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Laminitis/Founder

This is the most common problem we see with horses in our region, with over 80% of horses we trim showing current or recent signs of this disease, including our own horse. Most of these horses fall into the category of chronic laminitis. Due to food, most of these horses are in a constant state of low to medium level laminitis. This causes tender feet and can contribute to behavior and control issues while the horse is under saddle. Research suggests that the climate and temperature patterns in Minnesota cause pasture grasses to produce high levels of fructan, which contributes to the high incidence of hoof problems we have observed in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin.

Laminitis can strike at any time, but is most common in Spring and Fall when temperature extremes force pasture grasses to produce high concentrations of fructan (a type of plant sugar) that can play metabolic havoc with many horses. A laminitis attack or founder can occur in a horse on green pasture in as little as 36 hours after exposure. Founder from an overload of grain can occur in less than 24 hours from ingestion. Keep in mind, that by the time someone notices symptoms of laminitis in your horse it may have been going on for days, weeks, months, or even years without obvious lameness appearing. Let's face it, in the wild an injured horse is likely to be a dead horse...the horse will hide pain as long as he can, as a survival mechanism. Other triggers for founder can include bacterial toxins from retained placenta, inocculations, steroids, prescription medications, abdominal infection, excessive percussion, or damage from colic. There are also some natural substances which contain toxins that can set off laminitis if ingested, such as Black Walnut wood shavings, or Nightshade.

A recent study of 160 horses published by the American Society for Nutrition (July 2006) has shown a genetic connection between horses with founder tendencies. This study involved 2 groups of horses that included both known previously laminitic animals(54) and a control group that had never had the disease(106). Blood analysis was performed at the start of the study and found that the previously laminitic horses exhibited higher concentrations of insulin and triglycerides than the control group. This became the benchmark for identifying probable risk animals. Two months into the study the pasture starch concentration doubled and 13 cases of laminitis were diagnosed. 11 of the cases were from the previously laminitic group...only two were from the control group. A test has been developed for PLMS, Prelaminitic Metabolic Syndrome and has an initial predictive power of approximately 78%. It is anticipated that further tests will be developed that improve the prediction rate. Therefore it may become possible to test a horse before buying it to rule out the PLMS tendencies. Contact your veterinarian to find out. For those of you who already have a laminitic horse....read on.

If you have been told that your horse has laminitis or has foundered you essentially have 3 choices in dealing with it.

You can either:

1. Put the horse down
2. Change the horses diet and management practices
3. Learn to live with it until the horse founders so badly that you have to put him down.

In severe founder cases, the humane choice may be to put the horse down immediately and relieve the horse of the excruciating pain which accompanies this disease and its potentially long term recovery. There are many situations, though, where a horse can be healed and rehabilitated with time and cautious care, and without spending thousands of dollars...although you will need to maintain vigilance with respect to feed and management for the rest of that horses life. Read on to find out what it takes.

From a Natural Hoof Care perspective, founder is treatable most of the time, within the confines of the horses tendency toward it and the ability of the owner to make the management changes necessary to prevent recurrence. The ultimate question for those of you who have laminitic horses is,
"Are you willing to do whatever it takes to heal your horse and maintain the vigilance necessary to keep your horse healthy for the rest of its life?"
If you can't answer a firm and absolute YES to this question, you might want to seriously consider putting the animal down for humane reasons. Keeping a horse alive that continues to go through founder cycles due to your inability, or unwillingness, to provide proper care is basically torture. If you really care about your horse, you may have to make the tough decision to treat your animal humanely and let him go...

Of course, now you will ask us, "What does it take to heal and care for a laminitic horse?"

First, let us tell you what it does not take...prescription medications, other than pain relievers possibly for a short time. We know that many veterinarians are likely to take exception to that statement but, recent studies are suggesting that many of the traditional drugs vets have been using on founder cases may actually make the situation worse, rather than better.

Second, it does not take shoes to heal founder. Now we have likely angered both vets and farriers! But the simple fact is, a shoe can't fix anything. When the inside of a horses foot is detaching from the outside of the hoof ( founder), how will a shoe aid in healing? Shoes may make the horse and owner feel better and more comfortable for a short time, but it does little or nothing to address the underlying causes, or aid in the healing process. I have seen published cases where shoes were used in an attempt to slow down or stop rotation of the coffin bone, only to have the bone rotate and pierce the sole anyway. The shoe neither prevented advancement of the disease, nor assisted in the healing process in these cases.

The main problem with drugs and shoes is that we are treating the symptoms of the disease, not the source. If we want to facilitate proper healing we need to remove the source of the problem first and then allow nature to work on returning the horses digestive system to normalcy. The body has an incredible ability to heal itself if given the opportunity. Let's look at what's involved in the natural healing process.

