 Alright, good afternoon. Thanks so much for joining us. This is our last horse management webinar of spring. And so I don't want to say I'm excited it's the last one because this is kind of been fun. I sort of missed you guys last week a little bit. It felt like it was a long time. These last two weeks have felt like a long time between them. But it is getting really nice out. And so I think you guys are probably ready for these to be done. So I am excited about today's biosecurity is something that we maybe don't think about a lot. But it is something that if we used it and just employed some of the tactics that we're going to share today, I think we could avoid some of the issues that we run into, especially with our horse health a long way. So today my name is Mary Keena. I'm the livestock environmental management extension specialist. And I am based out of the Carrington Research Extension Center for NDSU Extension. And with me I have Dr. Stucka. And Dr. Stucka is our extension our extension veterinarian. I was going to say extension equine vet, but he's just all the things. So he's our extension vet. And so he's going to start off with talking to us about some immunity issues with horses, just just how the horse immune system works and what that even means. And then Paige Brumman from the Ward County Extension office. She's the A&R agent there is going to talk a little bit about biosecurity. I'm going to come in with some manure, of course, and Rachel Wald from the McKenner County Extension office, she's the A&R agent there is going to end us today with some more biosecurity tips. So with that, I'm going to I'm going to page forward here. Oh, I forgot. So with us today, we have 35 people registered and there's a handful of you on. And again, this will be recorded. So some of us were having issues with the internet earlier. So don't worry about that. We'll record it and then we'll get it sent out to you. So a lot of again, North Dakota, which is awesome to see. We're so glad you guys are here. We have a couple of Minnesota and Montana and then one from India today. So most of the people had four to five horses and there were a handful of you attend to 15. But for the most part, everyone on here today had four to five horses is kind of where we're at. So let me slide forward. Okay. And with that, I'm going to give control to Dr. Stucka and he's going to get us rocking and rolling. So thank you, Mary. Thank you, Paige and Rachel. And it's good to be with you this afternoon. I will say that I'm getting a little weary of not being in front of people. I guess we still are, but it's we're just in front virtual, I suppose. But this is a very interesting topic. And I put that background behind my face there just to remind people that I'm much more of a livestock cattle veterinarian than I'm a horse veterinarian. Although having been in practice in the Cooperstone area, we were sure exposed to quite a number of horses in our practice. And I just want to begin by telling you a little bit of a story that we used to run horse vaccination clinics in the spring. And the reason was was to keep up annual vaccination on on groups of horses. And we pretty well knew everyone who had at least one horse. And so we'd schedule a date and the time that we were going to shop at the place and go and vaccinate horses. And so we did. That was kind of our spring standard in the country work for a while trying to get all these horses vaccinated. So one day I'm on the road, I'm going pulling up to this place. There's three horses in the pasture. There's two adult horses of normal size. And there's one that looks more like a Welsh pony. And so I pull in there to do the vaccination and we we accomplish our tasks. And I was getting ready to leave. And the young man that was helping was a teenager. He asked me if I trim the feet on this little wealth pony, which we managed to accomplish with some difficulty, I would say. But we got enough restraint and were able to pick up the hooves and and trim them at least to a certain extent. And finally, when we got completely done, I asked this young man who was 15 or 16, I says, I says, do you ever ride this horse? And by that, I meant this little Welsh pony. And this wealth pony had some years on it. There's no doubt about it probably between 15 and 20 years of age. And you could tell that he was the boss of the horse group, this horse group of three. When I asked him if he ever rode this horse, his answer to me was, I like life. Which the meaning of it should have been apparent to everybody that's listening. This horse was knowledge of the boss of the other horses, but he was the boss of the people on the place as well. So that little story stuck with me for a long time as we talk about horses and biosecurity and vaccination and health and all those things that go into keeping these horses, whether they're just done the pasture for show and looking at or whether we actually use them for the purpose for which they were intended. So I want to start off with this slide right here because it's a reminder of a very important concept that while we have great vaccines in the horse industry, you can't keep all potential pathogens away or what we call harmful biological agents. So there has to be something in place that we call biosecurity procedures in place that intended to protect not only our animals, but ourselves against disease or harmful agents. And it's very important as we get into this a little bit further, we'll talk about what some of those are and why this biosecurity is important and why vaccination may not be the complete answer. And then finally, we're going to talk about vaccination. And we'll use it in this context. It's it's actually the process of inoculating an animal or human being with a vaccine to produce immunity against a specific disease. And that little part at the end there, specific disease, we have to remember that's what a vaccine does. It doesn't protect against disease in general. It protects if the immune system responds against a very specific antigen, very specific protein that's associated with that biological agent or that pathogen. Somehow I got to go to the next slide here. There we go. So you probably didn't enter into this zoom meeting with the idea that you're going to listen immunology, but I'm going to make you and I want I want to have you understand what's going on with this slide. It's not like you're going to take a test at the end. But this is really important to understand. There's a there's a gold colored at least on my screen is gold colored kind of an image has an AP in the middle of it. And that's AP stands for antigen presenting. In other words, it's a cell that you and I have in our own bodies, that the horse has in his or her own body that takes these vaccines or takes parts of a pathogen and internalizes that pathogen and expresses it to the immune system. So that's what I have in those blue stars in that little box with that gold AP that's a cell immune system cell. And these little blue stars are what we call antigen, it'd be the same thing as equating that with a vaccine. So I've given this horse a vaccine, the blue stars of the vaccine, they're parts of that potential pathogen. And that AP is internalizing internalizing that part of the vaccine into its inner parts, if you will. And then what it does, it presents that antigen, you can see that blue star then off to the right of that AP in the next