 Alright, good afternoon. Welcome to the 2024 Horse Management webinar. This is our second webinar in the series of four. And so these are hosted by NDSU Extension. And today our topic is prevention and detection of communicable equine diseases. And so with us today our speakers are going to be Paige Brummond, Paige is our extension agent in Ward County for egg and natural resources. And Paige is one of the active members of this webinar team. We also have with us Dr. Quinn Steichen. Quinn is the veterinary pathology resident at the NDSU Veterinary Diagnostic Lab. And so we're really excited to have both of them talking to us today about communicable diseases. Just a side note, this is being recorded and it will be sent to you. And so you don't have to take notes furiously, you can always go back and watch the recording. So today we're going to talk just a little bit about what is a communicable disease? What does that mean? We're going to talk about biosecurity and prevention. And then of course, how do we detect those diseases that we're talking about? And so with that I'm going to hand it over to Paige and she's going to get us kicked off. Thank you, Mary. So first up, what is a communicable disease? So any infectious disease that is transmissible from horse to horse fits into this category. And it's a problem because these type of diseases spread rapidly between horses versus something like a genetic condition that's limited to an individual horse. These are contagious. They spread rapidly amongst your horses in your facility and any horses that come in contact. So some of the examples that we're going to talk about today, we did just an informal poll to some equine veterinarians in North Dakota, and they kind of highlighted these as some of them that they're concerned with and that they're treating regularly or more regularly. So the examples and we'll visit about these later are going to be equine herpes virus, equine influenza, frangles, which some people know as distemperor strep, and then some skin conditions as well, things like a ringworm, a fungal infection, girth itch, pastoral dermatitis, some people refer to that as scratches. So how are these diseases spread? And each disease spreads maybe a little bit differently and it's important to know that. So let's talk about just in general, these diseases can potentially be spread by aerosol droplets or airborne droplets. So a horse that is coughing, sneezing, breathing, and those droplets are transmitted through the air to land on a surface or come in contact with another horse's airway. Contact spread is another one and that's nose to nose contact. So I'm actually touching each other or body to body contact. Another way is through ingestion. So being exposed to those pathogens through a shared water source or a shared feed source. Vectors will spread these diseases occasionally depending upon the disease again, but we have things like insects, so think flies, mosquitoes, ticks, rodents, like stonks and mice and rats, birds, all sorts of birds transmitting different pathogens and other wildlife as well. And then lastly, a term to know is fomites. And that's an object or an item that is transmitting this pathogen between horses. So think of brushes. If you brush a horse with a fungal ringworm infection and then go brush a horse without it, pretty soon that second horse has ringworm as well. So brushes, buckets, sharing buckets amongst horses, rags, contaminated clothing that a human is wearing. So just the human themselves on their hands and their clothing, trailers and many, many more fomites. Anything that can have this pathogen come in contact with it and act as a fomite and spread it to another animal. So what do we do about it? So first, let's kind of define biosecurity. And that's the act of limiting your exposure to disease by implementing these procedures to minimize the spread of pathogen. And I really want to emphasize that it's a risk reduction, not 100%. So we would strive for our horses to never get exposed to these or never get sick from exposure and never transmit it. But through our biosecurity practices, we try to limit that and reduce the risk and minimize that spread. It's not going to be 100%. So I do want to just stress that right there. Very important to implement our biosecurity and prevention plans. As far as prevention goes, first of all, have a healthy horse. So that's going to help you out just as much as anything. So have that balanced ration, a healthy horse that's living in a low stress environment, or as low as stress that we can provide to our livestock. Secondly, for prevention, make sure your horses are current on the recommended vaccinations to boost their immunity. So when they are exposed, they do have higher levels of immunity through those vaccinations you administered. And then also be aware of the common diseases and how they're spread that will help you become more biosecure and develop that plan and prevent the spread. So an example is influenza being spread through the air and aerosol droplets versus something like girthage. If you go put a horse, a stall or two down and think that I'm good, this horse has influenza, but two stalls down, I'll keep my other horses away. Know that those pathogens are going to spread through the air and still expose the other horses in your barn versus something like girthage that's more contact or can be transmitted through fomites. If you're really good with your biosecurity plan, just because one horse in your facility ends up with that condition doesn't mean that it will automatically spread. So knowing and being aware of what the diseases are and how they're spread will really help you tighten up your biosecurity plan. We're going to touch briefly on vaccination, not extensively. We want you to work with your local veterinarians to determine what's right for you and your horses, but know that there are guidelines out there that all horses should have the core vaccines. And these are recommended because if, of course, contracts these disease, they have high mortality rates. So those that are considered core vaccines are the vaccines against West Nile virus, Eastern and Western encephalitis, tetanus, and rabies. So that's regardless of what you do with your horse or where it goes or what your situation is. Those are the recommended core vaccines. And then there's many, many, many more that are risk-based. And you'll notice that the risk-based