Equine Vaccination

The goal of vaccination is to increase immunity against infectious diseases. As a result, we will decrease the severity of a particular disease or prevent it completely from occurring. At Whitecourt Veterinary Clinic, we recommend to vaccinate horses in early spring (April/ May) with Fluvac Innovator EHV-4/1 and Equiloid Innovator. The above combination will protect your horse against highly contagious respiratory diseases like Rhino and Flu as well as Sleeping sickness and Tetanus.

Remember that if a horse is immunized for the first time do REQUIRE a booster usually 3 to 4 weeks following the initial vaccination. Protective immunity against some of the respiratory diseases from most injectable vaccines are relatively shortlived therefore, we recommend intranasal Flu vaccine in addition to regular injectable vaccines. The intranasal vaccine is more effective and longer lasting.

The West Nile Virus has emerged as a disease to be concerned about. In Alberta, we had 155 suspect cases of this disease this past 2003 season. There is no way to accurately predict the number of cases of WNV in 2004, however, if we have a five fold increase o f cases, just like it happened in Saskatchewan last year, we could expect over 700 cases this upcoming year in Alberta.