A barn at Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley Race Course remained under quarantine through the morning of Nov. 27 due to a confirmed case of strangles in a horse that had been stabled there. Test results for other horses from the barn are expected later Wednesday, and the next steps will be determined by those results, according to Hugh Drexler, director of racing at Mahoning Valley.
"The horse that tested positive was off the grounds as of last week," Drexler wrote Wednesday morning in an email. "We are in a precautionary quarantine of barn 4 until the results of the (polymerase chain reaction) tests are returned from the (Ohio Department of Agriculture) today. The stable gate will remain open until further notice. There are currently zero confirmed cases of strangles on our backside."
Strangles is a bacterial infection of the equine upper respiratory tract that can be spread by horse-to-horse contact or by humans, tack, buckets, and other environmental factors. Cases occasionally occur at racetracks, farms and training centers. Some other strangles cases occurred this past winter at Mahoning Valley.
Racing and training continue at the Youngstown, Ohio, track.
Currently, equine health officials in Kentucky have placed no state-imposed restrictions on shipping to or from Mahoning Valley, said Rusty Ford, equine operations consultant for the office of the state veterinarian.
"We're just reminding our horsemen that might be going up that way to be mindful of the disease event," he said. "Use the receiving barn. Hygiene is good. Sharing is bad."
This story will be updated when test results are released.
