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FAQ #27124

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Do you have any statistics relating directly to horses? Are they more or less likely to be implicated in pathogen outbreaks in humans?

Related resource areas: Horses, Animal Manure Management


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Author: Jeanette Thurston-Enriquez, USDA Agricultural Research Service Scientist, jthurston2@unl.edu; Sheridan Kidd Haack, Research Hydrologist/Microbiologist, U.S. Geological Survey

Horses do excrete zoonotic pathogens in their feces.

Response 2: In the leptospirosis outbreak (recreational lake in Illinois) mentioned in my presentation ("Pathogens in Animal Manure?Should We Be Concerned?" Part 1), horses, cattle, and sheep from that watershed were all found to carry the leptospirosis organism, but that was the only case I found where horses could be implicated.

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