vaccines are some of those that we're going to talk about today because they were highlighted as a concern or something that is treated regularly in the North Dakota horse population. So those risk-based ones include equine herpes virus, influenza, triangle, and then there's many, many more. So again, we want you to encourage you to visit with your attending veterinarian to determine which one of those or which ones of the risk-based vaccines might be right for you. And if you want to do a little bit of research ahead of time, we recommend you utilize some of the sources that we'll link that will allow you to do some research and ask the questions of your veterinarian. So let's go back to protecting your herd. Your herd that exists at home or your horses that exist at home. One of the key things to consider is quarantine any new horses that you purchase or you bring in as a boarding operation or a friend's horse. And also quarantine any horses of your own that are traveling and coming back to your established herd. So quarantine is keeping them separated, avoiding that nose-to-nose contact with resident horses. And ideally it should be, you know, there's different ideas on how far away they need to be kept. Not everybody has an option to keep them super far apart, but if they're only 10 feet apart, that's not quarantining. So we recommend at least 120 feet for a new horse. And even though that there's still going to be some aerosol risk included with horses that close, so that as further away that you can get them is best. As far as how long, 14 to 28 days is recommended and know that this is all risk-based too. So the longer that you can keep horses quarantined from another, the less risk you're going to have of spreading a disease. You're allowing that new horse on the place to determine if they are healthy. And usually after 28 days that risk is much, much reduced and you can introduce them to your herd. The other thing to keep in mind is that keeping those new horses away from common areas that your established herd uses. So this includes the wash rack, the wall where you tie all the horses to saddle, cross ties, shared turnout areas. So if you have a round fender arena that you turn out horses in, you can do your best to have them stalled or housed away from each other. But if you bring that horse into that shared common area, all that hard work kind of goes out the door. Same goes for the care items that you use. So have a separate set of tack, grooming, whenever forks. If it's not possible or feasible for you to do that, use those items last on your new horse and disinfect, clean and disinfect in between use. The other recommendation is going to be to monitor the vital signs of that horse daily. And ideally make sure that your documenting temperature at least once a day, twice a day is even better. And again, handle that new horse or that quarantine horse last. If it's not possible to handle it last after you've already did your chores and worked with your established horses. If you do have to handle that new horse first, make sure that you wash hands or even better wash hands and change clothes before going to your established herd. The other thing to keep in mind is what's the history of that new animal? And that might increase or decrease your risk as well. So was that animal recently at a sale event or purchased through an event or a facility where there were hundreds of horses co-mingled together from all over the state or the country? Or was it a private treaty purchase where maybe that horse came from a closed herd, only a couple animals that hadn't been off the farm in months? That's going to determine the level of risk. And that might help you determine how long you're going to quarantine and so on. Also knowing the travel history of the horse. So say you did purchase a horse from a small operation. And they only had a few there and that horse had not left the place in a year or longer. However, if the other horse in that herd was traveling weekly, that kind of negates the closed herd idea. So know the travel history of the horse and where it came from. Next let's talk about while transporting your horse or while on the road. Cleaning your trailer after each use just sounds like common sense, right? But cleaning the trailer after every time you use it, clean out the manure, let it dry completely. The thing that we maybe aren't as good about is deep cleaning and disinfecting regularly. And regularly is going to be different for every person, right? Do you haul your horses once a year? Maybe you're only going to clean and disinfect once a year. If you're hauling them multiple times a day or week, it becomes more important to deep clean and disinfect regularly. Maybe you need to be doing this every week, every other week, monthly, if you're hauling a lot of different horses together. And when we say deep clean, we mean take out the mats, scrub all the walls with soap and water from top to bottom, rinse it out, allow it to dry, and then disinfect all the surfaces. We want to do that both on the inside and the outside. The other thing to keep in mind that hauling is stressful for horses and stress affects their immune response. So we do want to make sure that they're up to date on their vaccinations and give them a booster if needed. Something we do want to point out, though, is that vaccinating your horse the day that you're leaving or a couple of days before you leave isn't recommended. And you want to give them a booster at least a couple of months to allow them to develop that immune response. When you're hauling off-farm horses or sharing rides with other horses, this happens all the time, right? You're trying to save on mileage, offer a friend a ride, share your health requirements. Do you require certain vaccinations? Do you require certain paperwork? That's also the law to travel in some states or cross borders. But make sure that you visit with whatever, the owner of whatever horse you're hauling, and make sure you're just on the same page about what your expectations are. Inspect that horse before you load them. Make sure that they visibly appear healthy. Taking their temperature is also a recommendation. The next thing you can do to help yourself off and minimize risk of exposure is to keep as much space as possible between horses. So in this picture, maybe instead of putting these horses right next to each other in the trailer, leave an empty