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Treatment

Anthrax is treatable with the proper antibiotic therapy. However cases of anthrax are often undiagnosed until after the death of the horse. Bacillus anthracis is usually susceptible to common antibiotics such as penicillin and oxytetracyline, although the disease must be caught early and treated vigorously in order for treatment to be successful.

Prevention

There is a vaccine approved for use in livestock in the U.S. for anthrax, but horse owners should not use this vaccine unless their animals are located in an endemic area. Luckily, encountering anthrax spores in the U.S. is rare, with most recent outbreaks occurring mostly sporadically in the western part of the country and the Dakotas.