Accident Prone Youngsters

Freya

Freya

Well-Known Member
Joined
7 October 2010
Messages
64
Location
Nottinghamshire
Visit site
Am I (or I should say more poor upcoming 2yr old!) extremely unlucky on the injury list? I knew youngsters would be prone to accidents but having him from 6months to now just turning 23months old it seems to be a bit excessive!

• No end of fur missing (sometimes broken skin) bites
• Puncture wound and chipped canon bone
• Concussed hindlimb joints from charging about all day long!
• Ringworm (from new horse coming on the yard)
• Mud fever
• Puncture wound to front leg
• Strangles (from new horse coming on the yard without YO permission!)
• Cut to the nostril
• Hematoma on the chest
• Sliced eye lid (required 5 stitches and was very lucky not to damage his eye!)
• Scrapped front leg with open wound on the inside of knee

The last four are from being in with his buddy that is 4months older than him and they do play all day long! I’ve now had to separate them, in the same field but electric tape right down the middle, in hope that the injuries will stop happening. Whenever there seems to be a show coming up something happens!

At least I’ve got to know my vets very well and he does try to help with cleaning wounds, applying creams and obviously if he must have it on so should I :rolleyes:
 
Oh no, its par for the course I think. Like yours, one of mine instinctively knows when theres a show coming up and self harms :rolleyes:
 
Ahh no! You seem just about normal (well in my view anyway!) in terms of the injury list! ... I had the vet out virtually once a month for the first year and a half to two years of owning my boy (from 16 months of age) ... thankfully a change of field resolved many of our problems (in terms of chunks of him dissapearing) but we still have the occasional niggle just to keep in touch with our vet! lol!

I think Seperating them from particularly boisterous types is the way forward - I am all up for them having a play but hen it becomes obsessive, insessant and destructive, then it becomes a problem... there was a 20 something year old gelding at my old yard who was just hell bent on playing rough the entire time...and unfortunately my boy was always too slow to get out of the way quick enough...
 
I understand. :( My grey did this when she was a yearling. :( :( :(

DSCN4612.jpg


She was stapled back together and was soon causing trouble again.
 
Mine was accident prone but as a yearling, she went through a phase of galloping round slipping & falling. We had quite a few vets bills, i was that worried about it that i posted on here. I honestly thought she couldnt feel her legs or something lol.
As it was happening so frequantly, how she got through that 12 months alive is beyond me.

However 12 months on & she's quite a sensible thing thank god lol. In fact more sensible than my 27yo.
 
Thank god it's not just mine! In the last 3 weeks he's taken a chunk out his knee, made a huge hole in his hind cannon, punctured his knee (same knee, a week later), sliced his heel and tried to rip half his hind hoof off. Plus various bits of fluff missing.

He's just hooneying round a lunatic with no real control of his limbs and no fear :rolleyes:
 
hehe! The times I thought 'trust me to get an accident prone one!' lol! I remembe watching my boy on one of his rare active moments come galloping down the field - put the front brakes on which stopped him but his back legs carried on and he ended up sat on his bum looking rather confused as to how he'd got there! lol! Frustrating , annoying, embarrasing (particularly when thoroughly cleaned minor wounds get infected!) and expensive but highly ammusing sometimes... ;)
 
I think particularly the leggy gangly ones have no concept of spatial awareness as they're growing from one day to the next. Felix has run into a wall, got an infected thorn stuck in his chin (cue swollen head and big panic), chipped his pedal bone, and is now sporting a throat infection which I hope the vet can sort out tomorrow.

At least if they hurt themselves when they're young they stand a good chance of fixing themselves. I've been very lucky with Wolf as he's been very straightforward but I'm worried that he's saving it up for when he's older.
 
Oh thank god it's not just me then - unfortunately!

I was really starting to think I was doing something wrong and being a useless mother :rolleyes:

My boy is very long legged - maybe that is a sign ;)
 
I have one - he's 4yrs old now and has managed not to make himself lame this year which makes a change - *says frantically touching wood*!!!:D I hope to finally sell him next year once he's been backed, I usually sell them on as weanlings/yearlings/2 yr olds! and everytime I've gone to advertise him he does something else! He has a long list of injuries too - mostly because he loves to irratate the old grumpy broodies or he kept getting into play fights with the big boys and always seemed to come off worse - he has a lovely splint on his outside right cannon after a kick/gash - thankfully it's mostly scar tissue but has knocked a bit off his value!!:rolleyes: Thankfully they do grow out of it ............ eventually!!:D
 
Flippin' heck, I feel quite lucky - haven't had half of what most of you have had to contend with...mind you, Merlin is very 'special' in many other ways so maybe he's had so much on his plate mentally, he hasn't had chance to be accident prone!
He's out 24/7 all year round but other than a slight touch of mud-fever and scars from having taken a beating by a gang of colts before I got him, he's been ok. Having said that, his huge pink nose gets so badly sunburned he has to have it masked off and he seems very sensitive to fly bites so is currently looking a bit lumpy and shabby here and there despite my best efforts.
Apart from that, he got out once and had a couple of scrapes and got chased by my big boy into a fence when they were first introduced, cutting his nostril, but that wasn't so much a youngster thing, just a bossy gelding thing.
 