big box. So that antigen presenting cell is presenting that vaccine or that pathogen to the immune system. And that immune system had there's a cell there called a T it's got kind of a star shape, got spikes on the outside, it's called the helper T cell that helps the immune system figure out what it needs to do. So let's say that this is a tetanus toxoid vaccine that I've given in the blue stars, the antigen processing presenting cell takes that blue star that tectastoxoid presents the tax tetanus toxoid piece to the immune system, and then the immune system does two things with it. Okay, it can either go to the to the bottom here and present it to a B cell. And in the end, it produces antibody and that's what most of us are familiar with. So if I vaccinate a horse with tetanus toxoid, presents the antigen presenting cell presents it to the immune system, most of the response is going to be antibody. Okay, and that antibody what that does it binds if if a cluster of the organism that's associated with tetanus produces this talk toxin that can cause tetanus in a horse, that antibody is there. It's there to bind that antigen so it can't cause damage to that horse by messing up its musculoskeletal nervous system. Okay. On the other hand, if I take a different virus, let's say I'm taking herpes virus. And I present that herpes virus is now in that blue star presented to the immune system. Not only will I get antibody produced, but I'm also going to go up to this top part says cell mediated immunity. And that part is really important when it comes to viral infections like herpes viruses, because now I've created a population of immune cells that actually kill virus infected cells. So which vaccine you use, what you're trying to prevent and how the immune system responds is going to be a little bit different, it's going to be different for herpes virus. It's going to be different for that tetanus toxin, toxoid vaccine. I hope that makes some sense because the next time you're involved in vaccinating horses kind of think of this diagram and what's taking place. And of course, it all depends on a functioning immune system. Let me just make one important point. This is like cattle. This is somewhat like pigs as well. So newborn baby calves as well as newborn foals are born essentially without an immune without immunity. It's not that they can't build immunity because they can. But early in life that colostrum that first milk from the mare first milk from the cow is so essential to setting that full or that calf up for health, not only in the early stages of life but later on as well. So I can't overemphasize the importance of colostrum and managing that full when it's born and making sure it's it nursed and got enough immunity in it to its system because if it didn't even this part of the immune system doesn't work as well as it should. Okay. Alrighty. Okay, just this is just another reminder as well. This applies especially to young horses that are receiving their first dose of vaccine or an adult horse that's receiving a vaccine for the first time. This just a reminder that in most cases, that second dose of vaccine is critical to developing enough immunity in that horse or even a cow or even human beings in order to provide protection. So those lions in there give you an idea of this at antibody level, you give a first dose of a vaccine, they get a little bit of an antibody response. But because there's memory cells created after that first dose, now I've got a whole lot more of those B cells that can build antibody around. So when I give that second dose of a vaccine, whether it's at three weeks or four weeks, or I would even say six, seven, eight weeks later, there's memory cells are still there that can create much more antibody, create a much more powerful immune response. That's how critical those two dorses are, especially in naive, naive foals or an even a naive adult horses. Okay. Yeah. So let me just talk a little bit about this eastern or about core vaccines. Okay. This comes directly from the American Association and B coin practitioners and I think it's a really sound list. And this list is very sound basically according to where we live today. If you're living in the southern Hemisphere, especially as it relates to encephalomyelitis, then there's another encephalitis virus vaccine that you may want to incorporate and that's called the Venezuelan encephalomyelitis virus. So but for our purposes, and in our area and these northern plains, eastern and western encephalomyelitis, tetanus is critical to include on a yearly basis on these horses, certainly West Nile virus. Remember that some of these, some of these viruses, not that the horse is necessarily involved in transmitting to human beings because they're not, but some of these viruses because they're transmitted by mosquitoes can also impact humans. West Nile and these other encephalomyelitis can do that as well. Tetanus as I already indicated is important in annual vaccination and I would argue that rabies the same. We have skunks in our part of the world and skunks are the reservoir for rabies and it's just a very sound vaccination strategy to conclude rabies in your annual vaccination protocol. And here's a very important point I want to make about this list right here is that all of these require individual immunity as none of these are transmitted from horse to horse. It's an important concept to remember. Now, we'll talk a little bit about some other vaccines quickly, but these you're trying to build individual immunity. You're trying to protect that individual horse. So these vaccines and if it's a naive animal they'll in all likelihood require that two doses in order to get them started on the right track. This is just a comment about individual immunity and it's so important to understand this because most of the time a vaccine doesn't actually prevent infection, but it does induce protection against clinical signs. So let's say I have accident horse for West Nile trying to build immunity in that horse. Can that horse actually get infected? Yes, it can, but because the immune system is heightened and is ready for that challenge, it'll fight it off so rapidly that you basically never see the clinical signs. So and also that point number two when an immunized horse is faced with a West Nile virus infection, it requires a higher dose of virus in order to establish that infection and even if it does become infected, it reduces infectivity after the incurred some infection. So it's not going to last very long in the system. It's not going to shed very long to two other animals and so it this individual immunity for those diseases that we just talked about the encephalitis, the West Nile, the tetanus, the rabies can't be overemphasized. These these are a list from ABP on risk-based and depending on where you are, depending on whether your horse travels to shows or not and so on and so forth, these are certainly optional. The horse is much more resistant to anthrax than than than our cattle, but if you're in an area where you've had losses with anthrax, that's one you want to consider. Some of these others, the herpes, the influenza are considerations when you're showing horses and going different places and then some of these obviously are a little bit down the list in in in terms of whether you would consider them or not. Just one comment here and then I'll finish up I think and and turn it over to Paige