Jessie Cearns at Morgan Park

Today we caught up Jessie Cearns who is attending the Morgan Park school at Warwick.

How old are you?

Well I was locked up on my birthday. I turned fifteen on the 26th of August, lock up day.

What is it like going to school at Morgan Park?

It’s pretty good really! We go for three hours from 10am to 1pm. There are two rooms, one room has two computers and the other room has lots of internet cables so we can plug in our laptops. I am in year 10 at A.B. Patterson College on the Gold Coast and my teachers have sent up projects for me to work on.

What do you do before school?

I get up at 6.25 am, as I am looking after Sonja Jackson’s horse, Kings Gold, and he is first on the vets round. Then I have a shower and have breakfast, and it is time for the vets to check my horse, Rock N Roll Jazz. Before the vets arrive we need to have written down if they have had any discharge from the nose, if they have been coughing and we have to take and record their temperatures. After the vets have seen the horses they go out into the day yards.

Is your horse well now?

Basically he is over it but he still has a cough. The vets say this may last weeks or months. We can start riding them after they have had a week off for every day they have been sick.

Does just the cough count as being sick?

I do not think so but the vets have said that scarring on the lungs may be a problem further down the track.

What have you been eating?

We have just got new caterers who have set up a kitchen at the showgrounds and bring the food over. Now for breakfast we are getting bacon, sausages and eggs where we were getting cereal. Today for lunch we got pork chops and salad but some days we get sandwiches. Then it is a roast for dinner, last night it was chicken with vegetables and gravy and the night before beef. We have to supply our own desert if we want it.

Have you been doing any of the sporting activities?

I have been doing the aerobic classes with Melissa and they are really good, but people are starting to get sore and there are now not so many in the class. Some people choose to go for a run. We take our horses for a walk in the afternoon on the way back to the night stalls.

What do you do at night?

We have a television/DVD player in the truck and a Play Station, so we either watch a movie or play on the Play Station.

Do you sleep in the truck?

Mum and my brother are in the truck and I sleep in the annex in my swag. When it was raining I had to move in.

We will catch up with Jessie in a week to see how they are getting on!

Gate Shut After Horse Bolted.

Well-known breeder and exporter, John McMillan has been in lockdown for two weeks, but feels the DPI were “too slow at closing the outbreak down. The DPI did not shut our property down until the tests from our horses were declared positive, a period of four days. We should have been shut down as soon as there was suspicion we might have had Equine Influenza on the property. And at Warwick they should have shut the place down and thrown hamburgers and chaff over the fence to them. It may sound a joke, but from what I understand the major problem with this outbreak has been the human carriers. I don’t think people have been anywhere near careful enough in this outbreak. It cannot be denied that the virus is airborne, but I think in many cases it has been an excuse for human negligence.

“The blame game is not productive and we must learn how to handle the situation better. A combination of unfortunate circumstances has resulted in the virus contaminating horses in Australia and of course that could happen again. In some ways with regard to quarantine and bio security, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. The DPI was quick to act, but not quick enough.

“On a brighter note, all out horses have had the flu and are recovering well. We were most concerned about Casper (former World Cup showjumper) as he is 24 and just retired. He was imported from Belgium many years ago, and he did not have it badly at all. Whether that has anything to do with the fact that he would have been vaccinated when younger and certainly before he came into Australia, I don’t know”.

On the Mend at Kulnura

The positive news from the Equus Australia property at Kulnura north of Sydney is that all the horses are recovering well. WEG Team Member, Rod Brown told Horse Deals;

“The virus took about nine day to circulate around the 31 horses and none have been affected badly. Mr. Burns (pictured) had a very mild dose, most probably because he was vaccinated last year for WEG. We have only one pregnant mare on the property and I was a little concerned, but she has not had a bad bout at all. All the youngsters have it but you would not know as they still gallop about their paddocks. Really it has not affected them much at all. We have treated them with an anti-inflammatory for any high temperatures and antibiotics when and if necessary”

Rod, a trainer and coach like all other industry professionals is being affected by the lockdown. “You still have to pay the vet bills, but there is no training or coaching until we are given the all clear. We have been so lucky in Australia for so long, and we have taken our ‘clean’ status for granted. Some good will come of it all, as we will learn how to be better prepared for any further outbreaks in the future. We will learn too how to manage our horses that have had EI and how to bring them back into work”.

Horse racing industry not a pleasure industry?

I am absolutely astounded at the political and financial clout that the racing industry seems to have, it would seem to me that this "industry" is the ultimate in pleasure industries - gambling!