stall or a gap between them. Don't allow the bars down on the window so they can stick their head out and touch noses. Have a solid divider between them again so they can't touch noses. Keep as much space as possible when transporting if it's possible. Then haul it when you're away from home. So you're at your event, you're at the vet clinic, you're at the rodeo, the show, wherever you're going, the trail ride, the branding. Know that there's a potential for outbreaks to spread rapidly when we're at group events. We bring many, many horses together from all different places. They co-mingle, they're exposed, and then they go back home. And it spreads rapidly that way. Before you travel, again inspect your horse, take their vitals, make sure that they're healthy. We don't want to be hauling a unhealthy horse. Make sure that your vaccinations are current. Have that documentation and booster as needed. Once you're at the event, stay separated as best you can. So if you're going and you're co-mingling all these horses together under one roof and a barn, try to space out. So you're stalling horses with another horse from another barn. If you have a tax sell or a feed stall, put that between your horses. If the the bar, that's an open ventilation, if the bars are all down, maybe you can put up a tarp or something to minimize that nose-to-nose contact. Don't use shared equipment. So even at the shows as much as we want to be friendly or these different events, like, oh, I forgot a water bucket. Can I use yours? Try not to be too giving of your horse's personal care items. And if you do, clean and disinfect between using them for your horse again. So tack, grooming supplies, nerve forks buckets, all of those fomites that can transfer these infectious conditions back and forth. Monitor their health before you leave, but also during the event and after the event. Because again, hauling can be stressful. Taking them to new environments can be stressful. So monitor those vital signs. And then the last thing I'll say is have a kind of an awareness of visitor contact. So I think of going places where there's going to be people that want to pet your horse. Right. So a lot of times they're going to pet your horse and they're going to go right down the barn alley and pet other people's horses. So minimizing that or not allowing that is one option. Or if you do want to allow that, make sure that you are requesting that they wash their hands before and after petting your horse to minimize that spread. A few additional considerations to think about is avoiding communal water sources. Okay. This is a big thing. You show up somewhere and there's just one big water tank that's full of water that all of the livestock are drinking out of. That's a really quick way to spread diseases. Also, you say, well, I'll just go fill up my bucket out of that water source. But then you're taking it back to your horse and that that water source is contaminated. So minimize or do not dunk the bucket in that tank or the hose in the bucket. So it's best to fill up a bucket out directly out of a hydrant or hose. But don't put that end of the hose into the water because then that hose becomes a full night that can transfer that passage in to the next bucket and the next bucket and the next bucket. Combing legal horses is another one. So we think of, well, in the stalls, what can we do to minimize them from touching the horse and the stall next to them? But also when you're out riding, don't allow your horse to make nose to nose contact with the horse next to them. And again, the sharing of equipment. So, you know, someone wants to borrow a rag, I just need to wipe my horses face off real quick. And then you take that rig and wipe your horses face off and that that mucus gets transferred between the horses as with the pathogens that go with it. So again, all of that sharing of equipment, if you're going to do it, make sure it's clean and disinfected before you use it again. So here it goes back to we talked about biosecurity is reducing the risk not eliminating it. So now that horses get sick, that's that is a fact of life. It's not necessarily if they will, but when they will, if you are a horse owner. So how do we handle that sick horse? Well, promptly remove it from the rest of the horse. So if something's not right, your horse spikes the fever, because you're checking those vital signs regularly, remove it from the rest of the herd, quarantine it, separate it, separate all the items that use to care with it. So have a separate halter and lead rope, different buckets, different feed pans, different grooming tools, anything that you need to use on a sick horse, you want it to be separate from those that are not sick. Again, treating care for that sick horse last, just like on the biosecurity and quarantine plan for a horse that may or may not be sick, you want to care for them last on a horse that we know is sick, you definitely want to make sure that you're paying attention to that and treating them last. And usually if your vets coming to treat them, they're very aware, they are very well versed in biosecurity and understand that. But what about your other family members or friends or a failure that's coming in or another professional that's working on your horse that might not always be at the top of their minds. So just communicating that and saying, hey, I want you to work on this horse last. If that's not possible for whatever reason, again, change and disinfect your clothing, footwear, wash your hands, do whatever you can to reduce yourself being a fomite to transfer that disease to a healthy horse. And then let's briefly talk a little bit about the disinfecting process. That word is kind of thrown around as something that we say a lot, we'll just clean it, clean and disinfect. There's a process to it and a correct way to do it. Disinfectants work best on clean surfaces. So the number of times that I've gone somewhere and I can smell the bleach or watch somebody using a bleach solution and just spraying it on the ground or the dirt or the sand, that's not effective. So knowing what works and what doesn't work is kind of important. If you're disinfecting an area or a stall, first remove everything from that stall, get rid of the debris, any organic materials. So that would be scraping off any dried on the nerve or mucus that stuck on the walls, wash the walls and the floor with a soapy detergent. So soap and water