to talk a little bit more about biosecurity but as it relates, let me back up one slide. As it relates to some of these viruses here like herpes virus like influenza, those would be the the big two that I would talk about. This is where herd immunity comes in. When we vaccinate, this is be a little bit like coronavirus that's impacting people today. The quicker we can build herd immunity in the United States, the less of an issue this becomes. So it actually instead of quarantining everybody and thinking that you're going to escape, it will better off for the young people that are somewhat just not immune but resistant to this to become infected because the more people that are immune in a population, the less likely the ones that are susceptible like the elderly, like the immune suppressed, the less likely they are actually to become infected. So that's that's a big issue in a relationship like the herpes and the influenza. The more horses in a population that are immunized against those two viruses that are shed from horse to horse, the less likely it is that a horse that is susceptible will become infected because you are you have built herd immunity. I hope that makes sense and we practice that quite a bit on the cattle side as well. Okay, so perfect. Why do we care about biosecurity? We want to reduce the chance and the risk of these diseases being brought onto your farm and exposing your animals and they can be brought by people, animals, equipment, vehicles, items like tack and and brushes that sort of thing and you're not going to be able to maybe 100% eliminate the risk but you can reduce it by implementing some of the things we'll talk about today. The benefits that you're going to seize that you'll have a healthier horse, hopefully fewer vet bills if you have healthier horses and less disease coming through. It's also a human safety issue. There's some of these diseases that are zoonotic, meaning they can be transferred to humans. So it's also a concern of human safety and that's why we want to do our best with biosecurity. And then also it's an environmentally disowned decision to manage your manure, manage standing stagnant water, those sorts of things that are good decisions as well. And we want to point out that it's prevention's best. It's always, you know, easier to prevent things than to deal with treating things after they've been infected. So what are some of the challenge specific to horse owners and stable managers and event centers? Well, some of these places depend on public traffic to their barn. So if you are giving lessons, if you're training horses, you're hosting horse shows and events, you can't just shut down and say nobody can come to your facility ever and that's how you're going to keep some of these risks down. Some of these places rely on frequent participation in shows and events. If you're a rodeo competitor, a horse show competitor, a trainer that is competing and exhibiting, again, you can't just stay home. You're going to have some exposure. You want to be aware and consider some of the risks and losses that can occur from outbreaks just so you can think through all of these things. There can be an economic loss treating diseases and illnesses can be expensive. There's an emotional loss, an emotional toll on the owners and these horse owners and facility managers. It can be stressful. It can affect the reputation of these facilities and sometimes it can be life threatening to the horses. So specifically think about people that come on to your property and you can categorize them into different risk levels. So low risk would be people that don't own horses and rarely visit rural agricultural areas. So maybe a field trip coming from a school or a city or relatives that don't live in a rural area, they'd be low risk visitors. Medium risk visitors would be people that maybe frequently attend farms or go to farms in rural areas but they don't have real direct contact with horses. So think of people delivering feed and shavings, maybe some repairmen coming out. And then our high risk visitors are going to be people that regularly make trips to horse farms and have close contact with the animals. These will be your vets, ferriers, trainers, maybe other horse owners and neighbors that have horses. And I think it wouldn't be unusual and it may be a good idea to visit with those people that are in that high risk category. Especially if you're not the first stop of the day, maybe your ferry has been to somebody else's facility. Ask them if they've been willing to wash their hands. Maybe if they have a change of clothes, those sort of things are good ideas to implement. So management strategies for visitors. Keep a visitor logged. That way if there's an outbreak at your facility, you're able to notify people. You can provide hand sanitizer, hand washing stations, and boot washing stations. Clearly mark off areas where you don't want visitors to go. So if you have high risk animals, maybe a mare and foal, maybe an animal that is sick, make sure that you mark off those areas that visitors are not to enter. Set up some parking areas that are away from your feed storage and manure sources and see if you have a dog policy stated. If dogs are welcome on your place, do they need to be leashed? Do they need to make sure that they stay out of some of the areas on the property? I'm going to turn it over to Mary. She is going to talk a little bit about a vector as it pertains to manure and manure management. Okay, let me just scoot us out of the way so I can see. Perfect. Okay, so the first vector then that we're going to talk about. What's going the wrong way? The first vector we're going to talk about is manure. And so manure can harbor pathogens. That is something that we've talked about in previous webinars. And so those webinars that those specifically the manure management on is linked here at the end in the resources so you can go back and get the full manure download. But manure can harbor pathogens. And so and it's also a breeding ground for insects, both internal and external parasites are something that we worry about. Insects carry and or transfer diseases. And so you can see here that we have what would have been an internal parasite. And then we have our flies, our external biting parasites as well. So of course there's the manure management side of things that I mostly talk about. So I talk about the manure containing valuable nutrients. That's there's nutrients in there that plants need. And if they don't, if we don't manage them, they become an issue. And so Paige had touched on earlier is it's an environmental issue. So that's where we have excess soil nutrients. We have some potential runoff. They become a soil and a water pollutant. However, there's other considerations for manure to not just from an environmental standpoint, but from an animal standpoint. And specifically today, a biosecurity or disease standpoint. So we have the bacteria and pathogens, flies and internal parasites like to breed in manure. And so that is something where if we manage our manure, we can also then manage our fly and parasite populations. Rodents really like manure, especially when it's warm. It's a nice warm area. And in North Dakota, they don't get that too often. Odors and weed seeds. And so those are just some other management considerations when you're dealing with manure. So there's four options we're going to roll through today. So manure