Stidham's horses hit hard by quarantine

Slowly but steadily, Fair Grounds is emerging from the equine viral outbreak that began late last year and briefly even threatened to shut down the 2016-17 race meet. One by one, quarantined barns are coming back online, and off-site shippers began racing at Fair Grounds again this week.

But for trainer Mike Stidham, the slow still feels much stronger than the steady.

In a business sense, Stidham has been affected by the equine herpesvirus (EHV-1) event at Fair Grounds more acutely than any trainer.

All but a few of his Fair Grounds horses are stabled in barn 36, far away from barn 14, where the only two cases of the neuropathogenic strain of EHV-1 were found this winter. On Dec. 31, Stidham had the first horse on the grounds to test positive for the far less dangerous wild strain of EHV-1. His main barn has been quarantined since then. If the status quo holds, that quarantine will be lifted Feb. 6, but Stidham has not been able to run horses out of his main barn for about a month now.

Stidham’s barn, barn 14, and the receiving barn were the only barns in which asymptomatic horses were tested for EHV-1. Three other barns that registered wild-type EHV-1 positives were scheduled for full testing, but before that happened, the Louisiana Department of Agriculture changed protocols and decided to end the testing of healthy horses. By then, Stidham had 12 horses who were moved into isolation tents set up at various spots on the Fair Grounds property. One of those horses has twice tested negative for EHV-1 and no longer must be isolated.

All the isolated horses at Fair Grounds – none of whom ever was symptomatic – have been tested at least once for EHV-1 since being put in temporary tents, and only a handful tested positive again. Those positive horses were moved away from the tent horses with negative tests. After two negative tests, a horse no longer has to be isolated.

Stidham was the leading trainer at Fair Grounds last season, but the EHV-1 situation has ripped a huge hole in his meet this winter. And Stidham is far from alone among Fair Grounds horsemen thinking it all could have been avoided.

Stidham’s first EHV-1 wild-type positive came on a horse who already had been fighting a different illness for a few weeks. Initially, it was feared the horse might be having neurologic symptoms, but in retrospect, it seems more likely that the horse was generally compromised by its tenuous health.

Stidham, as required, reported two more feverish horses under his care who tested positive for EHV-1. Both quickly recovered, as has every other horse at Fair Grounds to test positive for wild-type EHV-1 this winter. The rest of his positive tests have come on healthy horses in training.

Horses in quarantined barns have a special training window each morning at Fair Grounds, but that window isn’t wide enough for Stidham to get all his stock to the track. His string at the Evangeline Downs training center now can race at Fair Grounds, but the horses must ship into the receiving barn.

“Really, the whole thing has been devastating,” said Stidham.

The whole stable has suffered, and the development of talented young prospects, like the debut winner Stallion Heiress and the stakes winner Proforma, has been put on hold. Proforma would have been running in a Sam Houston stakes race Sunday. Instead, like most of Stidham’s stock, Proforma is just waiting to get out of jail.