Tagged with 'Horse Health'

Taking care of your horse’s hooves, whilst not the easiest part of owning a horse, is vital to making sure your horse remains happy and healthy. Unhealthy hooves can not only lead to short term problems that can affect your riding plans, but could also lead to long term damage resulting in a horse that can no longer be ridden.  A few easy steps added to your daily routine will go a long way to ensuring that your horse’s hooves are strong and healthy.

The equine digestive system is a unique and complex system. It is important to understand the function of the equine digestive system to provide a basis for formulating suitable diets, management practices and to avoid digestive upset for your horse.

Here we will discuss the elements that can lead to harmful heat stress in horses and determine its significance in addressing the risks associated with dehydration and high body temperature and evaluate best practice management when faced with these concerns.

Horses are unable to digest fibre using their own digestive enzymes and rely on microbes for fermentation. The beneficial microbes are in a very delicate balance and do not appreciate a change in their environment and are responsible for not only fermentation but boosting the immune system, inhibiting the production and absorption of bacterial toxins, and excluding bad bacteria (they are clearly very important!).

No matter what part our horse plays in our life – our hobby, passion or career – we all want to see them as healthy, happy and performing at their peak. And since you know your horse better than anyone, when something is wrong, you’re usually the first to sense it.

When it comes to avoiding deadly and devastating diseases in our horses, being well informed and proactive goes a long way.  One of the best ways to be help protect against disease is to vaccinate.

Joint related lameness problems are a significant career limiting factor for many performance horses, young horses in training as well as pleasure riding horses and ponies. Lameness accounts for up to 70 % of lost training days and competition outings, with osteoarthritis and joint disease being listed as the most frequent problem affecting performance.

Gastrointestinal problems often result in weight loss, regardless of how nutritious the diet may be. Erica Sorkin found this out firsthand as she tried to add condition to her new Thoroughbred gelding...