A barn at The Thoroughbred Center in Central Kentucky has been quarantined after the discovery of a case of strangles in a filly stabled there, according to Rusty Ford, equine operations consultant for the Office of the State Veterinarian at the Kentucky Department of Agriculture. The sick horse is recovering and test results are expected late April 19 for other horses in the barn, Ford added.
Strangles is a highly contagious bacterial infection of the equine upper respiratory tract that can be spread by horse-to-horse contact or by humans, tack, buckets, and other environmental factors.
A notice on the Equine Disease Communications Center lists 18 horses as potentially exposed in the barn. The involved horsemen were not identified on the notice or by Ford.
“At this point in time, it’s not affecting any other barns at the facility,” Ford said at 10 a.m. ET Wednesday. “The good thing about this incident is the good separation from this barn from other barns and the fact that we had solid walls there. Again, we’re in the infancy here, so it’s going to be a changing dynamic every hour I imagine.”
Aside from the quarantined barn, Ford said there are currently no shipping restrictions related to horses in the general population at The Thoroughbred Center, an actively used training center owned by Keeneland located just off Paris Pike near Lexington. Such horses must have their health paperwork in order and be examined by a veterinarian, Ford said.
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Churchill Downs, which opens later this month after the conclusion of Keeneland’s spring meet, issued a notice Wednesday for horses entering its Kentucky facilities requiring health certificates on the date of travel with a written statement that the examined horses are free of clinical signs of infectious disease.
