Is it truly necessary to euthanize a horse which has broken a leg, or is it just an outdated “quick-fix” / “ol-wives-tale?”
WAG that in old days, they didn’t have the veterinarial skills or methods they have now, or if they did have a way to “fix” a broken horse, it was too long of a process for the owner to wait for the animal to heal, since horses were used primarily for transportation and utilitarian purposes. Down time of the animal would have been too costly and the owner would also have had losses (ie farming, etc).
IIRC watching something on Animal Planet that said horses with broken legs can indeed recover, and even featured a documentary of one such horse. Euthanization of a horse with a broken leg, presently, seems totally unecessary, and reasonably possible to fix. Is this correct?
I’ve seen a documentary where a thoroughbred with a broken leg was kept in a swimming pool (all the time? Some of the time?) to keep the weight off its leg until the break was healed.
I suspect that while we can splint, medicate, operate, and all else on horses with broken legs, the cost is prohibitive, and most owners are faced with either $10K vet bills or destroying their horse. I don’t think such broken legs get better on their own.
It depends on how bad the break is too. My horse chipped a bone in her leg when she was younger, but it wasn’t life threatening. With a valuble horse they will try and save it if possible, but if it’s badly broken or the horse is not worth much, sayanora. $$
Unfortunately, it is true, depending on the worth of the horse. I grew up on a ranch, and we always had 10-15 horses, as did all of our neighbors. Luckily, none of our horses ever broke a leg, but one of our neighbors horses did while up in the mountains. I don’t know the exact situation, but it was a very serious break, and they were forced to put her down.
Unless it is a racing horse that is worth millions in stud fees, a serious break of the bones in the leg makes it prohibatively expensive to heal the horse, and the horse will never be any good again. The same thing with cows, or other large farm animals.
As has been said before, splinting a horse’s broken leg is do-able, but expensive and requires extra care from the owner for a while. The well-to-do or very loving owners of a champion horse will do it if they can afford the down time; a dusty, broke, old alcoholic cowboy driving cattle across the plains 40 years ago just couldn’t afford the time or money.
Even with a very valuable horse and a wealthy owner, the horse may still have to be put down. A horse’s leg has to support a lot of weight, and they don’t like to be imobilized. A while back there was a race horse that broke her leg (I’m pretty sure it was a filly, even though most racers are colts) and they tried to set the leg several times but every time the horse came out of anethesia she struggled to stand up, get free of the restraints, and kept injuring her leg further. Very shortly the leg was unsalvagable and she had to be put down, since I don’t believe a 3-legged horse is a viable creature. Very sad.
Broken legs can be further complicated by the location where they occur - out on a trail driving cattle or whatever you not only have an injured horse but also the problem of how to move it to someplace where you can take care of the medical problem. In which case shooting it is more merciful than leaving it for scavengers to find in a helpless state.
I was talking with a horse breeder (quarterhorses, but it applies to all breeds) about this very subject last week. A horse with a broken leg has to be placed in a sling, which goes under the belly, to keep the weight off the leg. Most horses simply can’t cope with this confinement, as Broomstick said. The sling compresses the internal organs, which isn’t good for the horse. Race horses (thoroughbreds) are notoriously high-strung, which complicates things even further. Horses aren’t cheap to maintain, either, and even if a horse manages to recover from a broken leg, it can’t be used for even pleasure riding.
The filly broomstick is thinking of was called Ruffian (we have a poster here by the same name). She broke a small bone in her leg during a match race (July 6, 1975) with the Kentucky Derby winner, Foolish Pride. This is the human equivalent to breaking an ankle, not a long bone break. The track vets arriving on the scene gave her a 10% chance of survival. A team of 4 vets and an orthopaedic surgeon worked on her for 12 hours and she stopped breathing twice under anesthisia. When she awoke she thrashed and repeatedly tried to kick off the cast and was humanely destroyed, and buried at Belmont Park, facing the finish line.
To give you an idea of this horse’s worth, she broke track records in 9 of her 10 starts. She was Champion juvenile filly of 1974, and the winner of the filly Triple Crown. It didn’t matter if she could never be ridden again. She had immense value as a broodmare.
Another extremely valuable horse that was put down for the same reason (they could not keep him off the leg), was Alydar, the top stud at Calumet Farms. I believe his actual cannon bone was broken (human equivalent to beraking the long bone in the lower leg) and they tried supporting him in a sling-like appartatus. He panicked when he came out of euthanasia and was put down.
I don’t own a horse and I’m not really “into” horses, but I do like animals in general, and this whole situation is just something I find #$%&ing appaling and tragic.
Thanks for the answers, though they are not what I had hoped for. I’m glad I’m not a horse.
But yeah, he was some horse. Many people believe he was deliberately attacked in his stall for insurance money (he was insured for many millions and the farm was going under, real all about it in “Wild Ride” by Ann Auerbach). A real tragedy.
Another expensive horse that broke down was Go For Wand. She was euthanized right on the track, the damage was too great to try and fix. I saw this race on TV, and it was truly disturbing. I knew as soon as I saw her leg flopping around that it was bad.
As others have stated, it depends on the nature of the break.
A break in the cannon bone isn’t always life-threatening. It depends on the horse’s temperment. Some will allow the cast, others will shake it off. One notable thoroughbred that survived a shattering of his leg was Hoist The Flag, who was sure to be the 1971 Derby favorite when he took a bad step in a workout. It was months before his leg was healthy again; he never returned to the track, but became a respectable stud. The story of how they saved him is incredible.
The sesamoids are small bones wedged in between the cannon bone and the pastern (I’m pretty sure the order from the hoof is coffin bone-pastern-cannon bone, but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). If those crack, the horse can be saved. If they break, the joint won’t have any side-to-side resistance, and it’s almost invariably a fatal injury.
Yes, this is a sad thing. I’ve seen a horse put down on the track, too, and it’s disturbing.
The best known example of saving a valuable thoroughbred in the UK is Mr. Paul Mellon’s Mill Reef, an American bred horse by Never Bend.
Mill Reef was recently voted 4th best of UK racehorses for the 20th century, He won the Epsom Derby and 3 other Grade 1 contests in 1971, and 2 further Grade 1’s the following year, before breaking a leg on the gallops.
As a stallion he sired two subsequent Epsom Derby winners in Shirley Heights (1978) and Reference Point (1987, Steve Cauthen in the plate).
Another good example would be Charismatic, who won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness two years ago. Then proceeded to break down in the Belmont. Chris Antley held the horses leg up to take the weight off and they saved the horse.
Without the breakdown, this horse could have possibly been the first Triple Crown winner in 20 or so years.
I would imagine that, other than the top levels of horse racing, most horses who break a leg are put down. They don’t respond well to standing on anything less than 4 strong legs, and it requires constant observation to keep them from redamaging the broken limb.
