More Insights Into: Laminitis In The Arabian Horse

By T. R. Menis DVM

More Insights into Laminitis in the Arabian Horse records more than twenty years of on-field practice with Arabian Horses affected by Laminitis either acute and chronic. The approach to both prevention and treatment of this disease is optimistic, the main goal being that of giving the horse the right tools to self-heal as it usually occurs in a natural environment. Many satisfactory answers to most common (and to the least common) queries about laminitis are provided by the author, supported by a considerable statistical success rate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447569831

Book preview

beginning.

1 A short Introductin

Almost 90 % of the horses raised in the area, Galilee (fig. 4a), Nazareth and the surrounding villages, where I have been working for the past three decades as a veterinary surgeon, are Arabian horses and, if I am not wrong, they form the highest concentration of this breed in Israel. Besides the above-mentioned horses many others of these elegant quadrupeds come from regions outside this area to be tamed and trained in the Galilee.

These horses are usually raised for sport or leisure activities: trips, jumping, dressage, racing, stallion mating and endurance shows etc. and are the unquestioned stars in the numerous local and national beauty contests.

Power, ability to adjust to every situation and the economical status an Arabian horse may mean to his owner, have enthralled the heart and interest of many and the numbers of these horse owners has soared as fast as thunder over these last decades. But, alas, neither enough knowledge or a rational awareness of proper caring and feeding of this animal have progressed though! Too often, proper care of the horse is hampered by ancestral habits of the local inhabitants or by the unprofessional, offhand counseling of the village expert.

e9781447569831_i0006.jpg

Fig. 4a Landscape from Galilee.

e9781447569831_i0007.jpg

Fig. 4b One of the bedouin tents you can still see in the Galilee.

Besides, just lately have food suppliers been starting to realize how different horse feeding is from other types such as cow and sheep feeding (which is technically quite advanced in Israel unlike equine feeding), and that this fact has to be kept in mind while producing specific equine food. In this area this awareness is of consequential importance especially if we consider that different components of equine food are imported from different countries practicing different cultivation and processing methods. One same batch of grains may come from different sources and countries and may have different physical shapes. This can transform the same produce, let’s say barley, into distinctive types due to specific qualities and amounts of its components. Not to mention the physical changes that a specific grain undergoes which affects its texture or shape (cracked or rolled or crushed into flour etc.). A fact which is too often overlooked! See in the below pictures different types of grains (barley, wheat, corn, oats, sorgo, soya, bran etc. , with or without minerals, salts, vitamins, oils etc. added upon request), differently mixed and processed, showing different shapes and holding a distinct quantity and quality value. (Fig. 5-12)

e9781447569831_i0008.jpg

Many owners mistakingly think they can take a little of everything and make the ideal mix for their horse, smoothing the way to the disease! (wrong amounts, no regularity in dosage etc.). Free barley is the last and not least dangerous feeding trend which has to be once and for all done with. The rack is full all day long and a supply of dry hay is almost never there or not in the needed amount. This feeding method starts with foals, yearlings, mares, and after then, also during weaning. And besides all this, thanks to the expert’s advice, the shift to concentrates is often abrupt and on purpose, in order to get better performances!

e9781447569831_i0009.jpg

This irrational or even utilitarian behaviour of the horse owner is to be credited with the abnormal, almost pathological functioning of the horse digestive system which has to face unusual unbalances and pressures. He starts to produce mushy, cow-like feces (fig. 13), instead of compact, normally coiled or spherical-shaped feces (fig. 14). A trouble affecting more than 90% of the horses in my care.

The feces are quite mushy, sticky, bubbly and acidsmelling. In the many tests I carried out on the feces ph I found that it ranged between 5.4 and 5.7. Differently, in the horses fed rationally, the feces ph was around 6.2/6.8 (fig. 14)

In a wrong feeding regime, as above mentioned, any slight change, either in quantity or quality, immediately leads to a temporary collapse of the digestive system, especially of the saphrophyte germs, with pathological germs gaining the upper hand. We know quite well what the undesired consequences are, especially colic and laminitis.

e9781447569831_i0010.jpg

Let’s add to this common source of problems, the absurd expectations a horse owner often nurtures about his own horse: I want my horse to be fat and run as fast as possible. Actually I want my horse to run the fastest! I expect my mare to get pregnant as soon as possible and why won’t she run faster than any other and her foal will even grow faster? Of course, another pressing demand is that she will win in the next beauty show! So she will be pregnant but she will be able to run in the next race and after then she will also win the local beauty competition. The same for a stallion, engaged in contemporary mating, beauty contest, racing etc. and… I am not exaggerating !

e9781447569831_i0011.jpg

Fig. 5 Crushed barley.

e9781447569831_i0012.jpg

Fig. 6 Crushed barley and corn.

e9781447569831_i0013.jpg

Fig. 7 Barley.

e9781447569831_i0014.jpg

Fig. 8 Mix of corn, barley and bran.

e9781447569831_i0015.jpg

Fig. 9 Crushed corn.

e9781447569831_i0016.jpg

Fig. 10 Soy grains.

e9781447569831_i0017.jpg

Fig. 11 Corn.

e9781447569831_i0018.jpg

Fig. 12 Wild barley.