management options. And again, you can get all of the details in the manure management webinar. So dry lotting, stockpiling, spreading, and I put rotate in here and we'll talk about that and then composting. So just some quick considerations for dry lot. And this one was more so talked about in the grazing webinar, where we have a dry lot area are some people called a sacrifice area. So basically we're giving up a piece of land to use for putting our animals in instead of using that for pasture. But we're using that area all the time. And so that's an area that's going to become full of manure and we're going to have to manage that manure. And so soil characteristics and structure is something that we want to keep in mind when we're looking at a dry lot area, how we want to how we want to maintain the structure of that ground that we're on. Clay versus sand. So that's going to be a pollution issue. So we want clay because it's less permeable. And then a hoof traffic is something else too that we have to keep in mind what can handle extra hoof traffic on there. What's going to stand up to having several horses around. Ease of use. So if you're going to use a dry lot area, is it useful? Is it easy for you to use? Is it accessible? Or is it something that you're like, well, our dry lot area is over there, not anywhere close to any of the rest of the things we do. So it's harder for us to manage our manure. So we just don't use it. And so those are just some things to keep in mind as you're going through and deciding if you're going to have a dry lot or not. And the manure collection, most people say should be weekly. Some do it daily. Some do it every couple weeks. And so I'd say the more often you collect your manure and manage that area, the cleaner it's going to be. And the less issues you should have. Okay, so here's an example of why to dry lot. So you can see that this was an early spring picture. It was raining out. It was muddy because we were thawing. And I put this up here for a couple reasons. One, we're saving those pastures. You can see the green in the background. If we had horses just running everywhere, it would all look like this. And we don't want that. We want those pastures for grazing. However, when we look at this, we think maybe we could change the footing. Maybe we could change the structure. Maybe we could change the slope of these pens so that you can see in the back there's some pooling of water. And so maybe we can use this picture as a good example of how to change how we're dry lotting. But then also the manure that's in there. Miner is something that we want to make sure we're considering in this dry lot. Are you managing it? Are you able to get in there and manage it? Is it dry enough that when you are using the dry lot, everything is draining correctly so that you can get in and manage it. If not, you're going to have horses that end up with manure up to their hips. And sometimes that's going to happen is North Dakota, no matter what we do, sometimes that just happens. But we can walk through the steps of mitigating those issues. Okay, so another thing we talked about was manure stockpiling or some people call it stacking. And so there's some rules and guidelines in North Dakota that we should follow. So short-term manure stockpiles are anything that is stockpiled and maintained in one area for nine months. It cannot be there for more than nine months. And you cannot use that same location from year to year. The second option is a permanent manure stockpile. And that's something that you can use for more than nine months in the same location so you can use it all the time. But you do have to go through some soil investigation and some regulatory oversight to make sure that that is in fact the best area on your operation to have that permanent manure. And that's just because of the initial manure considerations I talked about with the leaching and potential pollution issues. So sandy soils have rapid permeability and we've talked about this before. So we want to they allow the nitrogen or the nitrate to flow through really quickly and we want to avoid that. So that's what we call leaching. Well the lomere clay soils have a slower permeability. So basically they just help to maintain. They hold those nutrients there and then we're actually able to take those nutrients and move them off then to an appropriate place. Or if it's in our stockpile already so that would be if it's in a dry lot if it's in our stockpile already we're able to maintain that until we go spread or compost that manure. So common sense right don't put it in a gravel pit other excavations along streams or lakes basically anywhere where you think if it rained it could flood and if it if I put it here it might potentially affect water. Those are places to not put your stockpile area. Okay so now you have the stockpile of manure and you want to spread it. So spreading is another option and you can spread rominar it's not something that we necessarily recommend. If you go to the parasite webinar which was one that we gave two weeks ago we talk a little bit more there about spreading rominar versus spreading compost ciminar and how to manage that and if you're going to rotate pastures as you're grazing or if you're going to rotate and you're not going to have those animals on something that you're going to be grazing where you're spreading that manure then it's okay go ahead and spread your rominar but we really want to watch that we really want to make sure that we're maintaining that rotational schedule. So if you are going to spread and you're working with a custom hauler so something big we have something big that we're working with we have a lot of manure or we have a few years of manure something that we have in the state our custom manure haulers and there are actually several states that have them so what we want to do is just make sure that we are when we work with them we have a place to spread the manure we know how much it's going to cost we know how much manure is there and all of this stuff you can find in the very first winter webinar where we go through the calculations of knowing how much you're actually going to have so you know what to tell them when they come and one of the biggest parts and the reason I put this in here is because if you're going to do a stockpiling area it's really important to make sure that if you're using a custom hauler this kind of equipment fits these trucks and these tractors are what they're going to come with however there's at home spreading options too and so maybe you have just a couple horses or you spread often or you you just want to do it yourself that's totally fine too so there are smaller more pull type auctions ground driven spreaders you can use an ATV lawn mower some people use horses for spreading their manure and so there's a handful of then these little at home manure spreaders as well so you may have gathered if you've been on a few of these now that composting of course is one of my favorite management techniques so what the heck is compost it's a mixture of organic residues it's been piled mixed moistened and decomposed so it uses heat so thermophilic is a heat loving process where we have a heat mixed with all the other things that we talked about some carbon and some nitrogen which means that we have the wood shavings in the manure mixed together to make a crumbly low odor substance it's nutrient stable and it