Weird lump on legs

[Caol Ila]

Right, so this is all secondhand. I might not be able to answer any questions quickly.

My mare's BOGOF foal is now 3 and lives with his owner in Germany. He is currently turned out 24/7 with several other youngsters and a couple older horses.

His owner (a good friend) messaged me the other day to say that she found weird lumps on his legs, It's a soft lumpy swelling (like a "jelly ball") on the fetlocks, right where the ergot is. It's on all four legs. The horse isn't lame. The weirdest thing is that the other youngsters (wambloods) he lives with all have the same thing on their legs, but their older companions do not. She found it two days ago. Today, she says it's not better or worse, just the same. No one has a clue. Someone wondered if the youngsters had been hooning about, but four horses with the exact same injury would be pretty strange. The best I could do was guess that it was something they ate or something they stood in. But why only the youngsters? Did they try something the older horses knew not to touch? I dunno.

If it doesn't show any signs of shifting in the next few days, or if it gets worse, she'll call the vet. But it has everyone stumped, including her YO who's been turning horses out in that field for years.

 

[PurBee]

How strange for them to all have them on all limbs.
Windpuffs and galls are usually pastern…

Maybe, as a remote possibility, the youngsters have been frolicking amid buttercups and have blisters caused by them? Topical toxin, rather than ingestion-caused:

“Buttercup (ranunculus acris)

Buttercup is a perennial plant that comes into bloom in the spring. Its yellow flowers continue through the summer. It has long runners and strong penetrating roots.

Why is it dangerous?

Buttercups contain ranunculin which can make a compound known as protoanemonin when the plant is damaged. This is especially problematic in wet conditions. It can cause irritation, swelling and blisters on horses’ lips, muzzle and lower limbs. Pale-coloured skin can be even more susceptible. If eaten in large quantities, buttercups can cause oral and gastric ulcers, colic and diarrhoea. Luckily, its acrid taste usually discourages horses from eating them.”


Do the fields seem more loaded with buttercups this year? Sometimes buttercups can flush like mad everywhere some years, and be not so bad other years.

The older horses probably are not frolicking as much as the youngsters, and likely avoid dense buttercup patches, due to experience of their bitterness and oral stinging/tingling, which is something maybe 3 year olds havent fully learnt about yet?

It seems unlikely a cause, as we know many horses are often grazed in dense buttercup fields, so it would be more well-known and a common occurrence. Perhaps youngsters immune systems being more ‘sensitive’ and developing, might make them more prone to reacting topically to buttercup poisons than older horses?

 

[Caol Ila]

I've been binging on Doctor Who so my brain is saying "aliens!" But it probably isn't that.

The horses had buttercup blisters on their mouths at a previous yard (here in Scotland...where both Hermosa and Caso stayed), so I know what those look like, as does she. I don't know if they have that plant in Germany. I can ask if it's a possibility. But it doesn't look like that, or how I expect that to look anyways.

If it was only Caso, you'd assume he'd tweaked something, but yeah, windgalls are fluid in the tendon sheath. Is there a tendon that runs under the ergot? It's still weird for it to be all four young horses. Doesn't make sense.

 

[MatHalTed]

Epiphysitis can cause similar joint swelling as the joint plates grow too quickly, however is more common in much younger horses, between 4 - 8 months old normally, by 3 it should have resolved if it was going to do so naturally and without treatment needed