The equine world has faced significant challenges in recent years as infectious diseases have disrupted both the sport and the welfare of horses. Controlling infectious equine disease has become a shared responsibility for owners and riders, and new digital tools are making it easier than ever to play a part. Heavenly Pastures, which provides dignified horse cremations across the North West, believes that good biosecurity is part of caring for a horse throughout its whole life, and that supporting these efforts protects the wider equine community.
The importance of biosecurity in equine health
Infectious diseases such as equine influenza and equine herpesvirus have had a major impact on the equestrian community. The flu epidemic in 2019 and 2020 led to the closure of racing across the country, and the equine herpesvirus outbreak that followed caused widespread concern and restrictions. These events underline the crucial role that biosecurity plays in protecting horse health and preventing the spread of contagious illness.
Biosecurity involves a set of practices designed to prevent the introduction and spread of disease causing organisms. Good hygiene, the isolation of new arrivals and careful management during travel are all part of an effective approach. Yet controlling infectious equine disease on a larger scale requires accurate, timely information about where horses are moving and gathering, and that is where technology now has a meaningful contribution to make.
Harnessing technology with the Digital Stable app
A collaboration between the Royal Veterinary College and Equine Register, funded by The Horse Trust, has produced a free app called Digital Stable that helps track how disease can spread. Its features allow riders and owners to log their journeys digitally, so that with a smartphone alone a rider can create a reliable, real time record of trips away from their home yard.
This method offers clear advantages over traditional paper records. Uploading paperwork and vaccination histories can be slow and incomplete, which makes it harder for researchers and authorities to understand how disease moves through the horse population. A digital record, by contrast, is instant, more complete and available for anonymous analysis, giving scientists a far clearer picture than was previously possible.
How your participation makes a difference
By logging journeys through the app, owners contribute valuable information that helps scientists identify patterns and transmission routes. Understanding how horses move between locations, and how infections travel along those pathways, is central to designing effective prevention strategies. The data gathered remains anonymous, protecting privacy while still allowing the wider picture to emerge.
This is a practical way for ordinary owners to support the health of the national herd. Simply recording rides helps build a clearer understanding of how disease spreads and assists with faster responses during outbreaks. For owners who would like to read more widely on staying ahead of illness, the disease prevention guide offers further practical advice.
The broader impact on the equestrian community
Infectious diseases affect far more than the health of individual horses. They disrupt competitions, training schedules and breeding programmes, and can lead to costly quarantines that affect trainers, breeders and event organisers alike. Supporting digital monitoring helps safeguard the wider community against unexpected closures and restrictions, and protects the welfare of horses by reducing the risk of illness and its complications.
Robust biosecurity, backed by solid data, supports healthier horses and greater peace of mind for the people who care for them. For owners across the North West who balance the demands of yard life with the wellbeing of their horses, contributing to this kind of research is a small action with a meaningful collective benefit.
Everyday biosecurity habits reinforce the bigger picture. Keeping a new arrival separate from the resident horses for a sensible period, avoiding the sharing of tack, buckets and grooming kit between yards, and being cautious at busy gatherings such as shows and clinics all reduce the chance that an illness travels from one yard to the next. None of these measures is complicated, yet together they form a quiet line of defence that protects not only one owner’s horses but every horse they might come into contact with. When that day to day care is combined with the wider data gathered through digital tools, the whole community becomes better protected.
Caring for a horse through its whole life
Promoting health and biosecurity is one part of responsible ownership, and acknowledging the full span of a horse’s life is another. Heavenly Pastures provides compassionate end of life support to owners across the region, with options including individual cremation with ashes returned for those who wish to keep their horse close. The same clear standards that owners hope for in every aspect of equine care apply here too, as set out in our standards.
The service reaches owners across the North West, including those seeking Burscough horse cremations, Skelmersdale horse cremations and Chorley horse cremations. Owners are also warmly invited to share a photograph and a memory of their horse in the Remembrance section of the website.
Playing your part
Controlling infectious equine disease has never been more achievable, thanks to the partnership between the Royal Veterinary College and Equine Register and the simple act of recording journeys through the Digital Stable app. This approach shows how technology and community cooperation can come together to promote biosecurity and welfare. To talk to a compassionate team about any aspect of equine care, from planning ahead to end of life support, call 01704 776976 or use the contact form.