decreases the volume so that's great for you because there's less to spread so less to worry about okay so the benefits of composting we reduced our weed seeds that's big especially even our pastures if we're maintaining we reduce our pathogens something that we're talking about today with biosecurity that's big we also reduce our nutrient loss and increase our nutrient stability big things and then something else I added to this one that I don't normally have and here's we're reducing our flies and parasite populations again with a biosecurity issue with parasite issues with horse health all important things and then I just put in here's the last couple of slides reducing weed problems and so there's the I'm not necessarily going to go through this but this is just to show you the temperature so we're composting we're typically typically getting our compost between 130 and 150 degrees and this actually goes through and shows you then what kind of weed seeds are killed during that process at that temperature but then also the American Association of Equine Practitioners says that there's very little actually says no development above 104 degrees Fahrenheit for internal parasites so not only are we getting rid of the weeds not only are we stabilizing the nutrients we are also getting rid of those parasites too and then of course there's always off farm disposals an option for keeping our pens clean and being the most biosecure we can so we have the soil conservation districts maybe you want to talk to them we have some local vegetable growers that are always looking for a really great fertilizer product like manure some landfills will take it potentially community compost projects and then working again with a custom manure hauler and I just want to go back here something else that we we talk about with biosecurity most of the time we're thinking animal health and the live animal but I think that biosecurity can also be weed seeds too because we are spreading this this plant around are the states potentially so if we're using a custom hauler and they come in we want to make sure when they come in we tell them this is how I expect your equipment to look when you get here now is it going to be pristine and perfect probably not these guys haul manure every day but do I expect them to come in with if they come in with stuff on their wheels just like Paige talked about like how do you want this stuff to look when it comes into your yard and what you allow into your yard and so I think that's important to keep in mind so whether that's weed seeds or manure important to keep in mind with that I am going to let Paige take back over okay so next we're going to talk about rodents as a vector so rodents in North Dakota you know we'd be looking at mice rats gophers moles bowls squirrels those sorts of things are considered rodents they can carry diseases bacteria ticks fleas mites intestinal parasites those sorts of things they cause a lot of damage in spoiling feed and consuming feed and they can also cause damage to your buildings they can be a fire hazard when they're chewing through walls and and tearing up insulation so what can we do to prevent them the probably the most popular thing is to make sure you're storing your feed in hard sided containers most of our feed comes in paper bags or plastic bags that rodents can easily chew through and set up shop and have quite a of a fay line so make sure you're sealing those in hard containers keep your garbage covered eliminate any holes in buildings that are larger than a quarter inch plug those either with more insulation wire mesh more siding those are options keep your weeds in long grass around your buildings trimmed especially in the fall time as we go into winter make sure that you really reduce the height because they are going to use that to hide and to burrow into remove hiding places like wood piles and any clutter around the place that can house rodents as well as far as controlling goes just about every farm and barn is going to have a small population of rodents we want to keep it under control and one way to do that would be traps poisons there's different fumigations and other rodent control options out there I do want to note that if you're using these items make sure that you're following the label very specifically they are they do pose a risk to human health and other pets children that sort of thing so make sure that you're following the labels and being cautious when you're using those another option we see a lot of people have to control rodents is have barn cats and a few barn cats can really help keep the population down but if you have uncontrolled population of barn cats they can actually become a vector and a bit of a pest as well next vector we're going to talk about is birds and there's a variety of different birds that can carry diseases in order to prevent birds keep in mind that they are drawn to an easy source of food so again keeping your grains covered and even your haze as much as possible cover that garbage container again and keep your manure and compost piles covered and or at least away from the facility if you're feeding a lot of whole grains to your horses birds will dig around in the manure and feed off of that and if you do have spills because every facility typically does try to clean them up as soon as possible if you have a high population of birds that are causing problems on your facility consider maybe some netting to keep them out of your barn there are a lot of things on the market as far as noisemakers and visual repellents things like hanging an owl or a scarecrow hanging pie plates or CDs all of these are temporary solutions that don't typically work long time the birds come very accustomed to them they might work for a couple hours or even a couple days if you're lucky and then they figure out that it's not a real threat and they set up shop again so keep that in mind there is an option to use pesticides to control birds but what you do want to make sure is that you're using a product that is legal to use in the state of North Dakota and that you're using it against a bird species that is legal to use it on a good source for that information will be the North Dakota Department of Agriculture website and there's a link there for the Kelly Solutions website which will give you a list of all of the pesticides that are labeled for use in North Dakota and then also there's natural enemies of birds that sometimes people try to discourage from coming on to their property I think predator birds and again some of those cat populations can reduce the population although probably minimally at best the next disease vector we're going to talk about is insects and we covered this a little bit more in depth on the last webinar but insects are going to be carriers of things like West Nile and EIA and they're going to breed especially in the summer months and a lot of them breed in either manure which Mary talked about or wet standing water areas so to prevent them store feed any spoiled things like manure compost grain that got wet clean up spills quickly get rid of stagnant water and clean out your feed and water buckets regularly every place is going to have some level of insects so what can we do to get rid of the ones that develop into mature insects well we can use feed additives that have IGR insect growth regulators that will inhibit the larva from developing into adult flies fly predator