Water Access

[Bulletwork]

Should our horses have access to the streams running through our new farm? How Do you fence off a stream between two properties? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

[griff]

Suggest you vaccinate for Potomac Horse Fever if your horses have access to a stream..

Potomac Horse Fever is carried by snails and most streams have snails.. Other than that I see no problem with a clean flowing stream; however, all streams are not clean and you should investigate what the upsteam water source looks like.

griff

[madelyn]

Depends. If your place is downstream from any kind of forest with a lot of deer, I would be afraid of leptospirosis. If there is a large ag neighbor upstream, I would worry about herbicides, pesticides, etc.

In my case, all of my horses grew up "city horses" and they want chlorinated city water, so as long as I keep my troughs full of that, they leave the groundwater and streams alone. In fact, I use bleach to scrub the water buckets and troughs and they act like that is some kind of special treat...

[Lisann]

Boarded long term at 2 facilities in MI that had streams in their pastures. Never knew of any health problems at either placed related to the water. The horses drank from the streams - no other water source in the pastures.

Only thing that was a pain was if the horse went across the stream when you wanted to catch them!

[griff]

The Merk Vet Manual says "infection is commonly acquired by contact of skin or mucus membrane with urine and to a lessor extent by intack of urine-contaminated feed or water"

Racoons, opposums, and rats seem to be the major carriers but Merrck also said that up to 40% of horses may be resorvoir hosts for Servar Bratislara which I guress causes Equine Leptospirosis..

Thanks for the heads-up Madelyn as I had never heard of Leptospirosis before your post..

griff

[Shannon]

I'd say fence it...for a lot of reasons. Disease being the biggest, pollutants next. And the environmental impact on the stream can be huge too. Horses trodding up and down banks cause damage to the stream, ecosystem that lives in it, not to mention the manure in tehh water. In some areas (like here in most of Canada) it is law that you don't allow animals into natural water sources. You can be fined hefty fines, and charged the cost of repair, so check your state laws also.