Why dont horse bones heal well?

Question

I know how devastating it is when a horse breaks one of their bones in their legs, but how come they cant just put a cast on like they do with humans and some other animals? Why is it so much harder to heal horses legs?

thanks for your answers, i was just wondering because of barbaro and yesterdays sad kentucky derby

Answer 1

A lot of it has to do with the sheer weight they place on their legs all the time.

Humans can get around with crutches, and some other animals can adapt very well without placing weight on a leg, or doing without it all together, but a horse isn't designed to support it's weight on anything but 4 legs.

It's virtually impossible to get a horse to move around on only 3 legs while having another heal, and if they break two legs, that's pretty much a killer right there.

Answer 2

Laminitis is caused by the swelling of the blood vessels in the hoof. Since the hoof is hard,it cannot stretch to make room for the swelling,the blood supply is cut off and thats what causes the lameness and pain. Laminitis can be caused by poor diet,or some kind of trauma to the horse. It is also called Founder. It leaves rings around the hoof starting at the top. Once a horse founders,it takes months for the rings to grow out. Horses legs are tiny compared to the weight of the horses body.They are very delicate.

Answer 3

This is a great question!

Yes, horses must spread their weight over all 4 legs.  Since they walk around on hooves vs. feet, this just complexes the problem.  When one leg is injured (let's use the left front for example), then the right front must compensate for all of the weight in the front end of the horse.

This would be the equivalent of humans walking on their tip-toes.  Horse's hooves are the equivalent of our fingernails.  When one front limb (or hind limb) must carry all the weight, then you have a chance to have what is called laminitis in the healthy hoof.

Laminitis is when the hoof wall becomes separated from the rest of the hoof, due to the increase in pressure and weight that the leg is bearing.  This would be the equivalent of our fingernail pulling from our finger and having to walk around on it.

This condition is extremely painful and very difficult to maintain and treat.  Many horses will have laminitis without having another leg injured and it is still difficult to overcome.

As far as a sling, due to a horse's extreme weight, they cannot be in a sling for a long amount of time because of the stress put on internal organs.  They can't even be made to lay on one side for too long because they would end up doing damage to organs.  Many times horses will actually sleep standing up - this is very normal!  They are not like dogs that lay down ever chance they get!

As you can see, horses are extremely fragile and have very complex problems!  It's not so much as a problem with their bones not healing.  They actually heal very quickly!  It's more of a problem with the horse in general.  Through evolution they are made the way they are for survival, but that has made their anatomy and systems more complex, thus making it even harder to treat with human intervention.

Answer 4

I dont know why, but people should STOP THE KENTUCKY DERBY. People just sit with their money and their stupid fluffy hats with bouncing sh*t coming out of the top and dont realize what the horses are being put through! I didnt make it to the television in time but when i found out this morning i was heartbroken. Its so sad how people put young horses in like that for MONEY. Its really depressing. I would be so mordified if my favorite horse on this planet was put into a big shindig like that and had to be put down for breaking to ankles.

I'll pray for Eight Bells.

Answer 5

It deals with the weight of the horse, each leg has 500+ pounds on it.  

If the broken bone is compound fracture, then there is infection.  

The other issue, and the issue that killed Barbaro, along with many other great horses such as Secretariat, is the awful illness of Laminitis.   If one leg is hurt, the horse puts more weight on the other three legs, and this weight issue can cause Laminitis, which is highly painful for the horse and if not cured, will be fatal.

Answer 6

Horses need to stand... if they lie down for more than a couple hours at a time, it stops blood flow and organ functioning.  It's like how your leg will fall asleep if you lie on it, except that for horses we're talking about 1200 pounds crushing their organs.  So when a horse breaks a leg, you can't just put them in bed for 6 months like you can with a person.

When a horse stands, it must distribute its weight evenly or else serious leg problems can result.  A horse stands with 70% of its weight on its front legs.  When a horse breaks one front leg, they can stand with more weight on the other front leg, particularly until the broken leg can get a cast on.  Eight Belles broke both of her front legs though.  If you've ever broken an ankle you know that it hurts a lot to stand on it.  To get Eight Belles into the ambulance, she would have had to put 70% of her body weight (about 800 pounds) on those broken front ankles.  She didn't have the option to limp on 3 legs.  It would have been enormously painful for her.

If somehow they did manage to splint her legs and get her to the hospital and she did have surgery, Eight Belles would have had about a 10% chance of survival.  It's not that we can't heal horses bones...  we can.  The science has finally developed to the point where we can take an injury like Barbaro's where he had multiple fractures all throughout his leg and fix it.  Barbaro walked without a cast in December of 2006... they had healed his leg.

The problem is the complications...  mainly laminitis.  When horses distribute their weight unevenly, it causes leg problems.  Laminitis is a condition where the tissue inside the hoof swells.  The hoof is hard so it can't expand.  You might remember that in July of 2006, Barbaro developed laminitis and the doctor cut away most of Barbaro's hoof to relieve the swelling.  That's because the problem with laminitis is that if there's swelling inside the hoof and it can't escape through the hoof, it pushes on the bones that are inside the horses's hoof.  When it pushes on the bones, the bones move.  There's one bone in particular that is extremely painful when it moves and if a horse gets severe laminitis, that bone can move all the way down until it is poking out of the bottom of the horse's hoof.

So if Eight Belles had surgery on her 2 front legs, from the pain in her front legs, she would have been standing with too much weight on her back legs.  And it's extremely likely that she would have developed laminitis in her back legs.  That would create a situation where she would have 2 broken legs and 2 hoofs with laminitis.  She would be extremely uncomfortable standing up.  It would be torturing her.  And eventually they would realize that the pain was too much for her and they would put her down.  So trying to get Eight Belles to recover from this injury would have just been torturing her for another couple weeks and then they would have put her down anyway.

We can heal legs.  The problem is the laminitis.  It has claimed so many of our horses from Barbaro to Secretariat to one of my favorite lesson horses named Sammy.  If you'd like to help find a cure for laminitis, please donate to the Barbaro Memorial Fund.