Pages

Friday, May 10, 2024

disease vectors

Happy Friday, y'all! We are officially into the height of spring around these parts. The local flora absolutely erupted into leaf and flower thanks to frequent rain showers and rising temperatures, and with all that comes the bugs omg the bugs! 

pictured: ticks, so many ticks
Tho, realistically these days... The ticks are with us year round. Actually, at least in my experience, the winter ticks are the sneakiest of them all bc nobody expects or is looking for them... I was appalled to find an engorged one hiding under Doozy's jaw recently, ugh. 

Normally I can get 'em the first day or two after they attach, but that one managed a full meal. Oh well, it happens!

oh look, there's one right there! fun thing about lone star ticks is they don't even try to hide, they'll just bite the horse in any old place, like on the shoulder or right there on doozy's belly
Virtually every horse in my region will have a mildly positive Lyme titer, reflecting at least some presence of antibodies. Tho I'll still do a test if there are indications of a more acute case. 

Around here, we'll usually say that if you're horse is acting a little off, his behavior or manners are a bit changed, he's cranky or maybe seems body-sore or NQR in a hard-to-pin-down sorta way, it's wise to at least run a titer. 

common tick types
source: Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Science
In recent years, another tick-borne illness has become increasingly common: anaplasmosis. Charlie had a case back in 2020, following my first run-in with a lone star tick. 

I was honestly expecting he'd pick up the infection mostly bc of the huge swelling at the bite site, despite the tick being fairly freshly attached. And Charlie miserably obliged that expectation after a 9 day incubation period by spiking a gigantic fever and feeling very sorry for himself.

an increasingly common diagnosis. familiarize yourself with these symptoms: BIG fever, puffy legs
source: https://stablemanagement.com/barns-grounds/tick-diseases-in-horses/ 

Treatment was fairly straight forward and the horse recovered quickly... It's honestly not a huge issue. Except that if you aren't thinking of tick-borne illness when those symptoms appear, it can be easy to panic or freak out. Nobody likes giant fevers and swollen legs! 

let the countdown begin, i guess...
Time will tell if Doozy goes down the same path. It's possible that I missed the tick the day before... but doesn't seem likely given that it was right at the girth groove. So I'm guessing it latched on the morning I found it. Getting it off was a little weird tho --- the body came apart in pieces!

sorry it's fuzzy, but the body literally tore in half when i tried to pull it out -- not just the body separating from the head 
Like, the segment of the body where the white dot is came off from the rest of the body, which has literally never happened that I can remember in years of plucking ticks off horses... Like, sure, the head will often pull apart from the body... But idk, this was weird lol. Luckily a barn mate knew where an old pair of forceps was hiding, so I could dig out the last little bits o' tick (ew). 
 
is this lifestyle worth it? yes lol, the answer is yes
Doozy, for her part, seemed very grateful for that little bit of attention and vigorously nuzzled my elbow while I worked, as if to say, "Omfg it itches get it out get it out!

So we'll see what happens. Maybe we'll get lucky? Anybody else had to deal with tick issues? 


19 comments:

  1. Anaplasmosis is getting bad here. A fiend lost her dog due to complications and another friend’s horse is struggling. I would happily wipe every tick off the face of the earth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. oh no, that's so sad about your friends dog!! and honestly i'm interested in hearing more about the horse's case.... the only cases around here that i've seen have basically been horses with acute infections (and giant fevers), they get a couple days of oxytet, and then all is well. maybe we've just been lucky to catch and diagnose those cases early?

      Delete
  2. OMG the ticks are SO BAD this year. Zach and some coworkers walked to lunch the other day (on the sidewalk). Ate outside at a picnic table (on concrete) and the one guy had like 15 ticks on him when they got back. Another guy had 3 or 4. Zach is lucky I didn't burn his clothes. IDK? Do they nest in picnic tables? Do they nest at all?! ICK!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. omggggg grosssss!! i found one crawling around in my hair after a hike in california this spring, and was so paranoid for the rest of the day ugh. i would probably cry if there were 15 ticks on me LOLsob

      Delete
  3. Goggles went through a few weeks of getting them and had quite a few in the folds by his front legs for at least 24 hours. Now I check that spot daily as well as the usual tail, hind legs, jaw.

