Happy October everyone – today I’ll be talking about antibiotic resistance in our equine friends, the bute battle and the problems wild poppies can cause. First though some positive news for those transporting horses into United States…

Equine babesiosis is an infectious disease caused in horses by several blood parasites, including Babesia caballi a parasite that is transmitted by ticks. Now a drug used to treat cattle and dogs for a blood parasite can completely eliminate the B. caballi parasite from horses.

Scientists from the Agricultural Research Service studied the effectiveness of the drug imidocarb dipropionate in horses and found that a high dose of it not only eliminated the blood parasite but also prevented the horses from being able to transmit the disease, babesiosis.

This discovery could have a positive outcome. At the moment horses with babesiosis are not allowed to enter the US and in some instances have to be humanely destroyed. If imidocarb dipropionate is licensed for use in the US it means that horses can be successfully treated and may be allowed to enter the country.

Horses transported abroad can carry disease which is not normally found in a country

Sticking with the topic of disease, researchers in the UK made a slightly concerning find – that horses hospitalised developed an increase resistance to antibiotics.

The scientists at Philip Leverhulme Equine Hospital in Liverpool tested faecal samples of a random selection of horses admitted to the hospital over an 18-month period. They measured the sensitivity of the horses to eight antibiotics, even if the horses were not treated with antibiotics during their admission. They found that the Escherichia coli 2 bacteria appeared to acquire increased resistance to 7 of the 8 antibiotics. Such a finding is concerning although the increased resistance could be due to a number of factors. The researchers are now conducting further work.

Horse owners in New South Wales, Australia are being advised to check their feed, particularly those who own competition or racehorses after low levels of morphine were found in tests on harness horses.

The source hasn’t yet been established but one suggestion is that commercial feed may contain poppy capsules or seeds.

Wild poppies contain morphine and other opiates are prohibited under racing rules and it is easy for the plants to grow as weeds with cereal crops and can thus appear in commercial feeds.

The plant has a pale purple flower and the dried flower pods or capsules can contain small black poppy seeds, so owners are advised to check the bottom of their feed bins.

Owners of competition horses should always be alert to contamination of feeds with weeds that could cause them to be accused of a doping offence.

Bute is commonly used in Europe as a pain relief; in fact it’s one of the most commonly prescribed equine drugs in the UK. But its use is currently threatened due to EU law.

Horses are classified as a food-producing animal and horses treated with bute must currently have their passport signed to prevent them ever entering the human food chain. The fact that bute has never been tested to see how long it remains in meat, threatens its future use – pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to pay for the necessary EU testing when other drugs are already licensed.

Now according to Horse & Hound Online, vets are trying to get bute listed as one of the drugs “that bring an added clinical benefit compared to other treatment options”. They believe that the alternatives to bute are not as effective and are more expensive and are being backed by the British Horse Society. Bute is frequently used to treat laminitis and as pain relief during surgery.

If the European vets are successful, bute could be added to an approved medicine list which means it can be used in meat-producing horses provided 6 months are left before the horse entered the food chain.

Sadly, I don’t have time to cover everything equine science related this week, but any readers interested in breeding equines for specific coat colours should check out this excellent article on Horsetalk.

Now, time for this week’s trivia question:

Fill in the gap. A newborn foal’s legs are already …… of the length they will be when fully grown?
1. 60-70%
2. 70-80%
3. 80-90%
4. 90-100%

The answer can be found here on my profile page.