mixture from the top to the bottom, allow that to dry and then apply a disinfectant following the label instructions. It's really important here too that you don't just kind of randomly mix different products that can really create some problems with really toxic fumes, can chemical reactions that can heat. You don't want to experiment with mixing products. On this next slide here, we have just a brief chart of the different types of disinfectants out there. And if you're concerned that you're targeting a specific issue, definitely visit with your veterinarian about what will work for you in that scenario, because there's a variety of them. So our phenols work best in the presence of organic material. Again, the best thing to do is get rid of as much of that organic material as possible. So that again, that's the nerve, the mucus, any dirt, soiled areas. Your chlorines, like your bleaches, they're inactivated by organic material. So if you're using those and spraying it directly over top of manure or some dirt on the walls, it's not going to be effective. Some are inhibited by hard water. So that's good to know. Other ones are inactivated by sunlight or organic material. Think of your beta dynes and those solutions that are kept in the dark bottles. There's reasons for that. A very common one that many people use is the Novacinibaglore hexanine solutions. And those aren't effective against spore forming bacteria. So this is where it kind of comes in hand to know what you're dealing with and working with your veterinarian to find the product that works best for you. Formaldehydes aren't used much for the layman. They're extremely toxic. The sulfates are effective against many germs. So those are more common. So just keep in mind that what you're using is going to determine on your individual situation. And I always follow those label instructions pretty well very closely. So it sounds like a lot. We've mentioned a lot of things and you think, oh, I'm just going to bubble wrap my horse and put them in a really safe area and not do anything with them because certainly they're going to catch something. Again, it's all about reducing your risk. And it's really up to you to make the decision of how strict you need to be. And this might vary depending upon your individual situation. And nobody can answer these questions except for you. So are you competing regularly or traveling regularly with this horse? Or is it a pasture companion animal that's in a closed herd that doesn't leave and new horses don't come in and out? Their risk levels are much different and how you manage that risk might be much different. So you can think through the things that we've talked about today and say, does this work for me or not? What's the value of the horse and what's the level of risk that you're willing to accept? And that's a question that you can only answer yourself. What's the value of lost training or lost competition time or lost use of that horse if it becomes ill? Are you willing to to give up use of that horse while it recovers from an illness or not? Or what if it doesn't recover? That's something to consider as well. And then of course the cost of prevention measures are almost always going to be less than the cost of the treatment if it were to get sick. So use those prevention measures that we talked about to the best of your ability. And then evaluate those protocols. So every horse facility is unique. You can set up your protocols for your operation. You can require visitors to wash their hands, to go through a foot bath, to do whatever you need to do on your facility that is completely up to you. And those protocols might change depending upon what's going on at your barn or your farmer ranch at the time. Tailor it to your needs and we do in our resources have some examples of some very detailed biosecurity plans that you can implement bits and pieces of or the entire thing depending upon your situation. So I'm going to briefly talk about this and then turn it over to Dr. Steichen. So in order to provide surveillance and early detection, you have to know what's normal for your horse and knowing how to take their vital signs and document their vital signs is the key part of this. And probably just as important as knowing what's normal is you need to know what's not normal. So observe your horses and if you haven't taken all of their vital signs before, I definitely recommend learning how. So we want to make sure that you know how to take their their temperature is key and just know their normal behavior and expression of your horses. You know, some people can walk in and look at their horse and note instantly without taking their temperature any of their vital signs that they're not right, they're not feeling well, because their behavior is the first first indication for them. Okay. Are they eating, drinking, urinating, defecating normally? Evaluate all of those things on a daily basis. Know how to take their temperature and know what's normal for them. Document it, write it down, put it in your calendar, have a chart out in the barn to document these vital signs regularly. So you have a record of what's normal for your horse. Know to take their pulse, respiration, check their gum color, check the capillary refill times, check their hydration, know what their normal gut sounds are like. All of those things are important. If you have a problem, definitely your your first contact is going to be your local veterinarian. If your horse isn't right, reach out to your attending veterinarian. After that, the veterinarian may decide to work with a diagnostic lab or you may work with a diagnostic lab directly. