WAVE 3 TV Louisville, KY | Horses Shipped From Churchill Training Facility to Florida Test Positive for Strangles

Horses Shipped From Churchill Training Facility to Florida Test Positive for Strangles

(LOUISVILLE) -- At least four horses shipped from Churchill Downs' Trackside training facility to Florida have tested positive for a bacterial infection, a Florida official said.

Dr. William Jeter, a Florida agriculture department veterinarian, said Thursday the horses at Palm Meadows training center in Boynton Beach, Fla., were shipped from Trackside on Jan. 18.

Another horse, the first diagnosed at Palm Meadows, was moved from an unidentified Kentucky farm and officials are investigating whether it had been stabled at Trackside.

The horses are among seven trained by Dale Romans that have tested positive for strangles at Palm Meadows. Horses in three barns there have been isolated from the general horse population.

Horses in Romans' barn at Trackside have been tested for the disease and are under quarantine. In December, several of Romans' horses came down with strangles at Churchill Downs and were kept at the track after the barns closed Dec. 31.

Romans was in the United Arab Emirates for Saturday's $6 million Dubai World Cup and could not be reached for comment. Calls to his Churchill Downs barn went unanswered.

Strangles, a bacterial infection that can cause a horse's lymph nodes to swell and rupture, can be fatal in extreme cases, but most horses recover.

Two other Louisville-based trainers said Thursday they had isolated cases of strangles in December, the first indication that the disease may have spread more widely than horsemen originally thought.

Jimmy Baker said he moved a seemingly healthy horse from Churchill Downs to Trackside on Dec. 13. Three days later the horse became ill and subsequent testing revealed it had strangles.

Baker said the horse stayed in his Trackside barn and was not taken out of its stall to walk until every other horse in the barn had been out for the day.

"We were just really careful," he said. "Any time anyone went in and out of the stall, we just washed our hands and shoes with bleach. We were very lucky to contain it."

Because of the incubation period, Baker believes his horse was infected at Churchill, although he does not know how. Baker said Churchill is handling the matter "extremely well" and stressed that horses with strangles recover and race again. His sick horse missed 40 training days but is back running.

Trainer David Vance said he sent a filly from Churchill to a clinic as a precaution in early December when she started acting abnormally. She was diagnosed with strangles and spent a month at the clinic before going to a Lexington farm equipped to handle such horses.

Vance said the filly "checked clean twice" before she was sent to his winter barn at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas in early February and has had no other problems.

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