Bony Remodeling from Chronic Laminitis

I received a large collection of bones for my birthday this year, and I’ve been slowly working through them to get everything cleaned up and organized.

I’m hoping to create more educational content with the help of these horses, there are a lot of interesting bones - and I thought maybe I’d start here:

This is a set of coffin bones (the bone inside the hoof capsule) from the same pony. Her name is Izzy.

The coffin bone on the left is from her right hind. It shows a normal coffin bone shape and healthy bone density.

The coffin bone on the right is from her left front, a foot that suffered chronically from laminitis.

You can see how extreme the bone loss is, including the loss of density in the bone that remains (Swiss cheese look)

This is an extreme example, but bone loss like this can start to occur even with low grade chronic laminitis if it’s allowed to continue on unchecked.

If your hoofcare provider is hounding you to get your horse off grass - this is why they get so upset when you don’t do it.

If your horse gets “footy” in the spring and you put metal shoes on to “fix” it, you could be masking inflammation from laminitis.

Once that bone is gone, it’s gone.

With laminitis, prevention is key! Diet, exercise, frequent and balanced trimming - and don’t ignore the subtle signs!