April and May have been bustling months! Beyond our regular yard disinfections, we’ve been actively involved in disinfecting yards post-spring deep cleans and ensuring stables at major events, notably the Badminton Horse Trials and the Windsor Horse Show, are disinfected to the highest standards.
Strangles Awareness Week 2025: Embracing the BEST Approach
At Ag Plus we are avid supporters of Strangles Awareness week that ran from May 5th-11th, hopefully you were following us and Strangles awareness week on social media. There was lots of useful information to take away from the campaign.
So I thought I’d do an overview, just in case you missed it!
The campaign centred round the anagram BEST
- Boost immunity
- Engage with trusted information
- Separate new arrivals
- Temperature check regularly
Boost Immunity: Introducing Strangvac
What does this mean and how can you boost your horse’s immunity to strangles? Vaccinate!
There is a new Strangles vaccine available and it’s pretty cool!
A new intramuscular strangles vaccine called Strangvac is available in the UK, offering improved protection and reducing the risk of strangles in horses. Strangvac has been shown to be up to 94% effective in preventing or reducing infection and clinical signs.
It is administered in two doses, four weeks apart.
Key Features of Strangvac:
- Reduced Clinical Signs: Strangvac can minimize clinical signs like high temperature, coughing, difficulty swallowing, and lymph node abscesses.
- Faster Recovery: It can also help horses recover faster if they do contract strangles.
- DIVA Capability: Strangvac does not contain proteins used in strangles blood tests, so vaccinated horses will not test seropositive unless they have been exposed to the bacteria.
- Broad Strain Coverage: It is effective against a broad range of different strains of strangles known to be circulating in the UK.
- Does not contain live bacteria: This means it does not interfere with strangles blood tests and your horse won’t contract strangles from being vaccinated.
- Multiple Benefits: Vaccination offers the best possible protection against disease by increasing your horse’s immunity, reducing the risk of getting strangles or having mild clinical signs, and providing a quicker resolution from disease.
The Strangvac vaccine can be given at the same time as your other vaccinations and we would recommend that high risk horses have a booster every six months.
Now for the cool bit! If your horse has been vaccinated against strangles, but is on a yard with a strangles outbreak, he can be safely vaccinated again to further boost his immunity!
Or if your horse hasn’t been vaccinated but there is an outbreak on your yard, then by vaccinating your horse straight away, you are boosting his immunity and increasing his chances of fighting the disease.
Engage with Trusted Information
Engaging with trusted information provides you with clear and trusted facts and not opinion or supposition! Who provides this trusted information, your vet and governing bodies like the FEI, organisations like Strangles Awareness Week and Red Wings. Oh, and us! It’s our job to keep on top of the latest guidelines and share the information with you.
Separate: Implementing Effective Isolation
Separate; Can you separate horses when needed? If you have new arrivals to the yard or a sick horse, can you separate them? It’s easier than you think!
Do you have;
- A spare paddock?
- A stable that can be used as an isolation box?
These can be used effectively by giving the new or isolated horse their own equipment in their own area, use a boot dip (with EndoSan disinfectant in), hand sanitiser and a separate overall. Cordon the area off with rope and signage and minimise the number of people handling the isolated horse.
Keep all of the isolated horse’s equipment disinfected in Endosan and once the need for isolation is over, disinfect the area thoroughly again with Endosan disinfectant.
Temperature Checking: Early Detection is Key
Temperature checking; Routinely check your horse’s temperature, it’s important to know what is normal for your horse. His resting temperature should be between 37.5-38.6C a rise in temperature is often the first sign of illness, their temperature rises in the 3 days before they become contagious and symptoms appear! Remember the campaign – Hot before Snot!!
Not sure how to take your horses temperature then check out our video!
Test your knowledge;
How are your Strangles facts?
- Can Strangles travel on air? No strangles is not airborne!
- How long can Strangles survive in water? Up to 6 weeks! Treat those troughs with Endosan 8 to stop the spread and to stop them going green!
- Is Strangles caused by a virus, bacteria or fungus? Strangles is bacterial – Streptococcus equi!
- Can horses get Strangles more than once? Yes, unfortunately they can!
From our perspective;
What we like you to know about Strangles! We want you to know how important it is to separating new arrivals and take their temperatures twice daily for 3 weeks. Prevention is better than cure!
If you do have a strangles outbreak then call us as soon as possible the sooner you call us the more we can do to stop the spread! It doesn’t need to sweep through the whole yard!
Biosecurity planning;
Have a plan! A biosecurity plan, means that if you have an outbreak, everybody knows what they are doing, staff and liveries. This reduces, stress and the sooner you can implement your biosecurity plan then the less spread there will be! Did you know that we can write these for you?
Top tip if you run a livery yard have a biosecurity section in your contracts clearly outlining what would happen in the event of an outbreak.
We also strongly suggest you nominate one vet practice to deal with an outbreak, this gives continuity of care and advice to horses and clients and really multiple vet practices don’t all want to be dealing with an outbreak!
Proven disinfection efficacy;
Did you know; that we had EndoSan disinfectant tested by the Irish Equine Centre on live samples of strangles. It achieved a high log 7 kill rate even in the presence of organic matter! – Let’s put that in perspective DEFRA only require a log 4 kill rate!