Sudden Winter Laminitis Surge - any ideas?

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Rose Folly

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On 27 December I went out to give our horses - all out 24/7 - their morning feed and haylage - to find my poor cob mare, who has never had a day's lameness in the 5 years I've had her, crippled with an acute attack of laminitis. The emergency vet who attended was very helpful, but remarked that in the last two days she had had three call-outs to previously non-laminitic horses. A laminitic-prone pony here had a bout of it two weeks ago.

I'm wondering if anybody else has had this happen? We've had nearly a month of sub-zero temperatures and some snow, and she had not been ridden. I had been generous with the haylage (though they do not have it ad lib, and she can't have hay because of RAO), and it was damper than I would have liked (local farmer's first attempt at making it). The vet advised putting her on to a laminitic-targetted haylage, but remarked that there seems to be a connection between frozen grass and laminitis (my mare had been busy digging for it).

I'd love to hear if anyone else has experienced this. My poor girl is still very uncomfortable, I'm depressed, and also wondering whether this is a one-off due to the extremem temperatures etc. or whether I now have a horse who is both RAO and a laminitic. Gloom, gloom....
 
Snow can bring on Laminitis. It is believed that the cold blocks the blood supply through the Laminae into the hoof. One of the horses at the yard I work at came down with it after being turned out in the snow.
 
If you look on the vet forum, there was a big thread about this - someone had put a lot of info about frost and laminitus.

We had a pony that we'd owned for 3 years suddenly develop laminitus last winter. I turned out to be due to the haylage - my eventing mare showed slight signs of it too. We changed back to hay this year. Interestingly they had been fine on haylage when it was our home made rubbish haylage, that worried me as it was such poor quality...

Hope you find the cause, and the horse gets better. Its horrible.x
 
My friends horse just got it,

vet said horses store fat for the winter, but usually dont need it as it doesnt get cold enough,

but with the severe cold we have had the fat stores are being released and too much is entering the bloodstream
 
Good grief how ignorant are your vets!!!!!!?????????????????

In freezing temperatures grass brings up sugar from its roots into its leaves to act as an antifreeze to prevent cell damage. Freezing grass is stuffed full of sugar and more dangerous than spring grass, which is why it causes laminitis.

I cannot believe your vets do not know this, it is so well recorded that there have been numerous HHO posts about the danger of frozen grass to laminitics!
 
cptrayes said:
Good grief how ignorant are your vets!!!!!!?????????????????

In freezing temperatures grass brings up sugar from its roots into its leaves to act as an antifreeze to prevent cell damage. Freezing grass is stuffed full of sugar and more dangerous than spring grass, which is why it causes laminitis.

I cannot believe your vets do not know this, it is so well recorded that there have been numerous HHO posts about the danger of frozen grass to laminitics!
Click to expand...

This is why we always make sure ours have hay on frosty mornings (well all the time at the moment) to try and keep them off the grass. The frozen hard ground can also bring on attacks if they try racing around on it as can hard summer ground.
 
cptrayes said:
Good grief how ignorant are your vets!!!!!!?????????????????

In freezing temperatures grass brings up sugar from its roots into its leaves to act as an antifreeze to prevent cell damage. Freezing grass is stuffed full of sugar and more dangerous than spring grass, which is why it causes laminitis.

I cannot believe your vets do not know this, it is so well recorded that there have been numerous HHO posts about the danger of frozen grass to laminitics!
Click to expand...

This! if you have a piggy horse like mine that would ferret for the grass rather than the hay provided then its safer to bring them in or put them in a non grass paddock like an arena or winter turnout paddock so they cant eat the frosty grass.
 
cptrayes said:
Good grief how ignorant are your vets!!!!!!?????????????????

In freezing temperatures grass brings up sugar from its roots into its leaves to act as an antifreeze to prevent cell damage. Freezing grass is stuffed full of sugar and more dangerous than spring grass, which is why it causes laminitis.

