Is it not ready to run or are they protecting it's lovely looking mark for the Festival 3m handicap?

quick question! honestly how many people on here would back a nicolls horse for Cheltenham right now?

I would Giggsy - Cheltenham is 3 weeks away, only a few of his horses have a cough and with the right treatment the horses may only be held up in their work for 3/4 days, it should have no impact whatsoever, the horses that aren't affected will be kept separate from those who have coughed.
Yards like Nicholls have the best medical advisers, treatment and facilities and they are well versed in dealing with incidents such as these.

I would but possibly purely on the basis that I've fancied Al Ferof all year and i'd almost rather stick to my guns and back him than allow this to change my mind and kick myself if he wins!!

Apart from BB he is the only one i was going to back. Was looking at Zarkandar in the w/o fly market but if i do have a fun bet in that then it would now be Binocular. The way he travelled, and more importantly jumped, has given me the odd second of doubt about the fly. Then I come to my senses again

Glenwood - Don't know willie has had 6 winners from his last 18 runners...not to bad I would say...still - paul can say what he likes he has had 1 winner from 30+ runners....which is a disaster which ever way you cut it...tomorrow will tell us more about the bug...

does anyone know if promising anshan is going to the festival?

Not at all budd...but the game is all about punting and he will have plenty of fancied runners eating up lots of the market...which is seen as a gambling edge...hope this helps...

you must be delighted if your on oscar as you can back big bucks for a free bet if he turns up which seems likely with lots on here not worried about the stables well being...

okey doke Harry.

yeh,BB is going to be backed at some point mate.

paul nicholls said on Tuesday that his disclosure the previous day that some of his string are coughing had been "a little bit blown out of proportion" and that the great majority of his horses remain unaffected. "We did a load more tests this morning," Nicholls said after saddling Dualla Lord to finish third in a novice hurdle here, "and I suspect a huge number will be absolutely fine, with maybe one or two we need to treat."

Nicholls has dominated National Hunt racing so thoroughly for the past seven years that any report of illness in his stable less than a month before the Festival would inevitably concern punters who have backed horses such as Kauto Star and Big Bucks's to win at Cheltenham in mid-March. If Nicholls is seriously concerned about his string's health, however, he was hiding it very well, as he insisted that the infection is having little impact on the pre-Festival training regimes of his horses.

"If you walked round the stables you wouldn't hear any coughing," Nicholls said. "It's probably the worst we've ever had it [at this time of year], but you always get a few little niggles, and having said that, we're only talking about 10 or 12 or so out of 120, and a lot of the others have run really well.

"I cancelled the press morning [which was scheduled for Wednesday] because it would have been the right thing to have done, and of course then I have to announce that it's cancelled, and everything gets a little bit blown out of proportion. It's probably the worst we've ever had it, but having said that, you're only talking about 10 or 12 horses.

"We schooled a load this morning, and Zarkandar [who coughed after winning the Betfair Hurdle last Friday] was back cantering. If we know that something's not quite right, we'll just give them a couple of quiet days."

Nicholls had three declared runners here, two of which had previous form, and though Edgardo Sol was unplaced in the Bathwick Tyres Handicap Hurdle, Duella Lord ran a sound race to finish third in the opening novice hurdle and Foggy's Wall finished second in the concluding race of the day.

"It's not a bad one where they're not eating, that's when you're in trouble," Nicholls said, "but there's not one that's like that at all, so we should be OK.

"I probably would have said something anyway [regardless of the scheduled media day], there's no point saying everything is all right when it's not. It takes the pressure off if you're up front, rather than trying to say that you haven't got a problem.

"What happens is that they pick something up on the racecourse and the stress of the race brings it out. The only one that [of the main Festival contenders] that I really wanted to run [before Cheltenham] was Zarkandar, and none of the others need to run anyway. Nothing has missed any work yet, so we'll just monitor the situation. Dildar [a possible runner in the Triumph Hurdle] is running this weekend, but all the others have done what we wanted to do.

"Zarkandar had a snotty nose the day after he won [the Betfair Hurdle] at Newbury, but straight away we gave him some antibiotics, and we cantered him this morning. Kauto Star, Big Buck's, Join Together, Al Ferof and four or five others were tested on Sunday and they were all absolutely 100%."

it is a fact, if they are viral infections (which 95% are) that anti biotics are useless

unless they have taken cultures and grown them to find out whether they have a bacterial infection

yes but giving antibiotics unnecessarily is counter productive and can weaken the organism, kill intestinal flora and make it more difficult to recover

flushing with 10ppm colloidal silver (silver disrupts viral growth), dilute soltions of sodium hypochlorite and inhalation of eucalyptus, peppermint and rosemary essential oils can be used to fight viruses plus big doses of vitamins D &C while you wait for the culture plates to grow

pre-emptive antibiotics should be avoided at all costs

(you might guess that this is part of my professional expertise)

no but I am medically qualified

Maybe they have a better judgement of vets than Henderson....