Quarantine: Tips for Keeping Your Horses Healthy

Competing in a horse show. Sending your mare away for breeding. Vanning to a regional trail ride. Welcoming a new horse to your stable. What is the common—and risky—element in all these scenarios?

Horses that enter your property should be quarantined for two to three weeks before coming into contact with other horses that are already there. In each one, a horse that has been away for some reason is being allowed to come onto your premises, possibly introducing a virus or bacteria that can infect all the rest of your horses. To avoid veterinary expenses and lapses in training caused by the spread of infectious illness, follow these tips for quarantining new arrivals.

• Ideally, horses that enter your property should be quarantined for two to three weeks before coming into contact with other horses that are already there. This means every time and every horse, no matter where it has been or how healthy it looks or how many veterinary certificates accompany it.

• The quarantined horse should be housed in a barn or small paddock used only for that purpose. Ideally, this area will be downwind of other places where horses are kept. The new horse should be fed, watered, groomed, and otherwise cared for after you have finished caring for your other horses, and you should wash your hands and change clothes after contacting the new horse.

• Check the quarantined horse twice a day for any indication of illness: elevated temperature, nasal discharge, cough, sores around the mouth or nostrils, diarrhea, lethargy, low appetite, or any other signs of abnormal behavior. Keep a record of any disease signs, and have a veterinarian examine the horse if it seems to be ill.

• Use sprays to discourage flies, and check your property to eliminate places where mosquitoes can breed, typically standing water. These measures will decrease the chance of spreading diseases that are carried by insects.

• Buckets, grooming tools, barn equipment, and tack should not be shared between resident horses and the new horse. If you used your trailer to bring the quarantined horse home, disinfect it before transporting other horses.

If the new horse completes several weeks of quarantine without showing any sign of disease, you are probably safe in allowing him to be added to the herd or allowing him to share a fenceline with other horses.

Quarantine is often inconvenient and labor-intensive, but the procedure is well worth the effort if it keeps disease from spreading to the other horses on your farm. Every equine disease starts somewhere; don’t let it hitchhike on a new horse and end up as an unwelcome guest at your barn.