A national survey delved into what horse owners know about biosecurity and what procedures they could put to better use to protect their horses.
Biosecurity stop sign at entrance to farm.
Horses are transported more than any other livestock species in the United States, and they also are co-mingled at various events, which can lead to an increased risk for disease transmission.
© 2022 by EDCC
You know that at a stop sign you should come to a complete stop and look all directions just to make sure others are also obeying the law, there aren’t emergency vehicles approaching at high speed, or just to ensure your own safety. But how many times do you “roll through” when you “know” the coast is clear? While in most cases biosecurity is not legally required of horse owners, not using biosecurity knowledge and techniques every day can be as dangerous as “rolling through” a stop sign.
2022 Horse Owner Biosecurity Survey
Horses are transported more than any other livestock species in the United States. They also are co-mingled at various events, which can lead to an increased risk for disease transmission.
In late 2022, a 24-question survey was sent out to North American horse owners, and responses were collected from 2,413 individuals. The survey was designed to determine biosecurity knowledge and awareness of horse owners.[3]
“In summary, the results suggest that most owners are not highly concerned about the risk of disease or the use of biosecurity,” noted survey researchers Drs. Nathaniel White and Angela Pelzel-McCluskey. White is Professor Emeritus of Equine Surgery at the Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center in Virginia and founder of the Equine Disease Communication Center (EDCC). Pelzel-McCluskey is the National Equine Epidemiologist for the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Veterinary Services.
The authors also stated that there are several biosecurity applications and techniques that could be used more frequently by horse owners in order to benefit individual horse health and help protect the industry from infectious diseases. Some of those diseases include equine influenza, salmonella, strangles and equine herpesviruses (especially types 1 and 4 and the neurologic form of equine herpesvirus—equine herpesvirus myeloencephalopathy or EHM).
The survey found that 76.3% of respondents owned 1-5 horses. Owners were the primary decision makers for their horses’ medical care (91.6%). Veterinarians ranked highest (98.8%) as horse owners’ sources for infectious disease information.
What Was Learned
Topics that the researchers found could improve the prevention of infectious/contagious disease spread through education of horse owners were:
- Reliance on temperature monitoring,
- Risks of horse mingling,
- Isolation of new horses at facilities,
- Event entry requirements, such as vaccination and health certificates, and
- An emphasis on having biosecurity plans for facilities and events where horses co-mingle.
These recommendations were based on owner responses to survey questions on these topics. Below we summarize those owner responses to help us understand the priority that owners currently put on these management procedures and why improvements are needed to protect individual horses and the industry.
Temperature monitoring: What prompts an owner to take a horse’s temperature?
- 96.9% take a temperature when a horse has a cough/nasal discharge.
- 85.4% take a temperature when a horse has hard breathing.
- 81% take a temperature when a horse did not eat all of its feed.
- 41.2% take a temperature when a horse returns from travel or exposure to non-resident horses.
- 30.5% take a temperature when a horse is at a competition to monitor its health.
- 29.9% take a temperature when a horse is getting ready to travel.
- 1.2% don’t take a temperature for any of these situations.
Risks of horse mingling: Researchers found that 59.9% of respondents kept their horses on their own properties. They also found that 75% of owners indicated that their horses came into contact with non-resident horses on one or more days during the year. However, 60.2% of owners considered contact with non-resident horses to be of average to low risk for disease transmission.
Here’s how horse owners ranked biosecurity practices at facilities:
- 59.6% isolation of horse with clinical signs,
- 52.1% isolation of new resident horses,
- 21.1% none of these,
- 18.4% taking daily temperature of isolated horses,
- 16.0% isolation of returning horses from events,
- 14.7% temperature monitoring following contact,
- 6.6% not sure,
- 2.2% daily temperature monitoring.
Additional information gleaned from the survey included how risky owners considered co-mingling of horses at events (such as shows, trail rides, or racing). Unfortunately, 92.4% of respondents considered co-mingling of horses to be a slight to very low risk for transmission of an infectious disease.
What is your perceived risk of your horse contracting a disease during co-mingling at events?
Risk Percent of horse owners responding
Very high risk 1.9%
Moderately high risk 4.7%
Slight risk 24.0%
Moderately low risk 42.9%
Very low risk 25.5%
Don’t know 1.0%
Of the 75% of respondents who indicated that their horses came into contact with non-resident horses on one or more days during the year, 60.2% considered contact with non-resident horses to be of average to low risk for disease transmission.
Risk Percent of horse owners responding
High risk 4.5%
Above average risk 14.3%
Average risk 33.8%
Below average risk 10.2%
Low risk 16.2%
Don’t know 4.1%
In other words, the majority of horse owners are not worried about their horses co-mingling with non-resident horses either at home or at events.
The EDCC states that, “Equine events pose a significant risk for the spread of infectious disease because of the concentration of horses and the settings in which horses interact with humans and other horses. Diseases can be spread from horse to horse, via human contact, or even through shared supplies, equipment, and surfaces such as universal water troughs or hitching posts. Event managers have a responsibility to ensure that their event maintains biosecurity protocols and that plans are in place to reduce spread of disease in the event of an outbreak. Owners are responsible for following biosecurity protocols and for their own awareness of the possibility of disease spread.”
Event entry requirements: When owners were asked what the most common biosecurity provisions were in place at events or competitions, they said requiring health certificates and vaccinations for entry were the top two provisions. However, having an event isolation plan ranked the lowest among the selected provisions.
Isolation: In the survey, 54.2% of facilities have a plan for the isolation of horses with an infectious disease. The survey also found that 54.4% of facilities require separate housing for new horses moved to the facilities.
Take-Home Message
There was a lot of information in this survey, but the key take-home message is that horse owners need to be better educated about biosecurity, and they need to take responsibility for the health of their horses and the industry when it comes to infectious disease spread.
There are proven biosecurity techniques used at events ranging from the Olympics to events to racetracks. Common features include minimizing horse-to-horse and human-to-horse contact, vaccine requirements, stall sanitation, non-shared drinking water, health requirements for entry, isolation of sick horses (and a plan and location to do so), temperature monitoring, vector control, and recordkeeping.
Not having or following a biosecurity plan has resulted in many outbreaks of infectious disease at events and the inability to contain the disease.
Owners need to be better educated on risk assessment of disease spread in different environments in order to take proper precautions.
Just “rolling through” the biosecurity stop sign and hoping for the best is not a good way to keep your horses healthy and avoid the spread of infectious diseases.
[1] The Homestead Information Network Inc., https://thininc.com
[2] This research was funded by an USDA co-operative agreement (Grant number: APP-17434) through the National Animal Disease Prevention and Response Program.
[3] The full manuscript is available at https://www.equinediseasecc.org/handler/managedfilehandler.ashx?id=1&ext=pdf
Press release by Kimberly S. Brown, President