Day-to-day operations at SAFE are managed by the members of the Operations Council, under the direction of SAFE’s Ops Director Terry Phelps. Each member of the OC heads a committee that focuses on a different aspect of SAFE’s work. Melinda Merryman is SAFE’s Herd Health Manager and she submitted this report on vet care in 2016:

We started off 2016 with Safe Harbor Stables in quarantine from an upper respiratory virus that spread through the barn. We learned a lot from this experience! Dr. McCracken of Rainland Farm Equine helped us with some new quarantine procedures, and we have been able to solidify those into a formal quarantine protocol. Some of those measures have been put into place permanently, which is a move that we feel has already improved our biosecurity significantly.

Over the course of the year, we had three horses who underwent major surgeries:

• Anakin had an eye removed, due to glaucoma and loss of vision
• Jessel, who suffered a skull fracture after being kicked by another horse, had a procedure to remove pieces of fractured bone
• Stormy, who is blind due to advanced uveitis had an eye removed, followed by a second procedure to remove the failed ocular implant

We rehabbed horses from several major injuries this year, most notable are Cameo’s muscle tear in the left hind, and Stella’s peroneus tertius rupture.

We laid two SAFE horses to rest in 2016. We lost Shay, who struggled with lameness issues to due coffin bone rotation. Shay was given a wonderful life in foster care at Eileen and Andy’s home. We also let Rocky go. Rocky was the first horse whose quality of life issues were assessed by our newly formed Palliative Care Committee. He fought a long battle against Cushings and chronic laminitis, and was given a lovely final summer at Kellie Larsen’s place.

During the summer we brought new intakes Lacey and Stevie through a successful re-feeding program at SHS under the guidance of Dr. Hannah Mueller of Cedarbrook Vet Care. We have established a re-feeding protocol for horses at SHS and are equipped to handle this type of situation at home again in the future.

The hiring of two awesome part time barn managers helped the herd health department tremendously in 2016. We now have two more sets of educated eyes on things, two more knowledgeable brains to contribute ideas and talents to the committee, and two more skilled hands that can do medical treatments as needed.

SAFE made the decision to purchase our own microscope this year, for which we have created a mini in-house laboratory to do fecal testing. We’ve been able to train more volunteers to run fecal egg counts, and to streamline the fecal testing process in general.