Vaccines for Your Horse

As the days get longer many horse owners and horse enthusiasts are eager to begin training for the show season or to get out on the trails. But before you load up your horse and haul them to a fun event you should ask yourself Is my horse up to date on their vaccines?
Why Vaccinate Your Horse?
Have you ever stopped to consider why we vaccinate our horses or ourselves or our dogs and cats? Vaccines are meant to create and maintain immunity against specific diseases. In other words vaccines are meant to reduce an animals risk of getting sick and if they do get sick after vaccination then the severity of the disease should be lessened and they may be less contagious. The vaccine is usually a modified weaker version of the disease you are trying to prevent. When the vaccine is given to your horse their body creates antibodies to fight this mock disease and these antibodies will stay in the body for a period of time after the vaccination. Now your horse is armed with a defense system ready to go if they do encounter the actual disease!

Vaccines are created for specific diseases for a few different reasons. A disease might have a high fatality rate such as tetanus. Or a disease might be highly contagious and easily spread from horse to horse such as influenza or strangles. Finally a disease may have the possibility to spread across different species these are called zoonotic diseases such as West Nile Virus or rabies.
Which Vaccines Are Available for My Horse?
Equine vaccines are categorized by the American Association of Equine Practitioners AAEP as either core vaccines or riskbased vaccines.  Core vaccines are vaccines that every single horse should receive every year.  Riskbased vaccines are vaccines that you may or may not

administer to your horse depending on a variety of factors location travel expectations odds of exposure etc. The table below lists the vaccines available for horses
Core Vaccines
Riskbased Vaccines
Rabies
Equine Influenza
Tetanus
Strangles
West Nile Virus
Equines Herpesvirus Rhinopneumonitis
EEEWEE
Potomac Horse Fever
Botulism
Equine Viral Arteritis
Anthrax
Rotavirus
Snake Bite
Leptospirosis
So Which Vaccines Does My Horse Need This Spring?
The short but frustrating answer to this is it depends! Keep in mind that for previouslyvaccinated adult horses the vaccines listed above need to be given on either an annual or semiannual basis in order to be most effective. For example if your horse received their rabies vaccine in the fall then they do not