Page 98 - July 2019

Cast Horse
by Denise Steffanus
Horsemen probably don’t comprehend how big and heavy a horse actually is until it gets cast against or under something and they have to get it unstuck. One futile tug on the mane of a cast horse and the person quickly will realize he or she needs assistance.
“The first thing I would say is to get some help,” said Dr. Sally DeNotta, extension specialist and assistant professor of large animal internal medicine at the University of Florida. “You don’t want to be in the stall with a cast horse alone because it’s dangerous and they’re big.”
A horse can become “cast” against a stall wall, fence or other solid object if it lies down too close to the object (or rolls over) and orients its legs against the object. In order to stand up, horses need to have room to roll onto their belly and unfold their front legs straight out from their bodies. They then push from their back legs up and forward, and onto all fours. If a horse has its legs folded against a wall with no room to roll or straighten its front legs, it cannot stand.
DeNotta emphasized that a cast horse is an emergency because the longer a horse is down, the greater the danger of nerve damage and crush injuries to the muscles on which it is lying.
96 SPEEDHORSE, July 2019
“It depends on the size of the horse and how hard the ground is that they’re on,” she said. “So, it happens more quickly in a large horse on concrete than a smaller horse in a well-bedded stall.”
These injuries can happen in as little as an hour, and when owners find a horse cast, they usually don’t know how long the horse has already been in that position.
Before attempting to get the horse uncast, horsemen must quickly assess the horse’s disposition. Only horses that are fairly level- headed and tractable will tolerate being yanked on when they’re down. If the horse is fractious, call a veterinarian to sedate it so it doesn’t panic. While waiting for the veterinarian, try to calm the horse by talking to it in a soothing tone of voice. Once the veterinarian arrives and sedates the horse, he or she can pitch in and help get it uncast.
WHAT CAUSES A HORSE TO GET CAST?
A horse typically gets cast when it lies down and rolls in its stall. Perhaps it is a miscalculation on the horse’s part when it rolls
up and over and ends up with its legs folded up against the wall.
“Occasionally, horses will become cast because they’re rolling because they’re colicking,” DeNotta said. “That’s because their abdomens are painful, and they’re not paying as much attention to where they’re rolling in the stall.”
Some horses habitually get cast, creating anxiety for the owner every time he or she has to put the horse in a stall. If the owner can rule out poor stall construction and an ongoing medical condition, the horse’s problem may be mental.
“It may just be poor critical-thinking skills, and he didn’t learn from his mistakes,” DeNotta said. “I’m not sure why he would do it over and over, other than he got into the habit outdoors. If his habit is to lie down and roll up and over the top, if he did that in the wrong spot in the stall, he would get himself stuck. He didn’t learn that one thing led to the next.”
For a horse that habitually gets cast, DeNotta recommended bedding its stall very heavily around the edges, banking the bedding up in all the corners and along all the walls to encourage the horse to lie down farther away from the stall wall.