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Steichen and she's going to visit with you about the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab. All right, thank you so much. So that was a great overview on how to prevent infectious diseases in your animals. But as Paige was saying, this is always a risk reduction. So even with the best protocols, there can be a lapse and your animals can get sick. What do you do then? So obviously, working with your veterinarian is the first step. And after that, you know, you can work with them in order to get the correct samples. Unfortunately, with some of the infectious diseases I will be discussing, they do cause animals to die. And that is really when the diagnostic lab steps in. And so we really ultimately are here to work with you guys as horse owners, extension agents, and referring veterinarians to find out why that animal died. And if it is an infectious disease, how can we help prevent that spread within your herd or to your neighbor's animals? Basically, we want to help your animals feel safe and healthy. So here's a picture of our diagnostic lab. We moved over here in 2017 off of the main campus of NDSU. This was a welcome move because we have a giant parking lot now where we can back up trailers and you don't have a bunch of undergrads staring at you if you have to drop off samples or an animal. And so just very briefly about the diagnostic lab, if you're unfamiliar with us, there are 22 employees that work here. As Mary said, I am a third year resident and I'm trained under two boarded pathologists, Dr. Pecorero, who's our director, and then Dr. Webb. We also have a boarded toxicologist, a veterinary diagnostician, and then also numerous medical technicians, microbiologists, veterinary technicians and chemists. On an average, the diagnostic lab sees about 14,000 cases every year. Predominantly, we are a cattle lab, but we also see small animals, so dogs and cats are equine or horses, and then a scattering of exotic animals from the local zoos. And if you've never been to our lab, I just real quick wanted to post a picture. So you can see I-29 on the picture off to the left. We are actually west of I-29. If you go past that beef research complex, we are on the left side or the north side of the road. We have a huge parking lot where if you're dropping off samples or an animal, you can go ahead and park in that client parking off to the right picture, as you can see. And then we have two doors that you can enter. We have two awesome front office staff administrators that can help fill out submission forms, as well as collect payments. If for some reason you have samples and you're driving through Fargo at nine o'clock at night, we do have an after-hours sample area that you can drop off. Those cooler doors are open 24-7. So you can drop off samples there as well as fill out a submission form. Now, unfortunately, there are times that we just have to drop off an animal. And so we do have a big hoist system that you can go ahead and back your trailer up. We can take the animal off of a flatbed trailer or your enclosed horse trailer. We do just ask that if you're going to drop off an animal in an enclosed trailer to let us know beforehand. Only reason being is that we have to add in another pulley system to our hoist system. And it helps us be prepared for you guys. Obviously, dropping off an animal here is always very emotional. And we try to be cognizant of that. And we are trying to make sure that you're not waiting on us to get that hoist system together. So we are always here for you. If you have the unfortunate task where you have to drop off an animal to us, just let us know beforehand that it's coming in an enclosed trailer. And so everything I'm going to talk about, you can find on our website, which is posted there. You can also give us a call. That's the front office number. Always feel free to call us or just stop by and drop off samples. Like I said, our two front office administrators are wonderful. And they can definitely help you with any questions that you have or divert you to somebody else in the lab. That might be more helpful in answering those questions. So before going into some of the infectious diseases, I just wanted to put a plug in because it is Coggins season. And so the majority of our submissions that come through the VDL is equine infectious anemia or Coggins. And so that is the blood test that you normally always have to pull in order to travel to other states or even within some of the events within the state. And so I'm pretty sure that we are the only laboratory in the state of North Dakota that is accredited and certified through USDA to run Coggins. It is an extremely intense process where the USDA actually comes in and inspects us. And our microbiologist Sharon has to pull records and keep in-depth equipment logs, temperature logs on everything when she runs these Coggins tests. So it's very important when you submit to us, whether it be you or your veterinarian submitting that we have all the information that you need. Now your veterinarian does have to be the one to pull blood for Coggins test. You can submit an electronic form, which is what you see on this seminar. We prefer the electronic form either through global vet link or VSPS. Reason being is, A, they're pretty. I love the colored pictures. But B, all the information has to be filled out appropriately. If you submit blood on a Wednesday and you need a stat Coggins for a Saturday event and it's on a paper Coggins, if all that information isn't filled out, the USDA won't let us continue on in order to even test that sample. So the electronic form automatically stops when your veterinarian is filling that out and says you need this information. So we do appreciate if you could maybe push your veterinarian into doing electronic copies. About 60% are electronic, but we're still getting about 30 to 40% that are paper. And those are the ones where your veterinarians coming out and they're drawing on the little submission form, all of the colored or white areas. And so besides Coggins, the rest of our case load consists of colic workups, abortions, or our scattered toxin cases. We do also have biopsy service, which is, which are the lumps and bumps that are removed from your horse. Real quick, I just wanted to throw up the submission form mostly because if you are submitting an animal or a sample to us, history is so important. Page really kind of talked about some of that history on a biosecure aspect. It's really important if we have an animal here that we know everything that you possibly know, overshare with us. We would much rather have you overshare and think that it's not important because it might be a key thing that helps us really narrow down our diagnosis here at the laboratory. And so that submission form is seen off to the left-hand side of the screen. On the right-hand side is more for our skin workups. We get very rare skin workups through the laboratory, but I will briefly touch on that at the very end. Okay, so now moving on to the infectious disease. The first one I'm going to briefly talk about is equine herpes virus. This is also known as EHB. Now there are a lot of different