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horses, sheep, av...
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by asud on May 26, 2009
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I can well understand that pharmaceutical co's might not want to broadcast this sort of thing, but...does anyone happen to know what the lifespan is of an antivenom producing animal? Have they got it down to a reliable enough practice that the same horse, say, can do this for years upon years?
Anyone familiar with adverse effects of administering scaled venom dosages to horses, sheep, etc.? I imagine there might well be dermal lesions, liver damage, etc. but am unfamiliar with specifics.
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RE: horses, sheep, av...
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by agkistrodude on May 26, 2009
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Good question. I've wondered that myself a few times. I remember reading or hearing once that the animals suffer no ill effects do to the small amounts of venom used. I don't remember the source though.Could be wrong.
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RE: horses, sheep, av...
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by LarryDFishel on May 26, 2009
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I've never heard much info on the subject, but I remember a story from a while back about the one and only horse being used to produce a particular antivenom (I think it was one/several of the sea snakes). I would assume that implies they don't expect them to drop dead too often...
I've also seen a few clips of blood being extracted from horses, apparently for antivenom production, and the horses shown looked perfectly healthy to my uneducated eye.
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RE: horses, sheep, av...
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by Cro on May 27, 2009
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Antivenin producing animals usually have a normal lifespan. That is because the venom injections start off very weak, and are gradually built up over time.
But, the animal is also building immunity over that time, so, there is not much damage from the venom as the doses get stronger.
If anything, the animals are probably treated and fed better than animals that are just kept on farms as pets and riding stock, as they are in a lab facility, and under controlled conditions.
When blood is removed from the animals, it has the plasma separated and most of the blood is returned back to the animal.
There is a nice video showing this out there on the web somewhere, I just can not find it at the moment.
Many animals can be used in Antivenin production, including horses, sheep, cows, goats, and even chickens. The interesting thing about chickens, is that the eggs are resistant to snake bite. And the yolk of the egg is what is used to make Antivenin.
A company in Minnasota was working on this, but I can find little new information on them. I think it took something like 5 dozen eggs to produce enough antivenin for one dosage. Was supposed to be less possibility of serum sickness from highly refined chicken egg yolks.
Also, snake bite immunity has been induced by combining snake venoms with lipids (fats) that could be injested by lab animals. And by eating these fats, they developed immunity to those snake venoms. I wonder where this lab work has gone also, as it seemed to have some early success in their experiments.
Seems that some promising research gets stopped for various reasons, like lack of funding, or bottlenecks in the results. If you search the web you will find a lot of very interesting approaches to snake bite treatment and establishing immunity that have been worked on in the past.
Best Regards
John Z
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RE: horses, sheep, av...
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by FSB on May 29, 2009
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If Bill Haast is any indication, the immunized animals should all live to be at least in their 90's (sheep years).
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