25/11/2025
Update
We are so pleased to be able to say we are now CLEAR of strangles! Confirmed by guttural pouch testing which is considered the 'gold standard' of strangles testing
We are very lucky that only 1 horse became unwell out of 20 horses on the yard. With thanks to our vets Hill & Phelan for great advice, support and care throughout and on our part strict biosecurity and early isolation. On vets advice we have temperature monitored every horse daily and also did testing on the contacts of the infected horse. Upon testing we found we had a carrier horse (with no symptoms), the affected horse and the carrier horse had been sharing a field prior to the infection, this is where it came from.
The carrier has NOT had an active strangles infection in our care, he must of had this prior to coming to us (unknown to us). Please see link below of how a horse becomes a carrier, this is something we have learnt a lot about and is probably not that well known - yet is a cause for a number of strangles outbreaks on yards. He has NOT shown any symptoms and was only flagged up on precautionary testing. The carrier horse was treated at Oakham Veterinary Hospital and is no longer contagious and is now negative on testing.
The affected horse was only mildly poorly and has made a full recovery
Thank you to everyone who has been so supportive of us during this time. Going forward we are upping our biosecurity to allow everyone and their horses to safely enjoy our yard and facilities. We are going to take a little time to think through our reopening and also give us time to put our additional biosecurity measures in place. We'll post an update when we are fully reopen
See you soon 😊
This short animation is a simple look at the process that can lead horses to become silent strangles carriers, and what we can do about it. Carriers can cont...