It is such a pity that the whole of the equine world can not be treated on par with each-other, after all shouldn't it be all about horses, all horses. After all EI doesn't care if your horse is an old family pet, a Childs pony, a champion show horse, a working horse or a race horse! Nor is it only affecting the income of jockeys, stable hands and race horse owners and trainers but also pony club instructors and horse riding schools, agistment farms, pony rides and so on.

All horses and people associated with horses are being impacted by the threat and infection of EI we should all be treated equally!

Iain & Serafina Munns

Concern Regarding Olympic Showjumping Qualification

Olympian, 2006 WEG representative, Assistant National Coach and member of the Showjumping High Performance Panel, Rod Brown (pictured), is concerned about the Olympic preparation for some domestic horses due to the outbreak of EI. “The optimists believe that we will start jumping in NSW at Tempo in early December, but I feel it will be rescheduled for the New Year along with the Australian Championships, which were to be in Canberra in October. It is of some concern as the Championships were to incorporate and eight penalty or better MES (Minimum Eligibility Standard) Grand Prix. Officially only one such class is permitted a year. We are hoping, due to the unforeseen circumstances, that the FEI will give Australia permission to conduct two such classes in 2008, in order to get our horses qualified for Hong Kong. Australia qualified a team for the Olympics at the WEG last year, but there are still some horses in Australia that do not have their MES and it is always better to have this qualification sooner rather than later”.

Vaccinations a Must

I have to ask the question why is it not compulsory for ANY horses travelling overseas or coming into this country to be vaccinated against Equine Influenza ?

Having grown up in a horse racing family in the UK where vaccination for EI is compulsory for ALL racehorses, regardless of whether they are travelling overseas or not, it amazes me that in a country like Australia where quarantine rules for passengers at airports are so strict that, for horses, it has been until now so slack in allowing ‘shuttle stallions’ and racehorses, travelling to and from Hong Kong & Japan for the big race meetings not to be vaccinated.

In the UK even pleasure horses and the like are usually vaccinated, at the owners discretion, so I think it is high time that the EI vaccine be made readily available at an affordable price so we can all take the preventative measure of vaccinating our horses in the future to prevent this type of epidemic from happening again.

With new cases of EI still surfacing every few days I don’t believe any horse racing should be taking place until the spread has stopped. However, it would appear that as always ‘money talks’ and when the big guns involved in the racing industry make a fuss, suddenly racing is back on again despite the rest of us being quarantined at home indefinitely.

Lets all learn from this epidemic and get our horses vaccinated in the future.

Kerry Landers (Jimboomba, Qld)

Victoria steps up security

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Victoria steps up security to keep horse flu out": it’s good to see that the people doing the wrong thing are getting caughthttp://theland.farmonline.com.au/news_daily.asp?ag_id=45294

EFA Meeting

I hear that there is a meeting tomorrow at the Sydney Showgrounds organised by the EFA, it will be interesting to see what the outcome is….

Anonymous

Its Everywhere

Barbara Bell enjoying her September Horse Deals. Taken whilst in lockdown (during EI) at Condobolin Showground.

Equine Influenza

If this outbreak of equine influenza is a dress rehearsal for an even more disastrous epidemic, then the Government’s agencies response has been lamentable. On a local level information is being disseminated more on talkback radio than anything else- the DPI tries to put a positive spin on all their output on matter how unpleasant. I imagine they have the perpetrator of the “risk assessment” at Narrabri in a good witness protection program. Why were the 400 horses from Narrabri, despite being in contact with infected horses, let go to all points of the compass on Sunday 26th of August, when the horses Moonbi were in lockdown on Saturday morning? Why were the problems associated with airborne transmission only brought to the public’s attention on talkback radio?

The disparagingly termed “leisure horse industry” is paying a very high price for the ability of a few individuals to make a lot of money from shuttle stallions. I might add here that we work our cattle with stock horses and breed around a dozen show horses a year. The mortality rate on other studs is now making itself apparent, and it is not good.

Initially this problem would be avoided with the use of A.I. which all other equine breeds use with great success. This is not the 80’s, Greed is not Good, the thoroughbred industry, internationally and locally, should be brought kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.

Deborah Bell Armidale NSW

I'm a bit Confused!

I'm a bit confused. On 29 Aug DPI said that there were horses that tested positive in Julia Creek and Gordonvale. Then on the 9 Sep it said that the second lot of testing was negative. Now the latest update at 6pm on the 10 Sep say they are infected. It would be nice to know wht it is because it would be a big step forward or backward for the rest of the state.

Also what happened to the daily updates from Queensland DPI&F, there are a lot of people hanging out fof the latest news and it's not forthcoming.

Jane.
Central Queensland