April 2004

Emergency: Acute Laminitis Attack

Laminitis is excruciatingly painful—and it can leave your horse a cripple for life, requiring constant, frustrating care.

Hand grazing is a great way to control the amount of grass your horse consumes at a time, especially in spring.

When laminitis occurs, the hoof’s laminae—“fingers” of connective tissue that make up the white line and help hold the coffin bone in place—become intensely inflamed. If the damage is extensive, the attachments can become too weak to hold the coffin bone and it rotates out of position. It can even sink down closer to the sole.

Stages Of Laminitis

• Early/prodromal stage. The horse isn’t yet lame. If you catch a horse at this stage of laminitis, the feet will feel abnormally cold. What’s going on is the trigger for the laminitis is causing the vessels within the foot to spasm. In experimental models of laminitis induced by carbohydrate overload or black-walnut…