Horse Viruses

During routine horse checks last week, Debbie discovered that one of the horses named Chili had a runny nose. Although horses often have snot running out of their nostrils, in this particular case, the mucous was yellowish-green. That's a bad sign. Debbie thought it might be caused by a bad tooth as this particular horse is known to have a cracked tooth. We also noticed that Cody, the horse in the stall next to Chili, had runny and swollen eyes. Since the veterinarian was coming down to take blood for a Coggins test that day, I had her check out the two sick horses while she was there. I bounced the bad tooth concept of the vet who recalled that the cracked tooth was on the bottom part of the jam and probably wasn't the reason for the runny nose. While we were discussing this, Chili began to cough. Although all his vitals were normal, it was obvious that Chili had a cold. The vet further surmised that Cody also had the virus and that was what was causing the puffy eyes. I isolated the two horses in the quarantine pasture and hoped that the rest of the herd hadn't caught the virus. We were lucky, both horses are fully recovered now and none of the others are showing any signs of cold symptoms.