What does it take to heal your foundered horse?

Primarily, a drastic change in diet. (Read on for more details.)
Secondarily, proper and timely trimming.
Thirdly, time... a year or more is likely.

"What does it take to heal founder the natural way?"

1. Remove the source of the problem, generally food.
2. Control diet and maintain healthy weight.
3. Provide a healthy environment and regular exercise.
4. Keep hooves properly trimmed.
5. Allow nature to heal the injury.
6. Maintain vigilant control over diet for the remainder of the horses life.

1. Remove the source of the problem

The first thing we have to do is remove the source of the problem...and most often it is food. The majority of founder cases are triggered by what the horse is eating. There also appears to be a direct correlation between obesity and founder, as well as the aforementioned genetic connection. Overweight horses are at statistically higher risk for laminitis than horses that are near ideal weight. Founder related to Equine Metabolic Syndrome in horses acts a lot like diabetes in humans...it is a problem involving insulin regulation, and left untreated with no controls on weight or the types of food eaten ( glucose regulation), human diabetics face nerve damage, loss of fingers and toes due to circulation problems, blindness, and failure of major organs. With horses, the laminae detach and, worst case, the hoof comes off.

When laminitis is triggered by medical conditions such as internal infection, colic, or placenta retention, these will need to be treated before anything can be done to address the founder. This is a job for your vet...we can do our work on the hoof once healing has begun. If you're not sure why your horse is foundering contact your vet first to try to determine the source, have your horse checked out, then contact us. We can work together with you and your vet to develop a treatment and recovery plan.

Certain types of plants will upset the horses digestive system and cause a cascading effect that results in the breakdown of the "laminae" which act as a connection between the coffin bone and the hoof wall. Some known trigger foods are:

• Green pasture (primarily Spring and Fall, but can happen at any time of the year, including Winter!)
• High grain diets
• Sudden ingestion of large amounts of carbohydrates, cereals, or concentrated feed.
• Fescue grass
• Bran
• Oats
• Legumes (Peas, beans, soy, clover, birdsfoot trefoil)
• Nightshades

Ideally your horse should be on a strict diet of high quality - low fructan grass hay with little or no supplementation, except what is needed to make up for any deficiencies in the hay and water. This will be relatively low in calories and fructan and is very similar to what wild horses eat. My guess is that most of you reading this are shaking your heads and saying, "I can't afford to do that!" "That means I will have to buy hay all year round!" Unfortunately, you are absolutely right. But, if you are able to follow the program the high fiber content and low calorie count of grass hay will stop the founder and cause your horse to head toward item #2...controlling weight.

2. Control diet and maintain healthy weight

We need to control the diet and reduce weight in the overweight/laminitic horse, thereby removing another source or complication to founder. Since the primary trigger to founder in a domestic horse is green pasture...we have to take them completely off of green pasture...possibly for the rest of their lives! Whether or not they can be pasture fed in the future will have a lot to do with their genetics and how badly they foundered the first time. The worse the original attack, the higher the likelihood of recurrence. Green pasture is unnatural food for your horse and many horses simply can't eat live green grass without risk of laminitis. Most horses should not be eating supplemental grain or sweet feeds either. These foods are too concentrated and your horses probably don't get enough exercise to allow dense nutrition of that type to pass through their system properly without causing problems.

Talk with your vet, too...find out what your horses ideal weight should be and take pro-active steps to control your horses caloric intake. Horses digestive systems are designed to have food in them 24 hours per day. Surprisingly, a horses stomach can only hold 2 to 5 gallons of food at a time. This is why a horse needs to have a constant supply of food available at all times. If a horse goes hungry it can cause serious digestive problems over time, including colic and ulcers. Regardless of when a horse is fed, his stomach is producing digestive acids constantly, whether he is eating or not! Typically horses eat small amounts of food all day long. The typical horse needs about 1.5 lbs. of hay per 100 lbs. of body weight per day to maintain weight, depending upon activity level. If your horse still isn't losing weight that amount may need to be reduced slightly. We also want to prevent them from eating the hay all at once...spread it out over the day.

Another technique to improve weight involves having a dry paddock large enough to place dry grass hay at several locations. This forces the horses to move around to get to their food. If you are keeping several horses in the paddock, distribution to several feeding locations may also minimize some of the dominance problems that certain alpha horses exhibit over food and water. Making the alpha move around even more to control other horses food/water access will just take the weight off that much faster.

