For a horse to live a long, healthy, and pain-free life, their joints need to be maintained throughout their life. Horses’ joints are similar to humans in that joint problems can occur at any time in life.
Whether or not a horse is being ridden or worked, joint supplements should be added into a horse’s diet. Grass and alfalfa hay and other basic grains, oats, and feeds do not provide enough nutrition to support their joints. Supplementing a horses diet with joint health specific supplements will fill the missing gap.
Understanding where the horses joints are, what a healthy joint looks like, causes and signs of joint pain, and how to prevent joint pain will help your horse live a long, healthy, and pain free life.
Types of Horse Joints
Horses have many joints that help bend and flex their body. The job of the joint is to provide fluid movement in the horse’s body when they walk, trot, gallop, and jump. Understanding where the horses joints are will help identify why the joint needs to be maintained throughout the horse’s life.
There are three different types of joints:
- Synovial Joints: These joints allow the horse’s body to move, flex, extend, and twist and are the most prevalent in the horse’s body. Synovial joints also limit movement as well by working with tendons and ligaments in the joint itself.
Most joint supplements will target aiding in the fluid production and cartilage health of the synovial joints. The major synovial joints are the stifle, hock, fetlock, knee, and pastern. Other large important joints that are frequently seen in joint problems include the elbow, hip, carpal, pastern, and coffin joint.
- Fibrous Joints: These are solid joints that don’t move and make up parts of the horse’s body like the horse’s skull.
- Cartilaginous Joints: These joints are connected by cartilage and can be found between the horses backbone vertebrae and allow for minimal movement.
What Does A Healthy Horse Joint Look Like?
A horse with healthy joints will have energy, be excited to work, and want to move around. The horse is able to jump, place more weight on their hind legs than fore legs, can move quickly on their haunches, spin and stop suddenly, and has a ‘spring’ to their step.
A healthy joint moves fluidly, and easily without pain because of four different factors:
- Tendon and Ligament Health: Supplements for soft tissue health are usually combined with joint supplements.
- Muscle Support: Solidly built muscles on the horses entire body help aid in taking impact off of joints. Horses with strong butt, back, shoulder, and core muscles will have significantly less impact on their joints than those without muscle. Starting from low impact exercises first to begin building muscle and slowly increasing impact with muscle is key to correct muscle building.
- Cartilage cushion intact: The cartilage cushion acts as a barrier between the two joint bones so that the bones do not grind and rub on each other, creating pain and stiffness.
- Synovial Joint Fluid present: The fluid between the joint lubricates the joint making for smooth and pain free movement within the joint itself.
To have lifelong healthy joints, a horse needs all four of those factors in check. When one of those factors is compromised, problems start to arise in the joint itself. Joint supplements help aid in maintaining the joint cartilage and fluid.
Causes of Joint Pain in Horses
A horse can experience joint pain at any point of their life. Even horses that are being ridden and worked properly with supporting muscles can end up having joint pain due to normal wear and tear of the joints, similar to humans. Other joint pain can be from trauma, injury, overuse, improper hoof care, or lack of movement.
The most common causes of joint pain include:
- Trauma of the joints in young horses: When a horse is overworked at a young age when their joints are still developing, the cartilage is damaged and rubbed down creating lifelong problems in the joint from deterioration.
- Shoeing and Hoof Care: If the horses feet are too long or trimmed at an incorrect angle, the unnatural angle that the hoof falls will cause extra stress impacting the joints.
- Normal Wear and Tear: A working horse that has been ridden and worked most of its life will need extra joint care and supplements around 15 years old.
- Overweight and lack of Muscle: Horses that aren’t exercised regularly to maintain supporting body muscle can end up with sore joints from the excess body weight.
- Athletic Injury: A sudden quick turn, stop, or other quick movement can overstress a joint causing a sprain. Ligaments and tendons can become damaged from fast, hard movements as well. These types of injuries are common in working horses’ lives.
Taking action to prevent these common causes of joint pain is best; however sometimes it is too late and you will have to look for signs that a horse has sore joints.
Signs That A Horse Has Sore Joints
When a joint somewhere in the horse’s body has pain, stiffness, or arthritis, a whole new set of problems can arise if the joint pain is not managed. Since horses aren’t able to tell us exactly where they feel pain, it is often we don’t realize the horse has joint pain until they exhibit pain somewhere else in their body.
The Effects of Unmanaged Joint Pain
- Back problems and pain
- Soundness problems
- Aggression toward other horses or toward you
- Pain in other parts of their body
- Laziness under saddle and in the field
- Swollen around the joint itself, or above or below it
- Swollen ligaments and tendons
- Laying down more than usual
Over time the horse’s body will compensate for the joint pain by avoiding use of the joint. Overcompensating for the under used joint will lead to injury in those body parts having to work harder for the joint.
For example, a horse with hock pain will not want to engage their hind legs when being ridden, leading to a sore back, leading to joint pain in the front legs from overcompensating for the under used hind legs.
Preventing this from happening before the horse gets to the point where their entire body has to compensate for joint pain is key to avoiding more vet bills, and more questionable problems in the horse’s body.
Prevent Joint Problems in Horses
Some horse breeders give yearlings joint supplements to ensure their joints grow strong and healthy, similar to how human babies drink milk to grow strong bones. The simplest and easiest way to provide long term joint health is to provide the horse with a solid joint supplement throughout their life.
There are many options in the market for joint supplements and there is a lot of science behind it. A vet will be best to discuss what type of joint supplement your horse will need as it depends on the activity level of the horse, age, and exercise regiment.
Written by: Gloria Ford