Assessment of the immunocrit method to detect failure of passive immunity in newborn foals.

Background: In newborn foals the absorption of colostrum immunoglobulins in the small intestine is maximal up to 8 hours after birth and then progressively decreases to become null after 24 hours post-partum. Thus, equine practitioners need a simple, quick, inexpensive and reliable field test to identify foals affected by failure of passive transfer rather than an accurate method yielding quantitative results within the whole range of immunoglobulin concentrations.

Objective: As the validity of the immunocrit method to detect failure of passive transfer in foals had not been evaluated before, the objective of this study was to test the ability of this method to detect the concentration of immunoglobulins in a large number of foal serum samples.