Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Making use of equine population demography for disease control purposes: preliminary observations on the difficulties of counting and locating horses in Great Britain.
- Journal:
- Equine veterinary journal
- Year:
- 2011
- Authors:
- Robin, C A et al.
- Affiliation:
- Epidemiology and Disease Surveillance · United Kingdom
- Species:
- horse
Plain-English summary
Understanding where horses are located can help manage and control diseases that affect them. Researchers looked into the UK's National Equine Database to see what information is available about horse populations and how accurately it can predict where horses are kept. They found that most horse owners did not provide specific details about where their horses live, but data from 1,440 horses showed that 90% were kept within 10 kilometers of their owners. While knowing the owner's address can give a rough idea of where horses are, more research is needed to see how useful this database will be for controlling horse diseases in the future.
Abstract
Detailed knowledge of horse populations can better facilitate effective control of equine diseases. Preliminary studies were undertaken to ascertain the type of information held on the UK's National Equine Database (NED) and to determine the geographical resolution at which mandatorily recorded owner addresses might be a suitable proxy for predicting horse locations. Results indicated that relatively few UK passport-issuing organisations requested details of where horses were kept in addition to owner address details. Examination of data on 1440 horses held on an Animal Health Trust syndromic surveillance database showed that 90% of them were kept within 10 km of their owners. While owner location may provide an indication of where most horses are kept, further work is also needed to evaluate the usefulness of NED as an epidemiological resource in future equine disease control measures.
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Search related cases →Original publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21492217/