Does Laminitis kill horses?

Dogbetty141

Dogbetty141

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Posted about Lami signs this morning just v worried about my horses best mate as he is just the nicest little man! Does Lami kill horses?

Thanks

Liz
 
Unfortunately yes, it did to my old girl a few years ago, she came down with it very quickly and pedal bone had started to rotate so made the decision to PTS, but many people are able to manage it well for years and their horses remain in good health so not all endings are bad ones
 
I have been thinking about what I have posting and it is making me sound very dim but I have never had any experience with it so dont know much about it!

Thanks

Liz
 
Laminitis may be so severe as to cause the pedal bone to rotate or drop through the sole of the foot. This is why it is so important to get a specialist equine vet to examine the horse at the first signs of laminitis. Laminitis should be treated as a medical emergency.
 
I didn't know much until I had to deal with it, best just to reserch as much as you can.

I do think that my mare had something else going on as well as she wasn't fat, was TB type, no injuries or anything else wrong with her health at all, just hit all of a sudden.

It's a horrible condition though, good luck and hope he is ok
 
Laminitis is unlikely to kill the horse in itself, but rather leave it in the most crippling torturous pain if untreated and unmanaged, so many sufferers are put to sleep if they get to this stage. I have heard of a horse up the road screaming in pain when it's pedal bones rotated to the soles of it's feet, it was left way longer than it should have been.

BUT...it is manageable. I didn't read your other post, but if you are concerned I would call the vet ASAP - it is an emergency! My pony didn't show the 'classic' signs and wasn't obese, I thought she had fallen in her field and that due to her age (35ish) she was stiff. I am lucky I didn't lose her through my own ignorance and I won't forgive myself for the pain she was in. But she did recover and was happy and healthy for another 4 years.

I hope the horse you are worried about is okay, but if at all worried i would get the vet out, or at least phone them and explain your concerns.
 
Yes, it can if the horse is so bad it has to be PTS. :( I wish more people with over weight horses would realise this :(
 
Yes, if badly managed, not treated quickly enough, or just a very bad case to start with it can cause irreparable and awful damage to the hoof resulting in the horse having to be PTS. It's a horrible thing to deal with. I'm sure I read somewhere that it's the second biggest cause of death in horses in the UK - although not sure where, so that might be inaccurate!

That said, if treated quickly and managed well, laminitics can go on to be sound again and fine. It has to be treated as life threatening.

Make sure your friend's vet tests for underlying causes such as Cushings and Equine Metabolic Syndrome, and helps your friend establish a programme to both treat this bout and to help prevent future bouts. Sadly, once they've had it once, it seems to make them more susceptible, but there's plenty you can do to manage that.

My horse had a bout towards the end of last year and has 5 degrees of rotation in each of her pedal bones but is now fully sound and back in normal work. My friend's horse came within hours of being PTS after his pedal bone came through the sole of his hoof, but is now recovered sufficiently to be in light work thanks to a great vet, dedication from his owner and a fabulous farrier.

I don't mean to scare you at all - and there's no need to panic, but you and your friend must now how serious it can be, so that you can do everything to stop it getting that bad.
 
In simple terms severe lami can cause structural changes in the hoof, where the pedal bone can actually rotate and protrude through the sole of the hoof. This would cripple the horse and to prevent suffering the horse would have to be put down.

Most horses recover from a bout of lami if they are caught early and treated properly, which it seems you and your friend have done. However it is a condition which can recur if certain triggers are allowed to happen, such as pony being overweight, overfeeding sugars, overgrazing, etc, so the horse will need monitoring and kept with this in mind going forward.

Take the vets advice and read up a lot, there is good advice on this forum if you search.

Good luck!.

F
 
Yes it can. Short answer.

However, my pony had it very badly when I got her, literally arrived barely able to walk. I have managed it strictly since then (many many years) and touching wood no signs for years.
 
JVB said:
I didn't know much until I had to deal with it, best just to reserch as much as you can.

I do think that my mare had something else going on as well as she wasn't fat, was TB type, no injuries or anything else wrong with her health at all, just hit all of a sudden.

It's a horrible condition though, good luck and hope he is ok
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Same with mine. He was a TB that started with abcesses and then they queried lami. They thought there was a problem in his pituitary gland so maybe cushings type, but he had no curly coat or anything
He was PTS about 4 months after his first abcess
 
JVB said:
I do think that my mare had something else going on as well as she wasn't fat, was TB type, no injuries or anything else wrong with her health at all, just hit all of a sudden.
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That exactly describes my mare's lami attack a couple of years ago. :(

I'd be interested to hear if you have any thoughts on a possible cause.
 
brighthair said:
Same with mine. He was a TB that started with abcesses and then they queried lami. They thought there was a problem in his pituitary gland so maybe cushings type, but he had no curly coat or anything
He was PTS about 4 months after his first abcess
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Worse thing was, the day she was diagnosed I had had to have the vet out to put my 3yr old to sleep due to wobblers - horrible day
 
To be honest not sure, I always wondered if there was something wrong with her blood or if she had cancer of a sort that was affecting her internally, she was getting on at 24 yrs but not too old - it seems there is so much we still don't know about it that it's possible I think that there are other causes for it
 
Laminitus is not always caused by food. My OH's mare was in an isolation paddock because of an injury to one of her back legs. A horse from the next field broke into the paddock (no idea why, there was nothing in there but the mare) and this caused a bout of stress related laminitus.

