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What Is Pigeon Fever?
Pigeon Fever can be fatal. It has been endemic in Texas, California, Colorado in years past and high levels of cases spreading into Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, New Mexico, and Oregon. Cases have also been reported in Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. You can get educated about Pigeon Fever and not be a statistic.

Scientifically referred to as Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis, the disease is named after it's most common external abscess developing in the pectoral region because the swelling closely resembles a pigeon ***. Though the disease most often takes affect externally, internal infections can occur with fatality rates up to 40%.

Flies are the vectors of carrying this disease. There is currently no licensed vaccine available in the US so take preventative measures again flies and mitigate the changes of your horses contracting this highly contagious disease.

What Are The Symptoms?

The Pigeon Fever disease takes on three forms; limb infections, external abscesses and internal infection. Horses often develop a severe lameness, fever, lethargy, and anorexia with this disease. It is common one or both hind limbs are affected with extreme swelling and cellulitis. External abscess of the chest is the most common but are abscesses are not exclusive to that region and horses can develop abscesses in multiple locations. 

Be Safe. Preventative Measures To Take.
By simply improving your manure management, a little cleaning up here and there with proper manure removal, you'll cull much of your fly breeding areas and therefore the number of flies on your property. Keeping your manure in a neat pile for composting and/or spreading the manure in fields before a series of dry days will also significantly decrease the locations flies can breed on your property.

Implement the use of beneficial insects like Fly Predators®. Sprinkle the naturally occurring Fly Predators in areas on your property where flies breed once a month to organically minimize your fly population by about 75%.

For the few remaining flies that beneficial insect and improved manure management don't get or those that might be coming from your neighbors, use fly traps. Not all fly traps are created equal and they need to be put in the right places to work. Use Odor Traps for house flies about 50 feet away from your stable. Hang Sticky Traps in your stable. The Biting Stable Fly Traps need to be placed no higher than 4 feet off the ground and put them in breezeway doors or near pastures or corrals.

I opened my practice in rural California in 1958, hoping to establish a group practice.  By the end of the first decade I had two practice partners, Dr. Bob Kind and Dr. Larry Dresher, both Kansas State University graduates.

It was July, and I was on a call to Bell Canyon Stables, a large and impressive facility at the Northeastern corner of our practice territory.

I was examining the left hind foot of a mare.  It was noon and the temperature was 105 degrees, Fahrenheit, when I suddenly realized that there were no flies around, annoying my patient or me.

It was so unusual during the summer heat that I decided to ask the stable manager, a young woman named Jennifer, what kind of chemical spray they were using to obtain such impressive results.

I will never forget her answer:

“No spray!  No chemicals!  We have been using Spalding Fly Predators since last summer and we are getting fantastic results.  There are only a couple of homes in this canyon and we have the only animals here at our stable, so we are getting excellent results with the Fly Predators.”

When I returned to our veterinary hospital at the end of the day, Dr. Dresher came in shortly after I did and I told him what I had learned.  I had seen ads for Spalding’s Fly Predators, but because we vets are deluged with advertising, I had not been convinced of their efficacy.

My practice partner said, “Bob, I live in the Santa Rosa Valley, surrounded by small horse properties.  I’ve been using Fly Predators since last year, and I see a noticeable reduction in our fly problem.”

The next day I placed my first order for Fly Predators.  That was half a century ago, and I am still using them.  I also convinced my neighbors, who had horses, cattle, goats, emus and, of course, dogs, to become Fly Predator customers.

We still use insect repellents on our horses, because the results, although very significant, are not 100 percent.

Before I bought my little horse farm in 1978, I remember it because the owner was a client with a couple of horses.  When I got a call from him during the summer, I remember having to spray myself with insect repellent, the fly population was so severe.  His horses were covered with thousands of flies, to the point where fighting them was of no avail.  They just stood there, heads down, no tail switching, no foot stomping, just surrendered to the bugs.

I hope this explains my allegiance to Spalding Labs, and why I advocate their products.

It is March 28, 2020. There is never a time without problems. That’s life. However, some of our primary problems are unique. Certainly the Corona Virus has created a national emergency, and our responses to that emergency are unlike those our nation has experienced since its founding nearly two and a half centuries ago.

The rules mandated by our government, intended, and necessary, to minimize the incidence of the viral pandemic we are experiencing, hampers our daily routines, the things we do to increase our daily pleasures, our work, and our relationships with other people.

Those of us who own horses, especially if we keep them on our home property, but even if we board them on property owned by others, are fortunate.

When we have time to ride it gives us physical and mental relief from life’s obligations and concerns, including our society’s problems as well as our own. It is difficult to concentrate on financial problems, pandemics, family and community obligations and even more personal problems when we are on horseback.

Physically and mentally, when we are on a horse, or even driving a horse pulling a vehicle, our attention is forced towards the horse. It is a living creature and if we have been blessed with compassion towards animals, especially domestic animals that serve us, physically or mentally as do trained domestic horses, we are, at least temporarily distracted from thinking about our own problems.

Horses fill many roles as domestic animals. They help us. They can be a target for our senses such as compassion, accomplishment, achievement and pride.

During periods of societal disruption, such as war, or persecution, economic failure, or disease such as the current Corona Virus pandemic, the above mentioned positive feelings help to remind us of the factors that can lead us to be more courageous, more understanding, more effective and, in general, a better person.

So, as we reflect upon the current worldwide pandemic, let us simultaneously be grateful that some of us are blessed by owning horses. They can, if we are receptive, help to make us better human beings.