– why are horses put down if they suffer a leg brea?
In: Biology
Horses spend the vast majority of their lives on their feet, and unlike other animals like your dog, they don’t lie down very often except for deep REM sleep, usually they doze on their feet (its a fight/flight thing, always gotta be ready to run). Complicating matters is that a horse’s hooves are designed to carry a set amount of weight in a certain way and things go wonky if you throw it (literally) out of balance**. if you _were_ to manage to convince a horse to wear a cast for the many months to heal a broken leg bone, it would spend all that time with its weight shifted onto its other 3 legs and that would, depending on which leg, cause all manner of other problems from uneven hoof wear to ankle and joint problems. So yeah, the leg might heal but now its lame in another of its legs. If you can afford to do so (i.e. its a prize stud or a race horse) you can keep it lifted in a sling, but thats hella-expensive.
** a horse carries most of its (and any rider/cargo) weight on its front legs, the rear legs are more for propulsion. A horse with a lame or broken front leg is really kinda screwed.
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