I cannot believe your vets do not know this, it is so well recorded that there have been numerous HHO posts about the danger of frozen grass to laminitics!
Click to expand...

thankyou for above explanation as my daughter asked today WHY the frozen grass was bad for them to eat. we usually hold on until frost disappears on normal frosty mornings before turning out. just recently we too have put vast amounts of haylage on field sprinkled with pony cubes to make sure ponies do not scoff frozen grass. i noticed some will even dig thru snow to get the grass so they are quite keen on it. thanks for explanation anyway.
 
cptrayes said:
Good grief how ignorant are your vets!!!!!!?????????????????

In freezing temperatures grass brings up sugar from its roots into its leaves to act as an antifreeze to prevent cell damage. Freezing grass is stuffed full of sugar and more dangerous than spring grass, which is
why it causes laminitis.

I cannot believe your vets do not know this,
it is so well recorded that there have been numerous HHO posts about the danger of frozen grass to laminitics!
Click to expand...

They are very good vets actually! One of the best in the north west !
They of course know what you have mentioned as being a cause but this what I stated can add to it
 
Also it wasn't me the vet told!

Somebody i knows horse who got lammy, the vet said the fat thing can contribute to it

Just thought I would say this so people don't think I'm stupid
 
We are feeding haylage for the first time this year, as there is more available here than hay. Our farrier has been issuing dire warnings about how many more laminitic equines he sees, now that it is common to feed haylage, rather than hay. He says that it is not so much the putting on of weight but the digestive upset which causes the problem.
We are watching their weight carefully and feeding pink powder as a feed balancer (and keeping our fingers firmly crossed).
 
cptrayes said:
Good grief how ignorant are your vets!!!!!!?????????????????

In freezing temperatures grass brings up sugar from its roots into its leaves to act as an antifreeze to prevent cell damage. Freezing grass is stuffed full of sugar and more dangerous than spring grass, which is why it causes laminitis.

I cannot believe your vets do not know this, it is so well recorded that there have been numerous HHO posts about the danger of frozen grass to laminitics!
Click to expand...

It's amazing how many people don't consider winter to be a danger period, but, as you know, grass can be a danger ALL YEAR ROUND for lami-prone animals.
 
Thanks so much for all the info everyone. It's a bit mind boggling, and I think I've got a difficult course to steer. My mare CAN'T have hay - even long-soaked hay starts her coughing and she's had one episode of that this winter. She IS too fat and I admit that, and she is now on a strictish diet. But like a lot of native or semi-native breeds, she actually prefers grass to haylage and will go looking for it. Keeping her in is not an option, so roll on spring - and thanks again! PS Agree with the point about 'rubbish' haylage. I had a chat with the new-to-haylage farmer and said we had had no trouble last winter with his neighbour's haylage. He said in mildly offended disbelief "but he just makes his off rubbish grass. Mine was sugar ley". that probably says everything, combined with the frosted sugar-grass.
 
What about soaking the haylage?

Mta. Oh she will prefer grass especially if it's sweet.
 
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For what it's worth there is also a theory that concussion laminitis (from hard ground) does not happen unless you first have poor attachment, i.e there is diet related laminar damage FIRST.

That is why barefooters like me can canter up roads whenever we feel like it with no damage to our horses - their feet are in good health because they need to be to work barefoot in the first place. (Cantering on very hard tracks and occasionally the road is unavoidable if you hunt seriously, by the way, so please don't start posting that I shouldn't be cantering on the road. And my eventers jumped on rock hard ground in summer too.)

Mobilising fat? Why would they mobilise it (with the "cost" to their metabolism of doing that), if they aren't using it to keep warm, perhaps ask your vet that? My Shetland has mobilised his summer fat all winter so far and is not laminitic, just thinner every week. The sugar in the grass is enough to explain the problem, why the wierd theories about mobilising fat? Vets should keep it simple, so people can understand that it is entirely within their own control whether their horse gets laminitic on frozen winter grass.

Kirsty I don't think you are stupid I just get annoyed with "experts" that don't help people with their advice. The lammy is because the horse is too fat, not because it's mobilising it. Perhaps he is just trying to be diplomatic?
 
