Eli5: Why are horses who break their legs so often euthanized?
In: 3613
Horses are skittish, dumb, 1200 pound balls of anxiety supported by toothpick legs.
They do not handle anesthesia very well and tend to get very panicky when they wake up. This makes them very likely to re-break their leg, break a different leg, or otherwise hurt themselves.
Allowing a broken bone to heal takes a lot of time *not* using that leg. Taking the weight off of one leg puts more weight on the others, increasing the likelihood of another break or another injury. They aren’t used to long periods of not standing, walking, and running, so trying to force bed rest leads to bedsores and a panicky horse that will, again, be more likely to hurt themselves.
Because they are so panicky, if the horse gets spooked its first instinct is going to be to try to run…which it can’t do, because it still has a broken leg. Either it will try to put the full force of a galloping horse onto that leg and break it again, or get tripped up by some kind of cast, fall, and break something else.
And even if everything goes *perfectly*, once the leg has been broken it probably will never be able to support the same force that it did before. The horse is likely to break that leg again, leading to another round of pain and suffering.
From an economic standpoint, it is very rarely worth the hassle. People have tried to mend legs on super valuable race horses – not to get them to race again, but just to let them breed – and it never works out well. From the standpoint of the quality of life of the animal, it’s more humane to euthanize them. It will be months of anxiety and trauma and pain trying to mend the leg with a very high chance of getting injured again, leading to even more trauma and pain and a longer recovery with more chances to get injured *again*, for a slim chance at successful recovery that still won’t give the horse a good quality of life and a high chance of getting hurt again.
Not a veterinarian,
The reason I know is that is really hard for them to recover because they use their legs much more than other animals and their lower legs bones are quite small.
1: Horses leave their life standing, walking or running. They take naps standing, even if they need to sleep down few hours every day.
The bone cannot heal properly if it is not resting for the first weeks.
2: the last part of the legs is evolved from the same bones we have in the [feet](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-lIfyVnwZ-RM/TYY-i6K1t2I/AAAAAAAAAWw/qo7O2YkiyBg/s1600/arto+cavallo.gif).
Horses are the wrong combination of size and brain for going easy on injuries. They have four legs but they’re *heavy,* and like to use all four. A dog or a cat with a leg injury will *try* to keep weight off it and the weight they shift to the other limbs isn’t a big deal.
Humans have more weight to shift but we also have crutches and walking boots. And we understand what and why pain and “don’t do that in two hours either.”
Deer are dumb as rocks but can run three legged because they don’t weigh more than people do and can already absorb running force at higher loads than people. They’re still not likely to recover, but the size helps.
Horses are heavy and are not good at not using an injured limb. What’s worse is that pain makes them want to run, rather than how dogs and cats often hide pain by being lazy. That size also makes them expensive, difficult and dangerous to immobilize, treat and care for.
So a broken horse leg is unlikely to heal and likely to develop serious complications like infection and healing out of shape.
No one has really answered the question clearly.
Many horses these days can survive breaks to various bones in their legs. It depends on the bone and the severity of the break and the horse’s temperament. But when horses are euthanized for bone breaks, it is generally for one of three reasons:
1) The way horses have evolved, they require all 4 legs to bear the weight of their bodies, with no margin of error, unlike animals like cats and dogs who can live easily with three or fewer legs. Horses have to spend most of their time standing, and when they have to take weight off a leg for too long – like for a broken leg to heal – the other legs can develop serious problems. This is especially true when the broken leg is a front leg, since the majority of the horse’s weight is in the front. In that case, before the broken leg can heal, the horse’s other front foot can (in ELI5 terms) break down irreparably from bearing too much weight. There is no cure for this breakdown once it passes a certain point, and it is excruciatingly painful, so it results in the horse having to be put down.
2) For a broken leg to heal requires a period of rest and no movement. By nature, horses are not designed to stand still for long periods – in nature, horses cover miles each day as they graze, moving constantly, and sometimes fleeing from predators. So some horses do not adapt well to being restrained from movement for long periods of time. They will try to run around in circles in their tiny stalls, or kick the walls. They can develop nervous ulcers or other issues. If the break is bad enough, the leg may need to be non-weight-bearing, which means the horse may need to be in a sling. Some veterinary hospitals have slings, but this is even more restrictive, not to mention very expensive, and can create even more problems for the horse, as all sorts of things can go wrong (eg with the digestive system) when a horse can’t move at all. All these factors can, depending on the circumstances, make healing almost impossible as a practical matter, even for a break that could theoretically heal.
3) Sometimes the break is severe enough that it’s clear at the time of injury that even if the horse were to make it through the healing process, he would never be able to live comfortably – he would always be in pain.
Generally when a break happens, the vets and owner take into account the severity of the break, the likelihood of full healing, the possibility that surgical intervention might help, the time it would take to heal, the horse’s temperament, and all other relevant factors to decide whether it’s worthwhile to attempt the healing process. Sometimes the decision is to put the horse down immediately. Sometimes a horse is euthanized after healing is attempted but fails, because of problems in the other supporting limbs or other issues during the healing process. And sometimes the horse heals fine and either resumes his former activity or retires from that activity but lives comfortably doing something else, or doing nothing!
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The current top two answers are correct but a common complication in horses that are trying to heal from a broken leg is called laminitis or founder. Laminitis is a nasty condition where the coffin bone inside the hoof separates from the hoof wall and in severe cases the coffin bone can turn inside the hoof. Imagine wearing shoes that are too big and your foot gets turned sideways inside the shoe. It would be painful to walk around in. This is a permanent condition. Minor cases can be managed but severe cases are a death sentence because horses simply need all four legs and feet. To ask them to live with just 3 good ones is condemning them to live a life in pain and suffering and the other 3 will end up having issues as well. This is common in horses with broken legs because their other legs end up over compensating for the broken one and put too much weight for too long of time on them. This is what ended up happening to the Kentucky Derby winner that broke his leg, Barbaro.
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