members in this viral group, but the two main ones that I'm going to talk about today are EHB1 and EHB4. Now you may be familiar with these two if you've ever read the vaccine insert before because these are in a lot of respiratory vaccines. EHB1 very broadly causes abortions and neurologic manifestations while EHB4 causes more of the respiratory and we'll go into each one of these. So EHB1 is the majority of what we're going to see. It can cause late-term abortions or within the third trimester and that is really between the nine to the 11 month range of gestation. When I use the term abortion, I mean that this fetus was exposed from the uterus prior to the time of it being alive or viability. That is what the top picture is showing on the screen. Now if EHB1 doesn't cause an abortion, it can cause either a stillborn or a weak full. Stillborn means that that full should have been born alive, but it was actually born dead. And then a weak full, they almost kind of look like dummy foals. They never really stand, they don't nurse within the appropriate time. And then within a couple hours, even if it's through hospitalization with your referring veterinarian, they just don't do well and they end up passing away. And so I put a picture of what we would see come through on our post floor and I orientated that bottom picture as to what it would look like in the full in the top picture. So the lungs, which are the big pink things in the middle would be right underneath the rib cage in that full. And the trachea is headed off to the left hand side. And that is what would be going up your neck. And that leads back into the lungs. And so these lungs are really heavy. They're very firm. And they almost have rib impressions because they're full and they're full of fluid. And that's what we see in these fetuses that have EHB1. Another key gross lesion that we see are fibrin casts. So in that trachea, it should be clear. But as you can see with those forceps pulling away, there's a yellow strand in there. That's a fibrin cast. So when we see that our suspicion that this full actually or this fetus actually had EHB1 increases. Another manifestation of EHB1 is the neurologic manifestation. This is also called equine herpes viral myeloencephalopathy or EHM. Now we actually recently diagnosed this on our postmortem floor from a horse in Minnesota in early February. And so I actually pulled this bottom snippet out of a paper from 2021. When in the state of Minnesota, they had two different cases, one of EHM, so the neurologic form of EHB1, but also of triple E, which Paige kind of discussed, which is Eastern equine encephalitis. Both of those are neurologic diseases that was diagnosed at our lab. But getting back to EHB1, so this really affects more pregnant mayors and mayors that are nursing foals. Common clinical signs include ataxia, so not really being able to walk correctly. Urinary incontinence and then dog sitting, which is what this picture is showing in this horse. On the post floor, it's really important for that history again, because if you tell us that your horse is maybe neurologic or dog sitting or your veterinarian does, we are actually going to take out that entire spinal cord. That entire spinal cord removal usually takes three to four hours sometimes. We have to do it in a very particular way. And so if we know that your horse has these clinical signs, we're going to spend the time to take it out because what we're looking for are hemorrhages, and that's what that bottom picture is showing. So that bottom picture is a spinal cord, and the dark areas are areas of hemorrhage. And when we see that, we kind of have a suspicion that again, this is an EHB1 case. A less scary equine herpes virus is EHB4, and this is known as equine rhino pneumonitis virus. This really affects just weanlings and yearlings, and again, this is a respiratory disease. Clinical signs are just the nasal discharge that's kind of thick and white. They can sometimes run a fever or have inappetence or anorexia. And so let's say your horse does have an upper respiratory infection. What are you going to do? Well, again, work with your veterinarian, but you can collect samples such as a nasal swab and submit it to our lab to run some diagnostic tests to tell if it is EHB or not. And so the nasal swab is something that you really have to shove pretty far up the nose of that horse. And it has to be a specific swab. It has to be synthetic. We really don't like those cotton tip swabs. And so you can submit two of those. The PCR for EHB1 enforce $45. But if you don't know if your horse has equine herpes virus, or just in general respiratory disease, you can run our panel, which has PCR for equine herpes virus 1 and 4, influenza, and an aerobic culture, which will be important for strengths. And again, the costs on this slide do not include our general accession fee. And that is just tacked on to the cases, not the individual specimens. So if you have a question about costs or your cost concern, please just call and let us know. Now moving on to equine influenza, this is one of the most important causes of viral respiratory disease in horses. Clinical signs can include that really white, thick discharge, conjunctivitis or inflammation around the eyes, reddening of the nasal mucosa, cough or decreased appetite. The really good thing is that mortality is pretty rare. So the death rate is rare, but it is very contagious. When I was doing some research for this seminar, I believe on the equine practitioners page, I found that if a horse sneezes or coughs, it can travel up to 50 yards to infect another horse. Again, these samples are pretty similar to equine herpes virus because it's an upper respiratory and it's a virus. So nasal swab is going to be your best bet for having a diagnosis. We have a PCR for influenza A or we can run that respiratory panel. Now moving on to equine strangles, this is the first bacteria, the other two were viruses and now we're moving into a bacteria. And this bacteria is actually called streptococcus equi, subspecies equi. And it's really called strangles because the horse kind of makes a strangled breathing sound because of all the nasal discharge, but then also the swelling that happens around the neck. And the reason that they're swelling is because that bacteria loves lymph nodes. And so that top picture is actually showing some lymph nodes down underneath the jaw or the throat latch