The area in the north of Israel where I have been working for these past three decades has been for me an ideal factory producing thousands of colic and laminitis cases. I am glad to acknowledge, though, that my colleagues’ and my own continuous, systematic instructing has yielded some benefits like an increased awareness of correct raising and feeding methods besides improvements in food production and care. Due to this positive trend, this factory is on its way to diminish its productiveness.

This high ratio of laminitis cases has allowed me to develop different healing methods according to the stage of the disease, be it acute or sub-acute or chronic. Some of these methods I was handed over by my University teachers, some I enquired in literary sources (as reported in this book) and most I have developed myself with a growing experience and wisdom on this subject. I have been supple in my treatment choices, combining different methods according to the specific case and trying to get to the best results in this or that way with no nailing on one given method and without losing hopes even in the worst of the cases. I suppose that in every corner of the earth there are specific, typical-of-the place problems and raising methods which may lead to the onset of this disease, but, eventually, what we face is the same sick animal, a victim of man’s mistakes, and the same results.

In this book I will try to convey as clearly as I can the whys and the hows, I will give answers that were never given and I will ask questions which I think were never asked and which do not always have an answer. Apart from a will and a need to share with you the huge experience I have been hoarding over my long career, the target here is helping to prevent or at least to lower the incidence of this ominous though curable disease. See below pictures of horses affected by laminitis. Notice their facies expressing various degrees of suffering.

e9781447569831_i0019.jpg

Fig. 13 Typical mushy feces I can see in most horses in my area.

e9781447569831_i0020.jpg

Fig. 14 Feces as they should be in a normal condition (ph meter).

Believe me or not, the horse is really suffering, his owner is suffering with him, torn by qualms of guilt, and I myself always suffer with the horse whenhe is plagued by laminitis!

e9781447569831_i0021.jpg

Fig. 15 Female in her ninth month of pregnancy with laminitis on fore legs caused by alimentary changes (passed abruptly from full to broken barley).

e9781447569831_i0022.jpg

Fig. 16 A mare with laminitis on four legs caused by abrupt adding of wbeat to barley to which she was used to.

e9781447569831_i0023.jpg

Fig. 17 Female with acute laminitis on her four legs.

e9781447569831_i0024.jpg

Fig. 18 Female local Arabian, 8 years old, with laminitis caused by accidental feeding on rat poison.

e9781447569831_i0025.jpg

Fig. 19 Laminitis on four legs triggered by excessive and abrupt feeding on apples.

e9781447569831_i0026.jpg

Fig. 20 11 year-old Arabian female four days before foaling, with laminitis on all four legs. Recovered after foaling and treatment with no escalation into chronic stage.

2 A few words about the Hoof

In an unshod, free horse the hoof appears to be static or unchanging as if it never grows or wears out. But this is not really so. There is in fact a balance between growth of the hoof and a wearing rate due to an action<> reaction activity of the hoof on/against the ground. Growth doesn’t follow a steady rhythm as it is dependent on the variables met by the horse in his daily life. For example: dietary regime, training, surface conditions, type of shoeing, rest, temperature, climate, diseases and so on. These agents affect day after day, moment after moment the hoof condition and shape. One of the results is that the external hoof surface does not appear smooth and homogeneous and some sort of wave-like, hardly visible signs form on it, parallel one to another and to the coronet and with diverse space among them. (fig. 21,22)

When these grooves get a certain visibility and prominence, due to sub-pathological reasons or to whatever disease, they are called rings and characterize the wall of the hoof (fig. 23,24,25). They are the result of trophic changes. The bulging part in them are a response to more abundant trophic conditions.

These trophic anomalies occur also within physiological boundaries showing an altered pigmentation which is particularly stressed when a keratogenetic dystrophy occurs in relation to serious pathological conditions or rather when perceivable static-kinetic variations occur creating a pressure on the hoof (fig. 166).

e9781447569831_i0027.jpg

Growth of the hoof is faster in young specimen and lags with age. Cold-blooded horses, draft horses for example, show a slower keratogenetic growth rate than sports, hot-blood horses.

Diet affects considerably the hardness/compactness and the growth rate of the hoof. Grass or poorquality feeding slow down the growth process while concentrated food with high nutritional values leads to harder and fast growing hooves.

Long resting times slacken forming of the corneal tissue while constant training improves growth due to an improved blood circulation activity in