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Your vet needs to do a blood test on your horse to determine if anything else could have triggered off the laminitis.
There are so many other triggers such as emerging encysted small red worms (which can not be detected in a worm count), an infection, medical shock, trauma to the feet etc.
 
cptrayes said:
For what it's worth there is also a theory that concussion laminitis (from hard ground) does not happen unless you first have poor attachment, i.e there is diet related laminar damage FIRST.

That is why barefooters like me can canter up roads whenever we feel like it with no damage to our horses - their feet are in good health because they need to be to work barefoot in the first place. (Cantering on very hard tracks and occasionally the road is unavoidable if you hunt seriously, by the way, so please don't start posting that I shouldn't be cantering on the road. And my eventers jumped on rock hard ground in summer too.)

Mobilising fat? Why would they mobilise it (with the "cost" to their metabolism of doing that), if they aren't using it to keep warm, perhaps ask your vet that? My Shetland has mobilised his summer fat all winter so far and is not laminitic, just thinner every week. The sugar in the grass is enough to explain the problem, why the wierd theories about mobilising fat? Vets should keep it simple, so people can understand that it is entirely within their own control whether their horse gets laminitic on frozen winter grass.

Kirsty I don't think you are stupid I just get annoyed with "experts" that don't help people with their advice. The lammy is because the horse is too fat, not because it's mobilising it. Perhaps he is just trying to be diplomatic?
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Could you please recommend some good websites to read up on barefoot. The more I look into it the more sense it makes.
 
The 'fat thing' is hyperlipideamia. It is a complex nutritional disaster that occurs when there is a sudden and drastic negative energy balance and rapid fat breakdown occurs in the horse's body. It often happens to laminitcs as a result of the management following an attack or an over cautious owner trying to prevent and attack. However, as much as the release of toxins makes sense that it could cause laminits, I haven't found anything linking the two in this way so far.

Such a negative energy imbalance could occur in an animal that is already on a restricted intake for weight control issues when sudden extremely low temperatures were to occur. I'm not sure of the exact figures but I know that extreme cold causes a surprising increase in nutritional requirements so a horse could go from a sensible diet to being starved within a very short space of time purely due to the cold! Also does dehydration have any link with laminitis? As the cold weather can discourage some horses from drinking (so many threads already!!) or cause the water supply to freeze!
 
cptrayes said:
For what it's worth there is also a theory that concussion laminitis (from hard ground) does not happen unless you first have poor attachment, i.e there is diet related laminar damage FIRST.

That is why barefooters like me can canter up roads whenever we feel like it with no damage to our horses - their feet are in good health because they need to be to work barefoot in the first place. (Cantering on very hard tracks and occasionally the road is unavoidable if you hunt seriously, by the way, so please don't start posting that I shouldn't be cantering on the road. And my eventers jumped on rock hard ground in summer too.)

Mobilising fat? Why would they mobilise it (with the "cost" to their metabolism of doing that), if they aren't using it to keep warm, perhaps ask your vet that? My Shetland has mobilised his summer fat all winter so far and is not laminitic, just thinner every week. The sugar in the grass is enough to explain
the problem, why the wierd theories about mobilising fat? Vets should keep it simple, so people can understand that it is entirely within their own control whether their horse gets laminitic on frozen winter grass.
Kirsty I don't think you are stupid I just get annoyed with "experts" that don't help people with their advice. The lammy is because the horse is too fat, not because it's mobilising it. Perhaps he is just trying to be diplomatic?
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If only the horse in question was fat, she is quite thin !! Not a bit of fat on her!!

