Things You Might Not Know About Equine Biosecurity

Practicing good biosecurity at home and while traveling is essential for your horse’s health and safety, and is an important part of industry-wide disease control measures. We collaborated with Dr. K. Gary Magdesian, infectious disease control officer and faculty member in the Equine Internal Medicine Service at the UC Davis veterinary hospital, to present a list of important things to remember when it comes to equine biosecurity.

1 — Disinfecting footbaths are ineffective if there is organic material on your boots. Manure, dirt, mud, and plant material prevent disinfectants in the footbath from doing their job of killing germs. They also contaminate the water, meaning that footbaths need to be changed more often. Before using a footbath, scrub the bottoms and sides of your footwear with a brush and rinse with a hose to remove visible debris. To encourage boot scrubbing, keep a scrub brush next to the footbath.

2 — Disinfectants have contact time requirements — don’t just spray and go. Effective disinfection protocols ensure appropriate disinfectant contact time with surfaces. The contact time needed to inactivate disease organisms varies by product. Always follow product labels and manufacturer’s instructions when using disinfectants.

3 — Biosecurity protocols protect horses, but they are important for human safety too. Some diseases are zoonotic, meaning they can be transmitted from horses to humans. These include ringworm, salmonellosis, leptospirosis, and rabies, among others. Practicing good hygiene and sanitation as part of a comprehensive biosecurity plan helps keep horses, people, and other animals on the property healthy and safe.

4 — Biosecurity is an all-for-one, one-for-all management scheme. While practicing good biosecurity is important for individual horse health, it is also for the safety of the whole herd and facility. Effective biosecurity protocols protect the most vulnerable individuals, including foals and older horses

— Biosecurity is an important part of day-to-day equine life. Biosecurity is not just for when there is an outbreak; it needs to be practiced every day. Assess which aspects of your horses’ daily lives expose them to disease risks and engage in practices to reduce those risks. Disease risks are not eliminated even if you have a “closed herd” in which horses do not move on and off the property. Effective biosecurity at the facility level is essential to the broader picture of reducing regional, and even global, spread of disease. The impact of infectious diseases can be significant and poor on-farm biosecurity puts the industry at risk from serious endemic and emerging diseases.