    The scary things I learned about anaplasmosis and dogs recently is it can transmit in as little as 20 minutes (Lyme meds at least 24 hours of attachment). Most dog tick products don't work that fast...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yea both of mine like to hide the ticks way up the insides of their hind legs, which was particularly dicey with doozy in the early days bc she was not at all on board with me trying to reach in to get the tick out...

      that's crazy about the 20min transmission tho, but makes sense with how swollen and crazy looking charlie's bite got despite being a fresh bite. doozy's wasn't swollen like that, so maybe we'll get lucky?

      Delete
  4. Opie did a round of doxy this "winter" (AKA slightly colder spring-like weather in December 🙄) for Lyme. Fortunately he retested negative last month, but it was basically on to the next horse in the barn to treat.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yepppppp we kinda almost always have a horse or two on treatment.... and some folks will just whip out the doxy without even testing, figuring it probably won't hurt and might even help even if it's not lyme bc of the anti inflammatory properties... hopefully Opie is feeling better!!

      Delete
  5. I didn't even think about horses getting ticks - ours don't get them because of their "turnout" situation but I can just imagine the horror

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yea for sure... definitely one of the downsides of turning the horses out into big pastures and meadows -- all the issues with dealing with nature and weather and fences and all that... overall, tho, i think it's worth it for them to have this type of lifestyle. tho, realistically, it seems like fewer and fewer farms are even able to offer this type of turnout any more, just bc of property values etc...

      Delete
  6. Anaplasmosis in people is no joke -be sure to take precautions for yourself too! I had it in 2021, and besides the fact that I felt awful for nearly 6 weeks, it can have long-lasting effects. People lose their s$$t over Lyme, but other tick-borne diseases can be much more serious!

    ReplyDelete
  7. You are correct, tick season never ends anymore. Shiny has chronic Lyme at this point. Al had an increased titer this winter so we treated him. I'll probably run titers on everyone this summer just to see where we're at compared to last year.
    Fingers crossed Doozy's tick was not carrying anything icky.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ugh. Ticks are the actual worst and we definitely don't get an off season from them any more :(

    ReplyDelete
  9. Our most common tick-borne illness is babesia, which we call biliary down here, and it's super common. Seems to be pretty identical to anaplasmosis (which we commonly see in cows). It's also pretty easy to treat and diagnose with a blood smear, but it's a bit of a beast because it destroys so many red blood cells that we err on the side of caution and give afflicted horses 4-6 weeks of rest afterward to let them regenerate. So that's fun :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. The nice thing about living where the air hurts your face for half the year is that the bugs also don't like to live in the freezing cold. We are starting to see ticks though, just in the last few years. Not commonly enough that you have to look for them regularly, and I don't know of any horses (or humans) who have ever been treated for any tick diseases.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Ticks and leeches attached to me are the two things in life that absolutely make me irrationally panic. With the different weather, we're seeing more of both here and I think I need to move further north ;)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thank you for posting about this. It's a good reminder to watch for ticks. I don't recall ever seeing a tick on my horse, but I have found ticks on my clothes after being outside with the horses or after mowing. Considering all the auto-immune problems associated with ticks, they are definitely something to be aware of.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ugh, I think ticks and slugs are 2 of the actual grossest things on the planet. Hate them all. I've had to pull a few ticks off the lighter horses I've ridden at this farm, but so far (knocking on ALL the wood around me) have not found any on Jodee. I'm assuming she's not as delicious looking, being all black. Also luckily, their fields are largely dry lots and their heads are stuffed in hay huts, so there isn't a ton of opportunity for tick-horse contact, unless it's the rare occasion they get some grass time during the summer.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Ugh, ticks are the worst. We ride out (not in a ring) most of the time and frequently in woods, so grooming includes a fair amount of TickSpotting, which I do not love but since my guy is pale gray, the ticks show up well and can be removed and squished with extreme prejudice. My previous mare had a round of Lyme (bad in our area) but got over it, so far Birb has been pretty lucky.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for leaving a comment! You may need to enable third party cookies in your browser settings if you have trouble using this form.