Lami seems to be a condition that many people self diagnose when a horse / pony gets stiff in front and think it is OK just to put the horse in isolation for a few days. I read up on the subject and subsequently spoke to two very knowledgeable farriers and a vet about it and what it does to the foot. If people really understood it, they would place an emergency call to their vet the second they suspected lami, not only because of the damage it can do to the foot, but because of the terrible pain the horse must feel (think ALL of your fingernails being very slowly pulled off at the same time).
 
Vets would refer to even the first signs of laminitis as a veterinary emergency. I went to a talk our vets practice gave last week about it, they got in a vet from elsewhere who'd done various research and his talk covered laminitis, EMS and Cushing's. I think due to the very poor prognosis if the horse founders - when the pedal bone rotates and detaches from the laminae - it's the 2nd thing most horses are put down for (sorry that's very poorly worded and probably doesn't get across what I mean!) though I think there are some who can survive that fortunately. It's also extremely painful for horses. The vet showed us on a slide the timescale of how quickly it can go from the early stages to very serious - matter of hours/days and he said they would prefer people called them out if they even suspected laminitis at all as then measures can be put in place to stop it developing so severely. We just had a horse on our yard with it and the sad thing was the sharer kept trying to tell the owner he was footy and uncomfortable but as he also had a crack in his hoof it was put down to that and they were waiting for a farrier's appointment to trim his feet but within 48 hours he was barely able to walk, with both back feet tucked right under and sweating profusely as in so much discomfort but thankfully 3 weeks down the line seems to be making very good progress. There's so much more they know now about laminitis and options to help treat the feet, etc.

Laminitis Trust is another good source of info.

I hope your horse will be OK. It's something I dread as have a very good do-er.
 
NeilM said:
Laminitus is not always caused by food. My OH's mare was in an isolation paddock because of an injury to one of her back legs. A horse from the next field broke into the paddock (no idea why, there was nothing in there but the mare) and this caused a bout of stress related laminitus.
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My loan mare and a friends were turned out together and were best buds. My mare had to go back to the owner after the summer and BAM...the next day poor mare left on her own gets laminitis (she had other horses around her, but had formed a strong bond with my mare). She had no previous injuries, conditions etc. Vet said she was just so stressed out about her friend leaving. The laminitis became so severe she was put to sleep.

Laminitis can kill indirectly. Such as in the wild a horse with a broken leg will die, as would one with laminitis (not sure if they ever got that in the wild?) So it doesn't kill them directly, but it does indirectly through owners PTS.
 
The trouble is laminitis is so common that is accepted as something that happens, yet it is accutely painful and can lead to the death of the horse or pony. A bit like diabetes in humans (in fact there are similarities - Pete Ramey is doing research into this.) It is a condition that is not fully understood despite the many £1,000s of pounds spent on research. There are several causes and there is not one single answer as to why it occurs.

I tend to favour the "leaky gut" theory and give my horses digestive yeasts and magnesium as a preventative.
 
No it can't.
It can cause enough damage/pain that the affected animal requires destroying.
 
QR

Yes it can kill.
One of my ponies suffered from lami before we got her on loan, and we always took extra precautions to make sure she didnt get it whilst we had her (4 years). Unfortunately, she got lami very soon after going back to her owner, and died aged just 12 :(
 
My old chap had Cushings, which pre-disposes to laminitis, and vice versa. He had laminitis really badly and in the end his coronary band just absessed, it was awful, so had to be PTS.

Bless him, even though I've got another lovely horse I still think of him: he would have been 27 years old today. Bless you dear friend, wait for me until I come ....
 
yes it can kill in so much as PTS is the only option. cushions, EMS can trigger not fat not food related laminitis. too fast trotting or fast work on hard ground can induce mechanical laminitis, and breeding can cause hormonal laminitis. (esp if retained placenta) but the majority of laminitis is human mis management or ignorance.
 
I lost my mare in 2008 with it, i made the decision to have her PTS because I felt for a 24yr old horse in her well deserved retirement that she was not going to have a good quality of life. We tried for 3 months but the best the vets could offer at the end was for to never have access to grass again. She did have it badly.

I honestly don't regret doing it because I knew it was right for us, I miss her every day BUT not living with laminitis xx
 
YES but I disagree that it can only kill if a horse is managed badly.....

I had to have Charlie (coloured) PTS a couple of months ago because of laminitis, first time he ever had it in 15 years of ownership. I noticed it within hours, mangaged it in every way I could, deep bed, super soaked hay rations (despite not being overweight), x rays, bute, ACP, magnetic boots.....the list goes on and I still lost him.

All I can say is dont be fooled and for god sake dont underestimate a lami attack.
 
JVB said:
I didn't know much until I had to deal with it, best just to reserch as much as you can.

I do think that my mare had something else going on as well as she wasn't fat, was TB type, no injuries or anything else wrong with her health at all, just hit all of a sudden.

It's a horrible condition though, good luck and hope he is ok
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I lost a 6 yr old Shire mare several years ago to a rotated pedal bone. I, too, think that there was something else going on, as she had extensive skin lesions, as well. I was never really happy with the vet's diagnosis and treatment and felt vindicated when a few years later, my farrier said that he felt that the vet was at fault in this case. The mare had started to be ill in the February and was eventually pts just after Easter.
 
charlie_brown1 said:
A little help please?

Do the horses stand with their back legs forward? Not stretching out backwards with laminitus?

Thanks
Mandy
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The typical stance is with their hinds underneath them, rocking back to keep the weight off their front toes. If the laminitis is in the hind feet, or all 4 feet, they might react differently though. They'll probably seem generally uncomfortable, shifting weight plus strong digital pulses and possibly hot feet.
 
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