A visiting equine professional generally means anyone who comes onto a yard to provide a service directly to horses or their environment. These people move between multiple premises and therefore pose a potential biosecurity risk if hygiene standards aren’t maintained.
Horse Owner / Yard Manager Responsibilities
- Provide the facilities: have somewhere that your VP can wash or sanitising their hands between horses and between yards. Provide a disinfectant boot dip to use on arrival and exit to your yard.
- Set and communicate protocols: make sure visitors know what’s expected on your yard (e.g PPE, where to park, which horses are isolated). Communicate with your visiting professional, have a conversation about your expectations and overview it in an email to them.
- Maintain records: keep a visitor log and ensure vaccination/parasite control policies are followed.
- Notify: if you have an ill horse on your yard, notify your visiting professional before their visit, between you, you can decide if you need to postpone, or if the VP sees your horse at the end of the day, so that they can go home and wash and disinfect their equipment, clothing, boots and vehicles in EndoSan disinfetcant.
Visiting Professional Responsibilities (VP)
- Arrive biosecure: come in clean clothes/boots, carry your own EndoSan disinfectant travel pack and PPE.
- Prevent cross-contamination: clean/disinfect your equipment, between horses and between yards. Wash hands or sanitise your hands between horses and between yards. Spray your boots in EndoSan disinfectant on entry and exit to the yard if boot dips are not provided. See sick horses last at the end of the day, so that you can go home, shower, disinfect your clothing (pop EndoSan in the washing machine), boots, equipment and vehicle.
- Comply with yard rules: respect the rules set by horse owners and yard managers especially sign-in procedures.
- Professional standards: vets, farriers, physios, dentists etc. are expected (and often professionally regulated) to maintain high standards of hygiene to avoid spreading disease.
- Transparency: declare if you have recently visited a yard with confirmed or suspected infectious disease outbreak. If after you have visited a yard, you are then informed of an infectious disease outbreak and you were on the yard in the incubation period, notify all customers that you have come into contact since.
- Keep clear records: of yards visited, with dates, times and names of horses, this helps track the potential spread of disease
Shared Responsibility
- Communication is key: open the dialogue regarding your expectations as a horse owner/yard manager or visiting professional.
- Biosecurity is a partnership: the yard provides the infrastructure and rules, while the visiting professional ensures their personal and professional practices prevent spread.
- The yard owner/manager is responsible for providing facilities and enforcing rules.
- The visiting professional is responsible for arriving clean, using good hygiene, and following those rules.
Horse owners/yard owners and the visiting professional share equal responsibility for reducing cross contamination and the spread of infectious diseases.
News
We have had a busy start to the month with our new stable, deep cleaning and disinfecting service. While still being out and about with our regular yard disinfection service. We’ve also had a busy month with sales of EndoSan disinfectant and we’re putting the final touches to some of our client’s bio security plans! it’s all systems go for the rest of August and September. Don’t forget to keep an eye on Equine Infectious Diseases Surveillance on social media, for infectious disease outbreaks in your area.
Please get in touch if there’s anything we can help you with!