I just said what I got told by the owner of the horse in question, don't shoot the messenger:)

My welsh sec c got terrible lammy in the summer to the point where he couldn't walk and was very nearly PTS. I understand how he got it, he is 21 and hadn't been ridden for 3 years, a young girl wanted to ride him so i started riding him and walking him round the field and the shock of being back in work gave him percussion laminitis, he is also a little fat and has borderline cushings disease
 
When I started this thread I should have pershaps emphasised more that my cob is NOT laminitic-prone - hence my dismay. She has had many opportunities to be so, but has never shown the slightest tendency. Nor could the episode be due to concussion. I've been recovering from a non-horse related injury for some months and can only cope with walking and the occasional trot. My gut feeling is that it's a too-rich-haylage / frozen grass problem, but I'm taking everything on board. Incidentally when I hunted - and galloped on roads - none of our hunters (all shod) ever got laminitis. I think we just worked our horses harder, and fed them less - and they didn't have access to much frozen grass!
 
cptrayes said:
Good grief how ignorant are your vets!!!!!!?????????????????

In freezing temperatures grass brings up sugar from its roots into its leaves to act as an antifreeze to prevent cell damage. Freezing grass is stuffed full of sugar and more dangerous than spring grass, which is why it causes laminitis.

I cannot believe your vets do not know this, it is so well recorded that there have been numerous HHO posts about the danger of frozen grass to laminitics!
Click to expand...

THIS sorry if a vet don't know that there is something wrong
 
Problem is these days horses are too well fed and managed, either borderline fat or fat (like mine). If the natural cycle of gaining and losing weight through the seasons together with a forage diet and only supplementing with hay when really needed, then I think we would see far fewer cases of lammy

This year my horses are out unrugged, with minimal hay even during the heavy snow we had, they had a pad each in the morn and evening and the rest of the time moved and dug around for grass. The weight is coming off, they are active and I hope remain lammy free. I agree with you that the cause was probably the haylage, too rich, too much and a change of diet suddenly coupled with other predisposing factors. I think the key is keep it simple. I got my guys used to wearing a muzzle in the summer and did not stop using it until mid Dec! Hope better soon.
 
Start with these and follow the links you'll find on them. Other people will suggest more, you'll be overloaded! For diet and footconditioning, you can't beat Feet First (on Amazon) for an easy read with loads of info.

Hoofrehab.com
Rockleyfarm.co.uk

Have fun - you'll become a hoofnerd before you know it :) Once you start, you just can't stop - especially when you see your first foot change after the shoe comes off.


ps hope everyone's pones are OK soon.
 
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cptrayes said:
Start with these and follow the links you'll find on them. Other people will suggest more, you'll be overloaded! For diet and footconditioning, you can't beat Feet First (on Amazon) for an easy read with loads of info.

Hoofrehab.com
Rockleyfarm.co.uk

Have fun - you'll become a hoofnerd before you know it :) Once you start, you just can't stop - especially when you see your first foot change after the shoe comes off.


ps hope everyone's pones are OK soon.
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Thanks CP - much appreciated. My pony hasn't been shod - he's 18mths. As a cob of dubious origin he should be a tuffy so should have no problems but, as I think he'll make a ride and drive, I would like to ensure his feet are done properly from the start so he's up to all the roadwork he'll have to do when he's a grown up!
 
Oneof our little mini shets had her first bout of laminitis when the rushed through in October. We've kept her in our stable yard ever since and she is thankfully back to normal. It was only a minor bout but we'll keep her in whenever condition suggest it might be a problem. So sad to see a usually very happy and bouncy mare so miserable and sorry for herself.
 
Daisy2 said:
Problem is these days horses are too well fed and managed, either borderline fat or fat (like mine). If the natural cycle of gaining and losing weight through the seasons together with a forage diet and only supplementing with hay when really needed, then I think we would see far fewer cases of lammy

This year my horses are out unrugged, with minimal hay even during the heavy snow we had, they had a pad each in the morn and evening and the rest of the time moved and dug around for grass. The weight is coming off, they are active and I hope remain lammy free. I agree with you that the cause was probably the haylage, too rich, too much and a change of diet suddenly coupled with other predisposing factors. I think the key is keep it simple. I got my guys used to wearing a muzzle in the summer and did not stop using it until mid Dec! Hope better soon.
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Definitely agree with this and this is exactly the way I keep mine.
 
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