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  Discussion on Anthrax Vaccine Reaction
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Posted on Friday, Aug 25, 2000 - 12:01 am:

Dr. O: Our horses were vaccinated for anthrax nine days ago. Of the nine in our herd, we chose to vaccinate 8...the ninth being my pregnant mare. In any case, on the sixth day following vaccination 3 of the 8 developed HUGE swollen areas on the neck where they were injected, and our vet believes that what he is seeing in our area is clostridia infections, secondary to the anthrax vaccine. We have been using penicillin as recommended by our vet, and for the most part the horses injection sites have now gotten smaller and today the areas were softer than they were. My six month old colt, however, developed a larger area of swelling after four days of treatment and after I decreased his dosage, so I increased his penicillin again. None of the horses have ever appeared terribly ill, despite the fact that they, in some cases, developed dinner-plate-sized swelling on their necks. In the worst case, one gelding had a huge area of swelling with a large "river" like swollen area running off the main infection down onto his chest. This is not to mean that it ran over his skin, but it was a snake-like protrusion from under his skin off the main infection site. He is now doing fine....but we continue to use 24 cc's of penicillin daily, down from the initial recommendation of 50 cc's. How long can we expect this bacteria to be at work in our horses necks? Horses in our area have been dying of this infection following vaccination, because many horse owners vaccinated and then put their horses back out to pasture. I have been watching ours like a hawk, and apparently caught the infection in time. Will we have to remove any tissue to correct all this? There is no odor or drainage, only the lumps under the skin now. Any comments?
Rilla

Posted on Friday, Aug 25, 2000 - 7:05 am:

Because I cannot examine your horses you must follow your veterinarians advice. But these are my thoughts:

It is unlikely that your horses are suffering from an active fully pathogenic Anthrax infection. Your experiences are common with this particular vaccine and this is the inflammatory reaction to the vaccine. I think phenylbutazone is rational therapy and using penicillin may lessen the efficacy of the vaccine.
DrO
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