3. Provide a healthy environment and get exercise

Providing a healthy environment is begun by getting your horses into a dry paddock...dry meaning there is nothing edible growing in it except dirt. This is the only practical way that you will be able to control the horses diet enough while it is healing. The surface in the beginning of a founder recovery should be relatively soft, like sand, or the horse should be in hoof boots with pads. As long as there aren't too many rocks in the paddock, it should work OK. Mainly the surface is for the comfort of the horse while we wait for the active laminitis attack to subside. There really is nothing we can do for the horse until the founder is stopped, the pain is reduced, and healing is beginning. Once the source of the founder is removed, the hoof will start to heal within a week to 10 days.

There should be access to adequate fresh water, salt and mineral licks, and food. An additional perk would be a pond or pool that the horse can walk into himself and soak its feet. Cool water on the laminitic hoof can be very relieving...We've seen it with our own eyes.

At first during recovery of serious founder, the horse isn't likely to move around much due to pain. But as the pain subsides they will move around more freely, not as stiff legged, and will spend less time in a founder stance. This is a sign of healing and a signal that it is time to perform a founder hoof trim to get things moving in the right direction. If you can get a prescription for Bute or another pain reliever, we can numb the pain enough to perform a founder trim sooner...this improves the pain and mechanical stresses on the hoof and sets up the path to recovery. The earlier we can get your horse stabilized the faster he will heal.

Once the trim is done the horse should be excercised at least once or twice per day for short times...10 or 15 minutes of walking around the paddock shoud do at first. This is VERY IMPORTANT...excercise stimulates blood flow to the feet and we need all the blood flow we can get while the horse is rebuilding the damaged hooves. He won't be thrilled at having to walk on sore feet, but the more we keep the horse moving, the faster his recovery will be. You may also notice that the horse may seem sore after the first couple of sessions...this is normal and will fade away as healing progresses. You can walk him around for longer periods as healing progresses and the horse will tolerate it. Don't force him to move if he doesn't want to...if your horse is normally cooperative, but is saying NO right now...listen to him, he's trying to tell you something...it hurts!

As the hooves recover more, the horse can be moved to harder ground to assist in getting the sole calloused, restore sole concavity, and to encourage the coffin bone to lift back up into the hoof capsule. Ultimately, after healing, a dry paddock with rocks or gravel in it will help toughen up the entire hoof, helping to prevent potential further episodes from becoming as severe.

4. Keep hooves properly trimmed

We can't emphasize enough how important timely and proper trimming are to maintaining your horses overall health. Besides laminitis, a majority of problems we see with horse feet are due to either improper trimming, or a lack of trimming. The average healthy hoof will grow out about 1/4" to 3/8" per month. If a hoof is left to grow for the 8 weeks typically seen with farriers the hoof will have grown 1/2" to 3/4". This may not seem much to you, but imagine letting your fingernails grow out for 8 weeks and then having to walk on the edges of them...they bend, crack, and break...just what we see on the majority of domestic horses. Ideally, trimming intervals should be 4 to 6 weeks maximum, depending upon the individual horse's hoof growth.

For founder cases, once the initial founder trim is done we should be looking at the horse at least every 4 weeks, until we see that growth is becoming normal and there is some hoofwall extending beyond the sole. Once the sole is beginning to 'rise' in the hoof capsule we are well on the road to recovery. It takes 9 months to a year for a hoof to grow out completely from the coronary band to the ground. Your horse may act and think that he has fully recovered within a few months, depending upon the severity of the founder and how well everyone is staying with the program.

5. Allow nature to heal the injury

Humans, especially in our culture, have adopted a tendency toward instant gratification. When it comes to healing a disease like founder TIME is our friend. You may certainly go out and find lots of vets, universities and specialists that claim that they can get your horse back on its feet in a short time, but take into consideration the methods they will use. How natural are they, and will they cause yet another set of problems while trying to correct the one you care about...founder?

If you are opting for natural healing, you need to give nature time to do the job. Be patient, the healing powers of the body are far stronger than veterinary medicine. Our experience has been that the horse 'feels' better within a month after changing diet and getting a founder trim. We see hoof wall growing out below the sole in 2 to 3 months, and full new hoof grown in at 9 to 12 months.

6. Maintain vigilant control over diet for the remainder of the horses life.

Whether or not your horse can be pasture fed again depends on many factors... too many to list. We suggest that you read everything you can on diet and founder. Consider having your horse tested for PLMS(pre-laminitic metabolic syndrome) or EMS (Equine Metabolic Syndrome). If it comes back positive you should feed only grass hay for the rest of the horses life. Some horses will be OK on 'some' green grass sometimes, it will vary from horse to horse. Use common sense and stay aware that any horse that foundered once is extrememly likely to founder again. If your previously foundered horse is now back on pasture, check him frequently for any of the signs of impending laminitis. If you see anything suspicious take him off grass immediately and contact your vet. The faster we can act the better chance we have to minimize the damage before it becomes severe.