Ross River Virus

I just received this email from a lady who just lost her horse to the virus, and thought I would share it so that others are aware of the symptoms:

Quote :

Today is a very sad day for me.
My pony died last night after a horrendous fight for over a week.
This started out as we thought with Colic symptoms on Wednesday the 6th. Then all his glands swelled to ridiculous size, even his poor sheath.
He stopped eating on Friday to start eating again on Sat, during this time, we have walked him for hours, stood for hours to let him eat, to make sure he didn't go down.
By Monday his heart was racing that hard he couldn't breath properly to keep up with it. He had every blood test you could think of and the vet was still puzzled. Tuesday, he wanted to eat again, but by that night he was on his side in the stable writhing in pain. I stayed with him all night, he was up the next day, amazingly, but he had given up, then he started very bad colic symptoms again, we walked him slowly for hours to stop him going down. Then he was so sad, lathered in sweat and breathing very heavy. The vet came out and did an internal, no twist ? She shoved a tube down his nose and to state there was very little stomach content, so she placed the usual warm water, sugar, paraffin oil and a couple of other things in his tummy, incase he had a blockage, gave him some pain medication and left, puzzled again.
He died peacefully approx 2 hours later, at least he is in no more pain.
So please I hope your ponies or horses never have to go through all this pain.
The vet is very certain it was the ross river virus.
I am writing to you to let you know what too look out for, he was 13hh, dark brown with a lovely white blanket and spots a very strong beautiful healthy pony, I will miss him dearly.

My old brood mare had this virus 12 years ago.I had sent her to a stud as a 4 yr old.I call it the stud from hell now. She came back a real mess,she had the virus plus a smashed up back leg and the worst infection the vet had ever seen, it was touch an go there for awhile but lucky I had a spot on vet at the time and she pulled through.She lived on pain killers for about 5 mths.anti viral meds and depression meds as thats part of the virus.she didnt show any colic type symptons but she was very un well. Its a horriable virus

Forot to say that my girls bloods came back saying ross river virus, so we new what to do straight away.

I heard this is going around the Hunter Valley at the moment....bloody mosquitos!