wasp or another option keep in mind that you don't want to use both of those options together so if you give the feed additive that is going to kill the insect or kill the developing larva and then you also are using the predator wasp you may end up killing your predator wasps so one or the other or rotate their use you can use screens to keep them physically out of the barn physical barriers on your horses such as fly sheets fly mass and boots or leggings and then of course there's a whole bunch of sprays and repellents that are contained insecticides that can either kill the fly on contact or they can repell them slightly for temporary periods of time landscaping solutions to use would be say if you have a pond at your facility maybe you can get that water moving put an aerator or a pump in to reduce breeding grounds draining standing water or dumping out buckets that are tires that are collecting small amounts of standing water and then the last thing we put up there is traps and traps we talked about before well they may be really exciting to see your gallon pail full of gallon jug full of flies that's really really very few flies that you're actually catching in the environment so while they may look rewarding they're best used in small enclosed areas like tack rooms or smaller barns setting traps outside typically is not going to be effective at reducing the population significantly briefly we'll talk about other wildlife in North Dakota we'll start with the unwelcome ones and Dr. Stucker briefly talked about skunks being a leading carrier rabies and transmitting that to horses and raccoons are often also unwelcome as well but what about the good wildlife hawks and other predatory birds can cut down on your rodent population and some of the smaller birds non-venomous snakes like our bull snakes they also consume insects and rodents as well as our gardener snakes and then fish and frogs are desirable as well okay so that kind of wraps up our discussion about vectors we're going to move into talking about some biosecurity options while hauling so the first thing we're going to remember is to be clean your trailer out after each time you use it get rid of that manure and compost it properly disinfect your trailer regularly both inside and out and regularly is going to depend on how much you use it if you're hauling daily or multiple times a week you're going to want to disinfect much more frequently than if you're maybe only hauling once or twice a year to do a little bit of trail riding keep in mind that hauling is stressful to most horses and stress affects the immune response and another thing to keep in mind when hauling is to allow that horse to lower their head to clear their airway regularly so if you have them tied up short with their head tied up a little higher they're unable to cough and to clear their respiratory system while you're traveling away from home remind yourself that typically outbreaks spread much more rapidly at large group events so think about things before you travel to make sure you're not bringing the disease to an event check your horse prior to travel take their temperature and don't transport a sick animal and make sure your vaccines are current to protect against disease spread when you're at the event stay separated as best you can try not to group house your horse with other animals minimize that nose to nose contact when you're riding or kind of standing around and visiting don't let your horses sniff their nose right to another horse if you can while stalling if room allows at the facility try to separate those stalls with a tax stall or a feed stall so your horse isn't having nose to nose contact with another horse from another facility as far as equipment goes as much as we like to share and be friendly and helpful don't share your supplies and tack with other people if you must make sure you disinfect them before Rachel's going to talk a little bit about how to do that later before you use them and then disinfect again before returning them to whoever you borrow the product from so that includes things like feed and water buckets tack grooming supplies nerve forks wheelbarrows all of those things that can be fomites for different diseases and then while you're away from home keep a vital signs chart before you leave during the event and after you turn from the event and usually the recommendation is to check their temperature at least once a day twice a day is even better so what about new horses coming onto your place whether you're boarding horses have a friend staying over for a weekend or you purchased a new horse it's recommended that you quarantine these animals for a minimum of two weeks and the longer you can do it the better so if you can quarantine for three weeks or four weeks that's even better quarantine means keeping them away from nose to nose contact with horses so not just merely putting them in another pasture next to the horses where they can reach over the fence or through the fence separate them as far away as possible so if you can get a couple hundred feet away from where the other horses are at that would be more desirable don't have these new horses in common areas so don't bring them into your wash rack your round pen the tie rail where you tie all the other horses along the side of the arena cross ties those sort of areas and again it's recommended to monitor new horse temperatures daily while in quarantine also it'll help to have the history of that new animal so if it was purchased was it purchased at a sale auction facility or was it purchased private treaty if it was purchased privately from another horse owner did it come off of a facility where they had a closed herd where no horses had been coming or going or was it a horse that had been you know recently exhibited or being hauled regularly for the past few months so knowing that history lets you assess the risk level some other commutations that I just want to share with you is some of these things to think about when you're at away from home or even when you're at home and are having new horses introduced communal water sources are becoming less popular than they used to be but it's still not unusual to pull up to a rodeo or a horse show or a trail ride and have a big tank of water that all the horses are led up to or ridden up to and drink out of avoid that at all costs if you can that's a really easy way to spread disease amongst horses bring a pail of your own and fill it up from a hydrant or a hose when you're using a hose avoid letting the end of that hose hang out in the water tank or the pail the hose then becomes a fomite that transfers disease from pale to pale to pale so keep that in mind these are just a couple common things that we see while co-mingling of horses may not always be easy at events try not to tie them right next to another horse or again allowing that nose-to-nose contact and then a lot of the shared equipment that we don't always think about you kind of have to develop a habit of thinking about all these areas and what you can do to reduce your risk so face rags is a common one somebody comes up and says hey can I borrow that rag I just need to wipe some snot off on my horse's face and they do so they give it back to you you use it on your horse and you just transmitted a respiratory disease or a bacteria like strangles buckets are another area oh I forgot my water pail or my feet pail at home can I use yours