Thoroughbred horseracing has been getting all kinds of media attention, but for all the wrong reasons. Seven horses were euthanized leading up to the Kentucky Derby, and one more at Pimlico just before the Preakness.
Dr. Mark Markel, Dean of the UW School of Veterinary Medicine and a practicing equine specialist explains to Mid-West Farm Report just how fragile these young horses are.
He says one of the reasons that horses can be prone to injury in competition is their age — the skeleton needs time to adapt to the sport and mature. But any athlete — human, horse or dog — is going to be predisposed to injury depending on how hard they’re pushed no matter the age.
Markel recommends having a trained eye or a veterinarian look over the animal before and after a competition. Mild lameness can be very subtle. Odd behavior, like difference in eating or reluctance in an activity, is also a sign that something is wrong.
Summer equestrian sports that we enjoy in Wisconsin are typically rodeos and pulls. He says the risk for your competitive horse is going to vary depending on breed, age and type of sport. Thoroughbred racehorses have their own unique considerations.
If a horse fractures its leg, it’s a different scenario from other ruminants like cattle or sheep. Horses do poorly in casts due to their thin skin. Fractures are treated with plates and screws. In the majority of fractures, it’s successful. But the difference with racing horses is that the bone doesn’t just fracture, it breaks into thousands of pieces.
“They’re going at such high speeds when these injuries occur, that the bone doesn’t just fracture, it sometimes blows a part into a thousand pieces,” Markel explains. “And often in those injuries, they’ve also damaged the soft tissues, the skin is open, and they’ve also damaged the blood supply to the areas below that fracture. Those all make it extraordinarily challenging to treat.”
If a horse is faced with a serious fracture, it’s likely it will never be an athlete again, he says. The horse still has value if it’s a mare or a stud because of breeding potential. But if it’s a gelding and cannot reproduce, then it will have no value just sitting in a pasture modestly lame.
Because of these issues, Markel and others created an upright, vertical CT scanner to detect lesions that lead to fractures. This machine scans a standing horse in about 20 seconds to detect lesions ahead of the competition to ensure that horses won’t fracture limbs.
“UW had the first one. We have scanners all over the world now. In fact, in the Melbourne Cup, which is the Australian version of the Kentucky Derby, you’re not allowed to race unless you get scanned with our scanner,” he says. “We’re hoping over coming years, that that might be more standard practice across racetracks around the world.”