Sizing up for spring
MEET THE EXPERT
BEVA President LUCY GRIEVE MA VetMB MRCVS is an ambulatory vet at Rossdales in Newmarket. She works with all types of horses, from happy hackers through to amateur sports horses to elite racehorses. Her main areas of interest are lameness, diagnostic imaging and poor performance, and she is passionate about maximising the welfare of the horse at all times.
“It is surprisingly difficult to ascertain fat stores in horses, hence why there is no perfect system in use. Muscle and fat can look and feel very similar and there is no shame in asking for advice”
DID YOU KNOW?
It is not the season itself that causes spring laminitis, nor is there anything special about the grass growing at this time. It’s just that the horse had no margin for error in its fat stores before it entered the red zone’, which tipped it into metabolic difficulty, namely insulin dysregulation and subsequent laminitis.
SPRING TIME IS a much-welcomed season for most, no