not ideal unless you're going to be disinfecting before and after use we haven't focused a lot on skin diseases like the fungus and bacteria that can be transferred through girth and saddle pads and brushes but that's a common area for issues to pop up as well so again don't share those things and even at home if you're using the same girth and saddle pad amongst many horses disinfect those regularly and clean those regularly so that you don't end up spreading diseases through horses halters and bridles are another common area do you think that that bit that goes into their mouth and then if you immediately take it out and put it in another horse's mouth you can be transferring diseases that way as well so just some things to to think about so it all kind of sounds like a lot and we come down with a question of how strict do you need to be about these things and really it's up for you to decide are you competing regularly on a horse that it's very important to you that they not come down with influenza or strangles or something like that or do you have a past you're a companion animal that maybe you only haul once or twice a year to go on a trail ride and then it returns home to a small closed herd of only a couple other animals that don't do a lot of hauling or competing there's going to be a difference in the level of biosecurity that you want to implement for these animals the value of the horse sometimes comes into play and the value of lost training or competition time if that horse becomes ill and then also think about the cost of treatment of forest specific disease versus the cost of the prevention measures or sometimes what we think of as kind of a hassle of presenting preventing diseases and implementing biosecurity measures regularly evaluate your protocols because every horse facility is unique every horse owner is unique and those plans should be tailored to fit your needs if you're a small facility maybe you can say no I'm not going to let it be come onto my place if you're a large boarding facility you host shows and clinics or maybe you're a horse trainer that isn't going to be as easy to do but you can still set up guidelines and rules that you're going to follow to minimize your risk all right I'm going to turn it over to Rachel and she's going to talk specifically about how to disinfect items on your farm okay so now that page has covered everything off-farm while you are out doing you're showing or you're rodeoing or whatever else works she talked about disinfecting your trailers or or cleaning out those areas as you go places now I'm going to talk about disinfecting your farm it's important to do both both the trailer and the farm and when you come home if you have several different horses you know maybe 15 or 20 and you've been gone for a week with one at a show especially if it's a big show you want to take that horse and put him in a secluded area by himself for a week to 10 days just so that if anything does come up his symptoms will show up in that time and you will be able to manage that disease better because he that horse will will have not gone to the rest of your herd so this will help it will be a little bit more labor initially but if if something were to happen this would be less labor than if and if your whole herd had gotten it so the first thing would be setting up away from setting up a space away from other horses making sure that it's easy to disinfect disinfectants work best on clean surfaces so if you guys have ever gone into a stall and you see that there's poop on the walls that poop has to be removed before you start cleaning and disinfecting so one of the rule of thumbs that that I have heard is clean before you disinfect so make sure you get all of the excess debris off any organic material like feces gets out of there and and keeping everything clean before before you start disinfecting make sure you're using a disinfectant that is horse safe and then following the label instructions for use you never want to mix any products together that aren't supposed to be mixed together because they can create toxic gases they can cause fires and become more toxic to people as you're cleaning so that's one thing to keep in mind as well so in the process is remove everything from that stall sweep out any debris remove that organic material wash the walls and floors with a regular detergent and then you apply the disinfectant as label the label instruction and do not rinse so here's a quick disinfectant guide in this this is some of your common ones the phenols and creosols work well in the presence of organic materials so if you do have an instance where you're not able to to get everything out of there say it's a stall with sand at the bottom instead of cement that's another issue chlorines and hypochlorates is essentially bleach those are what I would use on your brushes, buckets and any other materials that you can you can dump in and soak for a little bit when you're doing that I do like to air dry those just to get them to a place where it's real easy the other side of that is getting them out in the sunlight too sunlight is an awesome awesome benefit when you're looking to disinfect and dry and get rid of some of the things that fomites might carry fomites being those buckets, brushes, and feed pans betadine is one exception to that rule sunlight, that's why it's in a dark bottle sunlight and organic material actually inactivate it and then chlorhexane also known as novacin is might be something that you guys are pretty familiar with because you can also clean wounds with that but you can also use it as as something to put in a spray bottle and spray any surface as well to help disinfect and I know that's hard some of these materials that we do are a little bit harder to do like brushes I want to make sure to do brushes if you're especially traveling quite a bit I would say do those brushes at least at least twice a year if you're traveling quite a bit do not share any of your brushes obviously as Paige had mentioned but your your buckets, your feed pans as you're going places as you come home that's the number one thing get those bleached air dry them and then get them back into your trailer so that it's they're ready to go for the next season so as you're handling sick horses you want to either if they've been in your herd promptly remove the sick horse from other horses or if you're bringing them back make sure just to just to keep them out of your sick horse or your horse herd with sick horses you want separate buckets separate halters feed pans, grooming tools all of those need to be something that you have off to the side obviously separate housing somewhere where they cannot touch nose to nose or share any communal water sources or any hay sources so across the fence is not is not enough they almost have to be probably on the other side of the farm and you want to treat and care for the sick horse last so as you're going out you know a lot of a lot of people are worried they got to check on the sick horse go through your your normal chores first and do that sick horse last because the worst thing to happen would be for you to go and treat that sick horse first and then essentially spread it through your hands or your boots or anything else to the rest of your herd so anytime the vet comes out healthy horses first same with the farrier and any other family members you want to change your disinfect clothing of footwear in