Equine Obesity Update: Do Horse Owners Comprehend the Dangers?

14 November 2009 Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog at Hoofcare.com



There's no doubt that the horseowning public in the United States and abroad is becoming more aware of the problem of obesity in horses. Just look at the variety of new feed products and supplements designed to help horses lose weight, and you will see just the first wave of a marketing tsunami aimed at assisting horse owners in reducing the weight of the horses.

The problem may not lie in just recognizing obesity, however. For many horse owners, telling them their horses are fat is akin to telling them that they have spoiled a child with candy. In their eyes, fat horse is a sign of a well-fed and much loved horse, but they may not connect the dots to the real health risks associated with obesity, such as insulin resistance and a high risk for laminitis.

In this video, the British international charity World Horse Welfare updates us on their progress in educating horse owners and also in surveying horse owners for their perceptions of obesity in horses. You'll also see a severely overweight pony that was confiscated by officials as a welfare case because of its obesity. This was the first prosecution of horse owners for welfare violations directly related to overfeeding a horse.

I love the last part, where the pony stands next to a pile of bags of feed equal to the weight he has lost.

Thanks in advance for sharing this video and keeping public awareness of the dangers of equine obesity at the forefront.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask.

Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).

To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Safe but Not Sound: World Horse Welfare Tries to Help Large, Lame Young Clydesdale

The World Horse Welfare's Belwade Farm in Aberdeenshire, Scotland recently took in its largest charity case ever. Digger is only four years old, and is already 19 hands. Such a large horse might be a novelty that would appear to someone to adopt, but he also needs a lot to eat.

And first, vets at the University of Edinburgh have to decide if his hind limb osteochondrosis ( a floating "bone chip"), coupled with the gait abnormality known as "stringhalt" on the opposite limb, can be treated so the horse has a viable future.

Of course, it is possible that Digger may not even know he's lame. He's so young, he may never have moved correctly so the hitch in his gait is all he knows.

I'd like to share more hind limb lameness videos here so people can get used to what a shiverer and a stringhalt case, for instance, look like.

An interesting footnote to Digger's story is that he was orphaned as a foal and always fed by hand.

Digger would a great "pet" project for someone. I certainly wish him the best and, as always, congratulate WHW for trying to do the right thing.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask. Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Favorite Video: Horse Owners Beware of Seasonal Weight Gain Over Winter Months

by Fran Jurga | 2 December 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com

Most horses and ponies are not as overtly obese as this pony. The videos posted for you today explain the subtleties of weight gain in horses and their not-so-subtle effects on a horse's health. Chris Pollitt photo. (thanks!)

The red line on the thermometer is dropping. The blankets are out. The feed bucket gets an extra half a scoop. Soon it will be an extra whole scoop. Or two. In the deluxe barns, the heat comes on. "Can you bring the horses in early tonight? It's awfully cold...and make sure Bilbo has both his blankets on, ok?"

As countless horse owners continue to struggle with low-grade chronic laminitis and its more serious counterparts, we still seem to have as many overweight horses standing guard in winter paddocks as we did last winter. In spite of all the diet grain mixes, horse owners still love to feed their horses, just as they love to dress them in blankets. It's a visible sign that the owner cares, and is providing the best possible conditions for the horse. (Isn't it?) When the weather gets cold, adding more grain to the feed tub seems like a sensible, caring thing to do. (Isn't it?)

And when laminitis strikes, horse owners run through a gamut of emotions, from grief to guilt to an outpouring of excessive care and nursing. When, in most cases, it could have been avoided.

In this post you will find a three-part video from World Horse Welfare (formerly the International League for the Protection of Horses), a British-based charity that puts laminitis very high on its list of educational priorities.

World Horse Welfare horse care team leader Samantha Lewis shares good practical information with a horse owner in this video. She talks about the risks of laminitis, winter grazing, blanketing, weight taping, and a lot of other key concepts for horse owners.

She had my attention from the very first sentence: 80 percent of horses in Great Britain are overweight. How can that be? When she examines horses of different sizes and conformations, I start to understand that weight is a very deceptive variable in horses. And I may have been guilty of misjudging some horses in the past, according to Samanta's system.

I hope the regular readers of this blog will refer horse owners to this post to learn about the relationship of weight to laminitis and other health problems. If you're a vet or farrier, please recommend these video clips to your clients.

NOTE: In the shaded portion at the end of this blog article, you will see a small icon that looks like an envelope. If you click on it, you can forward this article (or any article in the entire archive of the Hoof Blog) to anyone you'd like to have this information. I think that the email icon shows up in some browsers and not others; sorry for this inconsistency.

This video set might make a great Christmas present instead of a bag of horse cookies.

Thanks to WHW for making these clips available. There's lots more information about obesity in horses on their website. For information about laminitis, please visit Dr. Chris Pollitt's laminitis research web site.

Here's Part 1:

 

 Here's Part 2:

 

 Here's Part 3: 

 

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. All images and text protected to full extent of law. Permissions for use in other media or elsewhere on the web can be easily arranged. Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online or received via a daily email through an automated delivery service. To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness, please visit our main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com. Comments to individual posts are welcome; please click on the comment icon at the bottom of the post.