Why dont horse bones heal well?
Horses need to stand… if they lie down for more than a couple hours at a time, it stops blood flow and organ functioning. It’s like how your leg will fall asleep if you lie on it, except that for horses we’re talking about 1200 pounds crushing their organs. So when a horse breaks a leg, you can’t just put them in bed for 6 months like you can with a person. When a horse stands, it must distribute its weight evenly or else serious leg problems can result. A horse stands with 70% of its weight on its front legs. When a horse breaks one front leg, they can stand with more weight on the other front leg, particularly until the broken leg can get a cast on. Eight Belles broke both of her front legs though. If you’ve ever broken an ankle you know that it hurts a lot to stand on it. To get Eight Belles into the ambulance, she would have had to put 70% of her body weight (about 800 pounds) on those broken front ankles. She didn’t have the option to limp on 3 legs. It would have been enormousl