between so if you're done for the day and you do your sick horse last either change into clothes that you've been using for that sick horse clothes and boots that you've been using for that sick horse or after you're done make sure that you are washing those clothes and washing your boots off before the next day starts washing hands is also number one that's for us as well as horses make sure you get your hands washed too so additional habits to adopt like Paige had said new horses take a temperature every day learn how to do vital signs and then also if you're planning on taking your horse somewhere having a standard vital sign set up before you leave so that you know when they are stressed or when something's coming you can see that in their vital signs beforehand so real quick temperature on a horse is between 99 and 101 those are pretty normal areas the pulse you're going to see anywhere from 28 to 44 and actually the more fit your horse is the lower that's going to be and then your respirations are between 10 and 24 breaths per minute and then another good one that I like to check on the regular is you just pick up that lip to check their mucus membrane so their gums make sure they're nice and pink and healthy and moist you can push on their gums and pull away and then count how many seconds it'll take for that that spot that your finger indented into comes back to their normal color and that's another piece of the vital sign that you can add to that too so on this horse here I have some red lines these are areas that you can you can get to it just depends on where the best spot for your horse is to take a pulse the first one is is underneath that jaw bone kind of on the medial side medial meaning middle so the one the side of the jaw bone that is facing the inside of the the throat that's one spot to take it the next is their jugular vein right along that groove on the lower part of their neck and then the pastern on the front part of the sorry the back part of the front leg and then you can also check not all horses are easily done by this one but it's essentially the femoral artery on the inside of the leg the back leg so you want to learn how to take your vital science chart them regularly some horses are easier than others it just depends on what sites best for for that horse we don't want to share any needles and then treat ill horses last so that's kind of just those good habits to keep on the regular not just when you have a sick horse so these are some of the resources that we'd utilized and I know you mentioned that vital signs chart frequently and the actually the first source there has a chart that you can certainly take with you and use at events perfect looks like we have a question in the chat box Dr. Stucker are you still with us would you like to unmute yourself and address that question I am here Paige let me see so the question is is why do horses need poor vaccines every year whereas humans and dogs and cats aren't needed every year got a great question actually you know in truth if there was a way that we could detect whether an animal is carrying protective immunity or not we may not have to vaccinate horses every year one of the reasons that we do especially for things like eastern and western encephalitis and West Nile is that we want to heighten their immunity at a time when we're going to get a lot of mosquito pressure it we can't control mosquitoes very well at all even though we try and remember that those viruses actually the reservoirs in bird populations if we get actually vaccinate mosquitoes and or birds we'd probably have a better chance of maybe not having to vaccinate horses every year but because we don't and because the horse and humans are essentially dead-end hosts in other words we don't transmit it to anybody else we want to maintain that individual immunity just as high as we can so i mean it's up to people whether to decide they need it every year or not it really is it's just that these recommendations for vaccination programs probably take a conservative approach and we never know how well a horse vaccinate or immunizes on the day we vaccinated if we had a way to measure that that would give us a little more confidence perhaps that i don't need to vaccinate every year rabies the same you know it's possible you could go a couple years with rabies vaccines tetanus may be the same but we just don't know the answers to that that can give us some idea is my horse protected or not so sometimes the default is just buying a little insurance and it's relatively inexpensive in my mind and one of the things i just learned putting this together is that there's now eastern and western tetanus and rabies all in one vaccine i mean that's pretty remarkable and in order to have a vaccine that's labeled that way they have to make sure that when they give them all in combination that they're not impacting negatively the other parts of that vaccine so it's become more convenient ever rather than three different doses or four or two you can actually do the cores in just one vaccine that's one thing i guess i hadn't kept up with on the on the horse side so it's convenient you're buying a little insurance gives you confidence i think in the care of your horse that you're not missing something or putting that horse at risk thank you dr stucca there's any other questions please feel free to type them in the chat box or you could even unmute your microphone and ask them verbally if you wish up right now on the screen we have a poll in action so if you want to select your answer and we have one more question to ask and we'll wrap up our polling I did forget to add one more thing to have a vet box handy in your trailer in your barn or just in your house and with that I would highly suggest you can get thermometers for five bucks get a thermometer in each location and a stethoscope they're they're pretty easy to have and to work so get those ready to go one thing that's really nice is to have an alcohol swab ready after you're done using it on your horse and just swab those off and let them air dry and that will that will keep them clean for when you need to use them again so as page is finishing off the polls there just want to let you know that like I said earlier this is our last one for the spring but we are planning some winter series and so that was one of the questions that page had asked is the likelihood that you guys will join us for a winter series and so if you want to in the chat box we have a few ideas already floating around just between us here but if you have some thoughts and ideas on things you'd like to share we'd sure like you to put that in the chat box things that you would like to know during a winter series like this and so we're thinking the December time frame so if there are specific things in the winter you really wish you had more information on that would be a great for us to know so pop them in the chat box or send us an email of course you can always do that if you think of something later you can always let us know with that page are the polls good all right so the polls are good and I think there are no more questions I haven't seen any come in here so unless anyone else has a question or wants to put anything in the chat box as far as a topic I think we will wrap up the series okay thank you everyone for joining us today thank you so much for allowing me to be part of it thank you thanks guys yes thank you all