Disclaimer: this is a general overview written for owners. The exact schedule for your horse should always be set with your vet, taking into account their age, location, travel history, competition body rules and individual medical history.
What most adult horses are vaccinated against
Across the EU and UK, the vaccinations most commonly given to adult sport and leisure horses are:
- Tetanus — a non-negotiable for any horse, regardless of work. Usually a 2-dose primary course followed by a booster every 2–3 years (varies by manufacturer).
- Equine influenza — required by most competition and racing bodies. Typical schedule: 2-dose primary course, a third dose around 6 months later, then a booster every 6–12 months depending on rules and risk.
- Equine herpes virus (EHV-1 / EHV-4) — increasingly recommended for travelling horses; schedule typically 6-monthly.
- Strangles — risk-based; schedule depends on vaccine and vet advice.
- West Nile virus — relevant in parts of southern Europe and the US.
Why "every 12 months" is a trap
The instinctive way to track boosters is "give them once a year, around the same time". Reality is messier. Equine influenza for FEI competition typically requires a booster within the previous 6 months. Some manufacturers specify 11 months. Some boosters are 24 months. Some 36.
If you treat all boosters as "yearly" you will miss the ones that are actually due more often, and you will over-vaccinate the ones that are not. The right pattern is: log each vaccination with its specific next-due date, derived from the actual product and the actual rule that matters to you.
What to record for each vaccination
The minimum useful record per vaccination is:
- Date administered
- Vaccine product name (and manufacturer)
- Batch number (legally required in many countries on the passport, also useful for adverse-reaction reporting)
- Administering vet
- Dose
- Next due date
- Optional: any reaction, route of administration, site
This is exactly what a vaccination tracker app stores per record, and what determines whether the dashboard can correctly tell you a booster is "due in 23 days".
How to actually keep on top of it
Three practical habits that work better than a paper diary:
- Log on the day, not later. The vet finishes the visit, you tap the record in. Memory of "what dose was that?" goes downhill fast.
- Let the system calculate the next due date. Do not store "annual booster". Store the date the vaccine itself stops being valid for the rule you care about.
- Use one calendar. If your training, your farrier visits and your boosters live in different places, you will miss things at the intersection.
What about the passport?
In many countries (including the UK and across the EU) the horse passport is a legal document that must contain a record of equine influenza vaccinations. The paper passport is still the legal record — but a digital health record sits alongside it, gives you a clean copy of the same data and lets you produce a vet-ready report on demand. We cover this in more detail in our digital horse passport guide.
The shortest possible workflow
For an owner of one to four horses, the minimum viable workflow is:
- At each vet visit, log the vaccination with batch + next-due date.
- Once a week, glance at the dashboard for "due this month".
- Book the booster appointment 2–3 weeks before it falls due.
- If you compete, double-check the rule body\u2019s window separately (FEI, BHA, your national federation).
Done consistently, that is the difference between "I think we did flu in spring?" and a clean medical record that follows the horse for life.