The Coggin’s Test

The Coggin’s test is used to identify horses infected with Equine Infectious Anemia (EIA) virus.  This virus belongs to the same viral family as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).  Similar to HIV, once your horse is infected with EIA, it is infected for life.  Despite being recognized since the early 1900’s, there is currently no effective treatments or vaccines against EIA.  EIA is spread between horses by biting insects, such as horseflies and deerflies.  The good news is that EIA is very rare in the US and new cases have continued to decrease annually, to a current level of approximately 0.02% positive of all horses tested.  However, it remains important to continue to monitor for this disease in order to protect our healthy horse population.

In an effort to provide accurate results and identify the horse for which the test was performed, previous tests have been hand drawn to identify the specific animal.  In cases where the horse has few distinguishing marks, the drawing is simple.  However, certain breeds of horse are not always easy to draw, rendering identification difficult.

With the advent of digital photography, we have implemented a new system whereby digital photographs are taken of your horse and included in the Coggin’s paperwork.

This updated system allows more accurate identification of your horse as the color photographs are part of the form.