Dog Heat Rash: Signs, Treatment, and Prevention

Grass Sickness

Grass sickness: what you need to know - Horse & Hound

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Wild Horses In Crisis

OPB · Wild Horses In Crisis Oregon Field Guide: Story by Vince Patton On the sagebrush and juniper desert southeast of Christmas Valley, Oregon, a wild mustang gave birth in 2012 to a distinctive foal. He was dark in color, a bay, yet with one blue eye.

His birth added another growing, hungry horse to the Paisley Herd Management Area, a tract that the Bureau of Land Management already considered to have more horses than it could support.

Within weeks, the young colt and other parts of his herd were rounded up by the BLM and trucked to a large government run corral just outside of Burns.

Blue Eye was branded, assigned number 1202297 and fed a premium diet of hay fortified with minerals and vitamins for the next nine months.

There, the foal was swallowed up in a $76 million bureaucracy that captures, feeds and stockpiles more horses than any other in the nation.

Oregon Field Guide: Mustangs of Oregon

Wild horses in captivity now outnumber those in the wild. When Congress passed wild horse protection in 1971, the government estimated 17,000 wild horses and burros roamed across 10 western states. Today, the BLM estimates that population has grown to 40,605.

The Oregon corral, expanded in 2013 to hold up to 800 horses, at one time held 1,200.

"We're complete maxed out," says Rob Sharp, the manager for the BLM's Oregon wild horses. "It absolutely can't go on forever. This is not a sustainable way of managing these horses."

Sharp says the nation's wild horse program has reached a "tipping point."

Blue Eye, like all the horses in short-term corrals, faced three strikes. The BLM would offer him for adoption three times.

If no one took him, he would be trucked far from his native high desert to long-term holding. The BLM rents pastures in states like Oklahoma and Kansas where old or unadoptable horses spend the rest of their lives.

— 1971 Wild Horse & Burro Act Protected by Law

Congress intended for wild horses to remain wild. In almost poetic language, federal lawmakers in 1971 wrote into law that "wild free-roaming horses and burros are living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West." They declared "they are to be considered in the area where presently found as an integral part of the natural system of public lands."

The BLM maintains that the land can support 26,677 wild horses. Wild herds currently exceed that limit by more than 14,000 horses. Without removing those "excess" horses, BLM managers say the horses will compete against each other, damage the landscape, run out of food and starve.

Joining many horse advocacy organizations, the Humane Society of the United States has taken a stand against government roundups.

"There are at least nine million domestic livestock on BLM land," says Scott Beckstead, the Oregon Director of HSUS. "You've got 40,000, roughly, wild horses. So are there too many horses? Of course not. It's just a matter of the BLM's priorities."

The law also made clear that horses were to be part of a mixture of uses of BLM land, not its sole beneficiaries. The BLM is required to manage the land for the use of people, cattle and wildlife as well.

Finding that balance has produced 40 years of continuous battles.

"Man put these horses on these rangelands," says the BLM's Sharp. "In my opinion, based on the 1971 Act we have an obligation to manage for healthy horses and healthy rangelands."

The crisis, Sharp says, is "absolutely preventable."

Blue Eye was caught in the middle. The young foal would never go back to the range. He faced the two options BLM most often relies on: adoption or exile to pastures in the Midwest.

Horses At Risk When Gorging On Fresh Grass

SPRING is traditionally the time for horses and ponies to enjoy the great outdoors 24 hours a day, but all those equines gorging on lush new grass are known to be at risk of the painful and sometimes fatal disease, laminitis.

Laminitis is the inflammation of the sensitive laminae which are membrane layers originating on the inner hoof wall at the coronary cushion extending to the pedal bone. In a healthy horse, the laminae are interlaced like the pages of a book to form a strong bond, but in a laminitic horse the attachment between the coffin bone and the inner hoof wall fails.

At worst, the connection is severed so completely the weight of the horse forces the coffin bone to rotate and sink within the foot, sheering arteries and veins and sometimes pushing right through the sole of the foot. The disease usually occurs in the fore feet but can involve the hind feet as well.

Although the most common cause is overfeeding, experts are still a long way to knowing all the answers.

A number of trigger factors have been identified.

These include carbohydrate overload from too much cereal feed, lush grass or grass growing under certain conditions such as stressed or recently frosted; trauma to the foot; abrupt change in diet; high doses of steroids or from endotoxins in the body following an infection, or as the result of colic or liver disease. Laminitis can also occur following damage to one of the horse's organ systems such as respiratory, reproductive and gastrointestinal.

How do you know if your horse has laminitis?

It can show up as lameness in any combination of the horse's fore feet and hind feet, but often it is the two front feet that are first affected.

They will feel hot, especially around the coronet, and the horse may shift from foot to foot to try to relive the pain and may be reluctant to move.

The typical stance of a laminitic horse is with the weight borne on the heels, hind legs well under, and fore feet stretched out in front.

In severe cases, he may be sweaty with quickened breathing and try to lie down to relieve his feet. Rectal temperature and heart rate may be raised. Arteries to his feet on either side of the fetlock may pound to the touch.

Always call the vet at the first suspicion of laminitis, as quick action can sometimes make all the difference to the progress of this disease.

Obviously, each case is approached on its individual merit and the other important person in treatment is the farrier. It is only with good co-operation between vet and farrier that the best can be done for the patient, because good hoof trimming is essential to maintain the correct alignment of the bone structure within the hoof and pastern. That's why X-rays are often an important part of the treatment.

New research into the causes, treatment and prevention of laminitis are going on all the time. And there is one theory that accounts for the carbohydrate overload cause of laminitis - the sort of laminitis caused by too much spring grass or too much cereal feed.

It has been discovered that when a horse's digestive tract is overloaded, a bacterium called streptococcus bovi grows, becoming responsible for the rapid fermentation of the carbohydrate into lactic acid in the horse's hind gut.

This causes an enzyme, MMP-2, to be activated in the horse's hoof, leading to massive separation of the laminae.

It is not clear how the bacterium gets from the horses hind gut to his feet in a case of laminitis, but one theory is the population of the bacteria explodes when the horse eats too much carbohydrate.

The gut wall breaks down, allowing the products to get into his bloodstream.

Once in the foot, the bacteria causes the attachment of the laminae to the hoof membrane to become degraded. Blood is diverted through the larger vessel walls, dilating them and producing the 'hot foot' associated with a horse suffering from laminitis. The enzymes MMP-2 and MMP-9 seem to play an important role in the laminae of the horse's foot.

These enzymes are found in a wide range of human and animal remodelling tissues like bone and joints, as well as in invasive tumours.

Once a horse has had laminitis, it is quite likely to recur. It is recommended that extra care is taken in future, including modifying the diet, regular hoof care, a good health plan including parasite control and vaccination, and the use of nutritional supplements to promote hoof health.

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