Your not alone! My 2yo has had a string of accidents starting from before he was weaned up until april this year *touches wood*

We started with a haematoma to the chest at about 4 months old, we then sliced our chest open requiring 19 stitches and £350 of vet bills at just under a year old. Countless lamenesses due to hooning around and falling over, a sliced open knee at a year and a half which healed, but then burst open again at 2 years due to chronic abcesssation of the initial wound requiring surgery and a 1k vet bill. Inbetween the knee slicing healing and reopening we had a mystery swelling the size of a grapefruit on his hindquarter. We got cast and scraped various limbs and eyelids, we've had a sore back from careering about on a wet field and slipping over.... the list is endless.
 
My youngster specialised in running through fences, including grabbing the wire in her mouth and running with it, cutting both sides of her face/ mouth in the process. Luckily it was all electric rope and "ribbon" so she used to get burnt rather than sliced open, but she still did it for a past time.

Now she's three (see new thread for pics!) and doing a bit more, so yesterday she spooked at my dog and ended up flat on her face on the concrete yard. She just scraped the hair off one fetlock tho, prob where she trod on herself, so very glad she is not yet shod!
 
This post has made me giggle so much, it seem every time I look at my 2 yr old there is another lump or patch of fur missing - he took a huge chunk out of his fetlock within 24 hours of him arriving at my place (14.5 months), thankfully (touch wood) that has been the worst so far.
He suddenly seems to have more control over his legs in the last couple of months, previously he used to come in plastered in mud where he'd fallen over trying to make too tight a turn, or I'd shout him in and he'd come flat out and always overshot stopping at me.
I'm quite philosophical about it these days, I'll probably never sell him, so what does it matter if he has a few scars, my first "proper" horse who was 19 when I got him had terrible scars on his legs, but it didn't make him any less of an amazing horse.
 
I've got a hopping yearling with a fat knee at the moment - just waiting to see if it gets any better (or worse!) before calling in the cavalry... Why is it that, in a field full of yearling fillies, it's only mine which seems ever to be lame?!
 
My now 6 YO Abba.

* At 2 1/2 months of age found her in the stable (only in for a dry night to lie down) spinning in circles, flipping over, blind, and in a panic. Diagnosed with head and or neck trauma. No point in shipping in that condition and treatment was the same even if exact cause was known. With all the drugs prescribed she also had at least 3 weeks of box rest if she lived. After 1 week it was decided to tranq and start letting out because she was back to her true self and going ballistic with excess energy.

* 7 months of age was spooked in field. Broke through 3 electric fences, jumped solid fence, took off out of yard because idiots can keep gates shut, on to main road galloping off like mad. Caught up with her 2 miles away absolutely terrified and exhausted. Not a mark on her.

* 10 months of age. Quit eating to find out she had massive woof teeth that needed to come out. She milked that for a month so I would hand feed her.

* end of yearling year comes in from field with huge gash across ankle. Stitches and box rest.

* spring of 2yo year. Decides she does not like new field. Jumps out of 5ft high fence/hedge. Lands on road. Starts jogging up driveway to barn. I see her and gently say, "Abba". She turns on slippy wet Tarmac and bam falls flat on her side. Clean up road rash wounds for days and have to wait for haematoma to get large enough to pop and drain.

* Beginning of 3yo year, puts foot through gate. Slices open. Stitches, box rest. When she did it I saw her, she held up leg and hobbled over to me because at this stage she is like, oh man look I did it again.

*end of 3yo year gets back kick on shoulder but luckily no lasting damage.

*beginning of 4yo year. Has a very mild colic episode. My only horse to ever do so.

At the end of her 4 YO year she went in to jumper training and was less inclined to try and kill herself. I have left out the minor incidents which other people might include on a list of things their horses get up to. Some I called the vet for, some I just treated.

But she is still alive and all mine! Lucky me. Abba is not a lovey mare but when something is amiss she seeks me any way she can. It could be very minor but I know. She has put grey hairs on my head. Unbelievably she has perfect x-rays of all her joints but has scars which tell the tales.

Terri
 
I should add that I felt like the worst horse owner in the world with Abba and that maybe I shouldn't have or raise youngsters. She was a law unto her own from day one. She has been the best horse teacher in the world. And under saddle she's brilliant. Competing, she gives you everything she has and more.

Terri
 
And under saddle she's brilliant. Competing, she gives you everything she has and more.
Click to expand...

That's how it goes with horses. The ones that give you the most heartbreak and sleepless nights are also the most rewarding in other ways (so we carry on fixing them up ;) ).
 
I have a yearling with two fat knees, a cut leg and fur missing off her belly after she ran straight through a post and rail fence yesterday in blind panic after my section a escaped from her starvation paddock and got the elctric fence on the floor and the yearling got caught up in it. I know i am very lucky she didn't damage herself worse.

A couple of months ago, same said yearling spooked at a dog and landed on her fetlocks, grating them.

Really hope the silliness ends soon!
 
Wow reading these stories is enough to put anyone off having youngsters for life!!
And I thought that I had been unlucky with my yearling ( only a fractured skull and multiple foot/leg infections, which is nothing compared to what all of you people have been through!)

However my other yearling ran through about 5 lots of post and rail fencing, got tangled up in loads of rope, bolted off going through fencing etc in blind panic, yet not a mark on her.

Abba- I do find in general that horses that have suffered or have been in extreme amounts of pain always seem to want to give more and try harder once in work. It is a bit like you get with people sometimes who have been very ill or in pain.
 
Faracat, Seabiscuit, I think you're right. I know this much for nothing, not much really fazes her anymore! And after her, baby raising was a breeze.

Terri
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top