Illness & Injury

joint health horses, types of equine joints, types of joints in horses, uc davis center for equine health, equine athletic performance

Equine athletic potential and subsequent performance, success, and longevity hinge on healthy joints. Joints are essentially where two or more bones meet, yet they allow the body to perform complicated functions. Some allow for movement, influencing range of motion, stride length, and overall comfort.

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Joint (intra-articular or IA) injections are often performed to treat joint inflammation and injury. This delivers treatment directly into the joint, ensuring the therapeutics are present where they are most needed, as opposed to systemic treatments (i.e., given intravenously, orally, or intramuscularly) that have to travel through the body to the site of injury or disease.

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From Fat to Fit - It’s spring and that means more time spent riding. Is your horse ready? Regardless of whether you want to trail ride, compete at a certain level, jump, do endurance or dressage, your horse needs to be fit for the job.

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For the first time, researchers have unveiled an intervention that appears to slow down the progression of osteoarthritis (OA). A clinical study conducted jointly by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and the University of Gothenburg (UGOT), Sweden, has yielded remarkable results. Horses afflicted with OA, treated with a novel drug combination, not only achieved freedom from lameness but also experienced a simultaneous inhibition of joint tissue degradation.

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Horse welfare is complex, partly due to the myriad uses, values, and husbandry arrangements for horses. They’re backyard pets, ridden and driven in competition, raced, raised for meat, and used for therapy, recreation, and rodeo. Horses are regularly transported, kept in rural and urban areas, stalls, pens, fields, and pastures, plus managed according to their use. Many horses live on individual properties and their welfare relies on individual owners, making poor welfare difficult to identify.

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The musculoskeletal system of the horse is an incredible machine — strong, fast, efficient, and capable of performing feats as varied as jumping obstacles and roping cattle. However, horse owners are all too aware of the fact that despite this amazing athletic ability, the equine body can be remarkably fragile. If one owns horses long enough, he or she is bound to encounter a disorder of the equine musculoskeletal system.

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Keeping horses sound is one of the most difficult and important aspects of horse sport. Given that horses have an uncanny ability to injure themselves, at some point every rider or horse owner will need their veterinarian to conduct a lameness evaluation.

equine respiratory ailments, horse barn air quality, horse care, horse barn drainage, horse barn ventilation, equine respiratory system, horse bedding

Horses are naturally designed to live outside. With shelter from the wind and elements and access to fresh water and good quality hay, most horses can live quite comfortably surrounded by their companions without a stable. This is not always a convenient option for their human counterparts.

horse strangles, boarding barn strangles, stable strangles, equine strangles, streptococcus equi subspecies equi, equine antibioities, dr ashley boyle penn vet

What do you do when a horse at your boarding barn has been diagnosed with strangles? How is it treated and managed? How vulnerable is your own horse to getting strangles? And how do you know when the sick horse is truly disease-free?

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