area. And it goes to the bacteria goes to those lymph nodes and they become obsessed. And once they become obsessed, then they rupture. And that's what that picture is showing that rupturing of those lymph nodes and that drainage is very infectious to another animal. And so that's usually how transmission happens. Clinical signs of equine strangles is fever, inflammation around that throat area, respiratory stridor, like I said previously, enlarged and abscess lymph nodes, nasal discharge, or guttural pouch and paeema. This is unique in the fact that horses have a guttural pouch, which is basically like an auditory tube. There's a lot of important nerves and blood vessels that run through it. And this bacteria loves to go to that guttural pouch and it sits in there. And when it sits, it becomes hard and almost kind of like a mass. And these horses that have a really prolonged shedding of equine strangles, it's usually because that bacteria is sitting in that guttural pouch and it's harder to get rid of. So that's just something that you might run into if your horse does come down with this, if they're talking about that, that can be a sequela or something else that happens because of equine strangles. The other thing I wanted to discuss real quick was just metastatic. And this is what happens when the bacteria goes to the lymph nodes outside of that head area. So in the chest or in the abdominal or belly cavity, there's lymph nodes all throughout our body. And so the bacteria likes to go there, we call that metastatic or bastard strangles. The good news is, is that if this bacteria is identified and then treated appropriately, most animals recover just fine. And so the, because it's bacteria, we can actually try to culture this. And that is actually what the plates, the culture plate on the right hand side is showing. And this is a culture plate from our diagnostic laboratory of equine strangles. And so we can, our microbiologists can use that nasal swab or an aspirate, and they streak it on a plate, like you see, this plate is a blood auger plate. So that's why it's red. And then off to the left hand side of that plate are little tiny dip dots, and those are the colonies of bacteria. And so they take those colonies and they put it on a machine that then further isolates it for diagnosis. If you want to run an aerobic culture of a nasal swab, it's going to be about $32. And again, we can always do that equine respiratory panel if you're unsure what is causing those respiratory lesions, whether it's a virus or bacteria. Sometimes we can do a PCR for equine strangles. We actually don't have that PCR available at our diagnostic laboratory, but we can always refer out and send it to a different laboratory if that's something that you guys want. And lastly, just skin issues. You know, I don't see a lot of skin issues because it comes through more so on our microbiology department. If I see any skin issues in horses, a lot of the times it's going to be biopsies. And so those are the lumps and bumps that are removed. Some of the common lumps and bumps that we see from horses in this area are sarcoids or squamous cell carcinoma, so cancer eye around the eyes of white face horses. And so a lot of the times if you're worried about fungal infections, like a ringworm, we're going to have you go through our microbiology department and you're going to run a fungal culture. You can pull hair or use a brush and we can run that fungal culture. Sometimes that culture can take up to three, four weeks in order for particularly ringworm to grow. And so a lot of people don't really want to wait that long. I don't blame you. And so we do offer a dermatophyte or ringworm PCR. And so the difference between just the fungal culture and PCR, A, cost, B time, C would be that PCR we really want a hair or a scab. We don't want a brush that you can submit for fungal culture. And I see more people submit for fungal culture if they don't know what kind of fungus they're looking for, if they're not looking specifically for ringworm. If we are looking specifically for ringworm, then we sometimes will have people just do that PCR. Okay, very good. Oh, there I am. Okay, very good. So thank you guys so much for presenting. So I'm just going to wrap up a couple things here. And so this is what I heard while I was listening today. So I heard biosecurity. Biosecurity is one of your first lines of defenses. And that's true no matter what kind of production system we're in or what kind of animals we have, cats, horses, cows, doesn't matter biosecurity is your first line of defense. And then limiting exposure. And so through biosecurity, we can limit exposure to what our animals are up against. I heard Dr. Sikin say overshare with your veterinarian and the VDL. And so whatever diagnostic lab you choose to send us to, whatever veterinarian you're working with, whomever you're calling to share information with about questions you have, overshare. Tell them all the things, tell them a long story. Okay, because there might be something in there that you think is insignificant, that really helps them determine what's going on. And then working with whatever veterinary diagnostic lab you choose, or if that's a local vet, whoever you choose to work with, whether that's a local one or calling NDSUs as well. Just making sure that you feel comfortable to call them. Always call and ask the question. Never hurts to ask the question. Okay. And so with that, we did have a few questions. And so Dr. Sikin, we'll have you come back on and Paige is still here. And so we'll just run through some questions quick. And then if anyone else has questions, we can make sure those can answer it as well. So let's start at the top here. And so Paige did answer a few of these in the chat, or she referred folks to some, but we're just going to go over them so everybody kind of knows what was going on in the background while you were listening. And so one participant says, I have a mini Mustang. In the spring, he pulls his own hair out. I've treated him for lice and I've washed him with Medicated Shampoo. The other horses don't seem to have it. Any ideas here? And so we're not necessarily here to diagnose, but are there any just things that come to mind, Dr. Sikin, or things that you would maybe suggest for this person? Yeah. So we actually had a similar case presented to us a week or two ago. It sounds like when horses start to maybe pull out their