eastern equine encephalomyelitis (EEE) this year in Maryland have been confirmed in two Lower Eastern Shore horses. Tissues from two horses, both from the Pocomoke City area in Worcester County, were submitted to the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) on July 21 and July 23 and were confirmed positive and reported on July 28, |
