MyHorseForSale.com would like to introduce our NEW Breeders Q&A.
Answers to your questions are submitted by Tina Lewis of the Lewis Stallion Station, CA.
QUESTION: What is EVA testing and what does it mean if I am a mare owner?
ANSWER: EVA , which stands for Equine Viral Arteritis, is an infectious viral equine disease affecting several major horse breeds, but is most commonly found in adult standardbred horses. Though it is thought to have been around for hundreds of years, it has only been documented since the early 1950’s with the most recent epidemic in 1984, in Kentucky.
EVA exhibits flu-like symptoms and causes, most significantly, abortions in pregnant mares which makes mare owners a key player in the fight to control this destructive disease. EVA is spread via the respiratory and reproductive systems of the horse and isn’t usually fatal (except to unborn foals) and it’s gestation period is relatively short-lived in all but mature stallions, making stallion owners the other key player. An infected stallion can pass the disease to a mare during breeding and then the mare can pass it to the rest of her heard via respiratory means making that one breeding capable of destroying an entire year’s worth of reproduction with spontaneous abortion of the foals in the entire herd.
The disease, when spread reproductively, can be spread via Live Cover or Shipped Semen and does not appear to be killed off by the freezing process in the case of Frozen Shipped Semen.
The USDA has developed a test for EVA and a vaccine to be given yearly in order to stop the spread of this disease. Many stallion owners today are testing for EVA and vaccinating for it on their own and advertising their stallions as tested and vaccinated for the disease in order to reassure mare owners of the safety in breeding to their particular stallion. The USDA is also requiring stallions be tested and vaccinated for the shipping of semen overseas in compliance with International regulations.
As a stallion owner, you should, if standing to the public, have your stallions tested for EVA and then vaccinated each year. As a mare owner, especially if you are breeding to a Standardbred Stallion, you should make sure the stallion you are breeding to or receiving shipped semen from, is tested and vaccinated for EVA.
With these, and other important steps, that are being taken today by mare and stallion owners within the breeding industry, combined with the efforts of the USDA with regard to the shipment of equine semen, Internationally, the disease can be controlled, and even one day, completely irradiated.
If you have a breeding question you would like answered please send to info@myhorseforsale.com