hair, they might be a little itchy. And so that's really something that's important to maybe talk to your veterinarian about. We actually ended up getting some biopsies from a horse. It wasn't a mini, but it was just honestly seasonal shedding, which might not be the case in this particular case. However, again, it could be a lot of different things. And so it's really important my next diagnostic recommendation would have potentially a veterinarian out maybe take some skin biopsies and have us look at them to see if there's anything we can see bugs on our slides for histopath. And so that would probably be the next steps. The next question then is, do all horses need to be vaccinated against EEE and WEE? Or is it based on your location in the county? And so Paige, yep, go ahead. Yeah. So I can take that. And yes, it is recommended that all horses, regardless of whether they're east or west of the Mississippi, be vaccinated for both EEE and WEE. And the good news is, is that it is combined into a single vaccination. Most of the products that are out there, it's one vaccine that will vaccinate and provide protection against both of those eastern and western encephalitis. Okay. Very good. Dr. Steichen, so the question, and I'm going to let you take this one. I think I know half the answer, but I'm curious about the rest of the answer. And so does NDSU offer carcass disposal? And so my knee jerk reaction to that is, no, we don't. But what happens if they bring a carcass or something in for diagnostic? What happens then? Yeah, for sure. And your knee jerk reaction is correct. We do not just do a straight carcass disposal, unfortunately. If you want to bring your animal in for a autopsy or necropsy, you can use those words interchangeable, we will then dispose of the animal. We have a giant incinerator here. We also do offer private cremations for our large animals. If you are having an autopsy or necropsy done, I believe. I also believe if you would just like to have a private cremation done, we will do that without doing an autopsy or a necropsy. Again, if that is something on that last little bit, you have questions about, always feel free to just give us a call and ask that front office. Okay, very good. Let's see, was there anything I missed? Yes. Okay, so can you speak to the period of time horses who have had strangles are immune from contracting it again? That would be better directed at more of a clinical veterinarian because there is a lot of gray issue. I feel like in that, depending on whether or not they're harboring that, if they've had treatment, if they've ever had vaccines before, so that might be more directed at somebody that's a practicing clinical veterinarian instead of on my end. Okay, and so Lisa, you heard that. And so maybe that's something that you can go to your local vet and discuss with them. Let's see. Okay, I have a horse that will show a false positive with a quick version of Coggins, but will show a negative with the alternate tests. Can you speak to what may cause that? No, I cannot. That might be a question more directed towards our serology department. Again, I just wanted to briefly bring up Coggins. But if that is a question, I would feel free to go ahead and give us a call and ask to speak to somebody in the serology department, especially if it's through our lab that you're doing it. And then we would probably reroute you to Dr. Pecoraro because she is the section head of serology. And she would be able to explain that a little bit more. There's a lot of different tests out there. I'm familiar with what we run, but I'm unfamiliar with some of the other ones. Okay, thank you for that. Folks just know whether it's our lab or other labs that you're calling, when Dr. Seikin says call us, they really do mean call us. They have experts and she listed some of them up front. Their team is exceptional and they are here for the folks that have animals. They want to answer your questions. They want to know what's going on because the only way they get better and they change their tests and they know what to do is to know what's going on out in the animal world. And so please do feel free to call those labs. Okay. And real quick, Mary, just to put on that, we are one of the smallest diagnostic labs out there and we are very easy to get a hold of. I've heard of some of the other diagnostic labs that can be very challenging to speak with pathologist or a toxicologist. And most of the time, Dr. Mostrom, our toxicologist will call you and ask you questions and have a conversation. The great thing is our veterinary diagnostician, Dr. Mitchell, practiced for a very long time and so she's awesome to always call and ask questions about because she's also been practicing but now she's in the diagnostic field as well. So always please just give us a call and ask us the questions. If you're hesitant or you're confused about something, that's what we're here for. Okay, very good. Anything else that came in here? Let's check. I did see one more in the chat, Mary. Oh, okay. Okay, so Diane says we have a mirror that I suspect may be pregnant even though she ultrasound it as open. She'd be coming into her ninth month and would have missed her five and seven month pneumobort. It would still be beneficial to give her a nine month vaccination, correct? I feel like that one probably has to go back to your local vet and who you're working with, Dr. Seiken. Correct. Every situation is different and I think Paige kind of, you know, did an excellent job with saying that you have to make decisions best on your farm and your operation and working with your local veterinarian is also going to help in that aspect. And just to add to that, it's, I mean, ideally you'd want to confirm that she is pregnant if that's what you're thinking so that you can manage her differently for for nutrition and for housing and all those other things that go with it. But if that's not possible, know that you are correct that giving the nine month vaccine, even though you missed the five and seventh month recommendation would still be acceptable. Okay. So we'll be back here next week at the same time. So Wednesday at noon central time and we'll be talking about first aid until a veterinarian arrives. So what do we do in an emergency situation when our animals do something they're not supposed to do. So with that, thank you guys so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Have a great week.