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Discussion on Transmission of and incubation period for pigeon fever
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Member:
cmatexas
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Posted on Wednesday, Apr 25, 2012 - 9:14 am:
The neighbor's mare had swollen areas on her chest and abdomen over the weekend. Vet thought it might be pigeon fever, but was skeptical because we live in an isolated area, none of the horses travelled recently, and we have no history of it on our places.
However, 10 days ago we did have 2 mares that got loose from down the road spend two nights with us until their owners could retrieve them. Neither showed any signs of illness at all.
The mare's abscesses ruptured last night. All of our horses, both in the pasture, and the show horses that were on turnout overnight, share a fence with the neighbor's horses. The flies are already pretty wicked this year because of the mild wet winter. Fly control is literally an exercise in futility; we are surrounded by cattle, including our own. Best we can do is sheets, masks, fans, and sprays. We clean horse stalls and areas around the barn, but further manure control is not feasible.
As of this morning, neither the rest of the neighbor's horses or ours show any signs of illness (10 horses total).
We have moved the pasture horses to the very back of our 60 acres. The show horses are under sheets, fly masks, and sprayed down with piranha. Deet doesn't seem to work on our flies. The show horses are in very close proximity to the neighbor's horses - maybe 200 feet away.
Our neighbor moved the mare as soon as she could to her yard to try to stop the spread and keep the area where the puss drains out of her own pasture.
So, questions:
1) What is the incubation period? When will we know if our horses are safe?
2) Is it only transmitted while draining, or has it been contagious all along?
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Moderator:
DrO
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Posted on Wednesday, Apr 25, 2012 - 5:45 pm:
Hello Michelle,
Horses are not thought to be directly contagious to one another. Transmission is thought to occur most commonly when flies, contaminated with the disease, bite an unaffected horse. Unfortunately once the ground is contaminated the organism persists for a long time.
It is the draining purulent material that perpetuates the disease when it drains on the ground. Once exposed incubation is thought to be around 3 weeks though very variable. There still remains a lot of conjecture in the above scenerio.
DrO
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