How close of contact dose a horse need to catch coggins from another?

Question

How close of contact dose a horse need to catch coggins from another?

Answer 1

from what i know i believe it takes the infected horse to bite another horse.

it is a very very dangerous, fatal, and devastating disease which is why your horse can not leave the property if it has the disease.

the horse will live ok for a while, but after a few months the horses body (spine) will break down and the horse will just die slowly and painfully.

its very rare that a horse have this now a days seen as almost every horse in the country is tested for it.

but I'm pretty sure that it takes one horse to bite another.

Answer 2

It's not Coggins the horses catch, it's Equine Infectious Anemia (EIA), and Coggins is the name of the test that is used as the standard diagnostic for it.

The disease is caused by a retrovirus, and is spread by biting insects.  It is not contagious through direct horse-to-horse contact;  it needs a vector (an intermediary) to carry infected blood from one horse to an uninfected horse.

Ask your vet about EIA and any outbreaks of it in your area.  Believe me, your vet will know, because an outbreak of EIA is gigantic news.  If there are no outbreaks near you, then maintain fly and insect control and don't worry.

This website gives some information about EIA:  http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/pubs/fshee...

The Coggins test is the test most often used to determine a horse's status with regard to EIA.  It is usually required as part of the "health certificate" documentation to move horses across state lines, or when they are sent to a commercial boarding facility or breeding farm, racetrack or showgrounds.

Most states have done a good job of controlling EIA, but for some individual horse owners, it's carried a high price.  EIA is a reportable disease, which means that if you have your vet to a Coggins test of your horse and the test comes up positive, the vet is required by law to report the positive test.  Generally horses with a positive Coggins test have to be euthanized, although as an option the owner may be able to keep the horses is a strict quarantine situation (impractical for most horseowners to do) for the rest of their lives.

If you live in an area where EIA has been reported to occur (ask your vet), the best thing you can do to prevent your horse from getting it is to observe strict insect-control measures to keep biting flies and mosquitos from spreading the disease.  Also, try to avoid situations where your horse might be located near or on the same premises as horses whose Coggins status is unknown.  If you board at a commercial board and stable facility, make sure they require a negative Coggins test of all horses that come into the facility.  If you show your horse, find out if the show management requires a negative Coggins test before allowing horses onto the grounds.  

I did a quick Google on EIA outbreaks, and it seems that there has been nothing reported in the US more recently than 1999, when there was an outbreak in Pennsylvannia.  Ireland and some locations in the UK have reported outbreaks in 2006;  but as of March of this year, all restrictions with regard to movement of horses related to the outbreak have been lifted, so the outbreak is now regarded as controlled.

Answer 3

This question has really given me a chuckle. First, for the asker's benefit, the Coggins test ( which is a blood titer or test) was developed to detect the disease called Equine Infectious Anemia or EIA for short. This disease is ordinarily transmitted by the bite of a mosquito, just like West Nile Virus and Equine Encephalitis ( also known as sleeping sickness) . The way the disease operates is something like this: mosquito bites horse that has the disease or is a carrier, and then bites another horse that isn't infected. The second horse becomes infected with EIA, but is asymptomatic and a carrier. After a while, this second horse is taken to the track or to a show barn and comes into contact with other horses and with their living spaces and equipment. Because no one at the track knows the animal is a carrier, everyone is surprised when one after the other, the rest of the horses in the barn become sick with symptoms that look very much like sleeping sickness. Puzzled, the track vet puts the barn under quarantine and orders blood tests for all the horses in the barn, even those that don't appear to be sick. But before he does this, the original carrier horse in this scenario, who never showed any symptoms of illness to begin with, has left the barn to train at another track, without anyone being any the wiser. At the next track or barn, the same story gets repeated- in fact, it is repeated several times before the horse is finally tested and proven to be a carrier- and at that point, because there is no cure and very few treatments for EIA, the horse is destroyed to prevent another outbreak of the disease. This whole story, though fiction, is an example of why testing for EIA in horses is so important. The Coggins test was developed by a vet with that name at Cornell University in upstate New York, for just that purpose. There is NO cure for EIA- and most of the treatments which exist just focus on keeping the horse comfortable while the symptoms exist. A horse that has the disease will run a high fever and be very lethargic and weak. Sometimes, such horses will have seizures. These symptoms last for a few days, and then the fever goes down and the horse appears to recover. But the appearance is short-lived and false, because at that point, the horse is a carrier,and not only will it get sick again itself, it can infect other healthy horses, who then will either die or have to be put down. It is for this reason that ALL tracks require horses to be tested annually for the disease ( most states where racing exists have laws which make this mandatory) and that most major shows, 3-day events, and other horse sports and competitions require proof of negative EIA status for horses to compete at them. The Coggins test is very simple and very inexpensive- it is used routinely in most of the barns and at most of the farms I've worked at ( and it can be done on nursing foals as well as adult horses without danger) and it provides assurance that horses are not carriers of a disease that can cause epidemics and is not curable or very treatable. As for how much of a dose horses need to transmit the disease, there have been cases where horses came down with this disease within 48 hours of exposure. Older and younger horses are more vulnerable and less able to resist infection, so their rates of infection are higher and more rapid. It's also worth mentioning that any horse that tests positive for the disease, regardless of whether or not it shows symptoms, must be immediately destroyed by law in most states. This is to prevent epidemics from occuring in the horse population- and to protect the industries that depend on and employ the people who care for these animals. Horses who are positive can transmit the illness to others, even if they appear healthy themselves. I hope this answers your question.

Answer 4

.You mean Equine Infectious Anemia or Equine Infectious Anaemia (EIA)

Coggins is a test for EIA virus...

It's a blood born disease, where contact of body fluids is involved, or insects like biting flys and mosquito's