African Horse Sickness

Hi all Clanners, Trainers, Jockeys and the Powers that be

It is COMPULSORY/STATUTORY for every Thorough Bred to have an annual injection against AHS. My question is what negative effect does this have on a Horse's performance and for how long on average does it last. It must have a major e effect as on Tellytracks 'First Call" this morning Andrew Bon stated that Dean Kannemeyer informed him that all his Horses had this AHS injection about a month ago so they were NOT performing but would FIRE from now on. Is this one of the reasons why Stables go OFF FORM yet run Horses knowing the Horses are not going to perform to its potential unbekown to the publec.

I have no reason to dispute what Andrew B stated so why hide this fact from the public. Why not include this info, with all the other info that is already available, in all the Media e.g. Race Card/Computaform/Sporting Post etc.

Fark, IMVHO in this age of TRANSPARENCY publish this info for all to see.

as far as I know (and I'm not a vet) the horse has to be off work for 2 weeks after the vaccination, thereafter another week in light work PROVIDED it's temperature is OK. The vaccine is live, so there's always a possibility of some horses developing mild symptoms after vaccination like a temperature and it probably doesn't feel 100% (not nice, but much better than being dead). Hard work or racing at this stage can cause harm to a horse showing symptoms, and anyway it's likely to perform poorly.

That's what I always heard anyway, but maybe those with more up-to-date knowledge would disagree?

AHS vaccines are actually 2 different jabs. After the first one, the horse works normally in week 1, slightly lighter work in week 2, and back to normal work in week 3.
This is then repeated with the second jab. I.e. A 6 week process. As the horses get older, they handle the vaccines better. One just needs to be careful to see how each horse responds to the vaccine, and checking for an elevated temp is the usual start

In an ideal world, the AHS injection information should be known to all concerned, however in practice, whose reponsibility is it to collect this info - is it fair to expect publications like Computaform and/or Sporting Post to contact each and every trainer to find out when their strings are having their AHS injections?

Is it practical to have the NHA contact the trainers and to publish the scheduled / planned AHS injection dates? The NHA do publish all sorts of other info like updated MR's, Stipe Reports, etc.

Not sure there is an easy answer to this one.

Its an excuse for trainers to keep your horses longer without racing them in my opinion.

Frodo Wrote:

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> In an ideal world, the AHS injection information
> should be known to all concerned, however in
> practice, whose reponsibility is it to collect
> this info - is it fair to expect publications like
> Computaform and/or Sporting Post to contact each
> and every trainer to find out when their strings
> are having their AHS injections?
>
> Is it practical to have the NHA contact the
> trainers and to publish the scheduled / planned
> AHS injection dates? The NHA do publish all sorts
> of other info like updated MR's, Stipe Reports,
> etc.
>
> Not sure there is an easy answer to this one.

I think with amount of horses in training around the country it would be impractical to phone all trainers for their schedules as not all the horses can be vaccinated at the same time. ie: If the horse has been ill or had an op etc... I do think it would be a good idea for a trainer to have to declare any AHS vaccine given to a runner in the last 30 days.

If blinkers and alumites are information deemed necessary to assist punters then I would presume innoculations are similar.............phone calls would not be necessary if innoculations needed to be advised to the NHA as a compulsory requirement ..............that could then be reflected in form guides?

do me a favour guys and girls you speak like we living in the dark ages...we have cell phones text messages emails faxes etc plus a few more modern ways of communicating THERE IS ZERO EXCUSE FOR ANY INFORMATION ABOUT A HORSE THAT CANNOT BE RELAYED TO THE PUNTING PUBLIC...geez this industry has a terrible culture of wanting to find excuses for everything

How hard would it be to inform the authorities when a horse is jagged?

All uk dog trainers have to inform the boards when a bitch is in season or had a jag(see below) and this information is passed on to the punters..

hibs our racing authorities have a 3rd world fcuking attitude to everything its to much fcuking effort for them to gather information

Getting it done is the least of the problems.The fact that the majority of the NHA board positions are based on other positions rather than qualification,means that what needs to be done is not understood.

I posted about this many months ago and received no real info except from a long explanation from a women who seems to know what she'a talking about.We need this info to assess the selections we make with our hard earned money.WAKE UP NHA