Monitoring

Monitoring to Prevent Infectious Diseases

Monitoring horse health is important to prevent disease outbreaks and for managing an outbreak. Keeping health records is needed for successful monitoring.

Instituting monitoring for disease control as part of the daily care of horse helps to responc to an infectious disease. Routinely taking each horses temperature is not commonly completed in for the home environment but provides valuable for early disease detection. This is important for horses that mingle with other horses. Specific Microchip technology now includes recording the temperature by scanning the microchip. 

Changes in a horse’s behavior are often the first sign of an infectious disease. Depression, lack of appetite, excessive recumbency and incoordination more often are all indicators of the start of a disease. Although not specific for infectious diseases, changes in behaviour suggests a problem is present and signals needed increased monitoring is needed. Keeping written records of behavior and temperature helps identify trends for early recognition of infection. At the first sign of potential infectious disease a veterinarian should be consulted to help make a diagnosis with specific testing.

Monitoring to Respond to Infectious Diseases

Monitoring horses during an outbreak is necessary to respond to new cases of infectious disease and prevent it from spreading. Monitoring temperature twice daily is recommended to identify new cases as soon as possible. Monitoring temperature and signs of disease are also needed to determine when horses can be released from quarantine. Monitoring the overall health of horses during an outbreaks will help to identify other problems occurring due to changes in husbandry which is necessary due to restrictions in movement and diet.