How Do You Prevent Founder In A Horse?

Founder is a devastating and far too common disease in horses. It is sad because most, if not all, cases of founder could have been avoided. This article will give you some important steps to prevent this crippling, and sometimes fatal, disease. Preventing founder is hugely important when you own or care for horses. The old saying - "no hoof, no horse" is painfully accurate. If your horse founders badly enough, it will have to be euthanized. The first, most important, and simplest step is to take great care not to allow your horse to become obese. By becoming too fat, the horse's system becomes glucose intolerant, just like a diabetic human. If you overload a fat horse's gut with too many starches, it WILL founder. Founder occurs when the "coffin bone" of the foot (aptly named as all the horse's weight is narrowed into this tiny little bone) rotates inside the horse's foot causing the laminae of the hoof to disconnect; the hoof will, essentially, come off. That is the worst case ...  more