Why can't a horse heal a broken leg?

Find an equine vet. What makes horses' legs so vulnerable to fractures? And what can be done to heal a broken leg? H&H finds out. Horses are designed for speed, which means they have skinny, lightweight limbs that are moved ... If it can't, problems in the “good” leg, such as laminitis, are likely to occur. read more

With the best treatment money can buy, a quiet and tolerant horse with a simple fracture might be able to make it through living on a sling for a few months (slings delay healing because they don’t promote circulation on the legs, but it’s better than nothing), then very slowly and gradually start putting weight back on the recovering leg, avoiding sudden movements that could re-fracture it, all the while dodging laminitis on the good legs, generalized infection, colic and depression. read more

The horse's hoof is attached to its leg by interdigitating laminae, fibrous tissue. These are strong enough to support the horse's weight when that burden of 500kg or so is shared across four legs. But when a horse breaks one of those legs and tries to support itself constantly on the other three, the increased burden creates serious problems for the laminae at the base of those legs. read more

If you break a leg, it may mean, in the worst of cases, surgery to place pins to hold the bones, a cast and weeks or months of allowing the bone to heal followed by physiotherapy. Our bodies are relatively light compared to a horse's and our leg bones are larger in ratio to a horse's. read more