Three government-owned horses that had been used to make antivenom for snakebites were retired on Friday after a decade of service at Nantou County’s Cingjing Farm (清境農場), the Centers for Disease Control said on Sunday.
In the antivenom-making process, horses are injected with reduced-strength snake venom that causes their immune systems to release antibodies which are then extracted from their blood, the centers’ Chief of Vaccines Chiang Cheng-jung (江正榮) said, adding that the blood is reinfused into the horses to aid their recovery.
The three horses, aged between three and five and identified as No. 304, No. 314 and No. 328, were bought from the US in 2006 and 2007 for NT$350,000 per horse, he said.
Photo courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control
Horses are the animal most commonly used for the production of anti-venom and a horse is usually used for 10 years, the centers said.
The retired horses were used in the production of antivenom for treating hundred pacer, brown-spotted pit viper and Stejneger’s pit viper bites and helped numerous snakebite victims, Chiang said.
While the horses have reached retirement age and are no longer fit for secreting antibodies, they are still in “very good health” and are aged about 50 in human years, Chiang said.
An average of 1,000 people are bitten by venomous snakes in Taiwan every year, requiring 45,000 doses of antivenom that are produced by the centers’ antibody-producing horses, Chiang said.
The centers said snake activity peaks between July and August, adding that this year, it has prepared 3,200 doses of antivenom for brown-spotted pit vipers and Stejneger’s pit vipers, 1,200 doses for many-banded kraits and Chinese cobras, 330 doses for the Chinese sharp-nosed viper — commonly known as the “hundred-pacer” —and 50 doses for Russell’s vipers.
The government expressed its gratitude to the horses and urged hikers to wear clothes that cover their limbs and to beat undergrowth with a stick before walking through it as a precaution against snakebites.
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