Do horses with broken legs have to be shot?

You may have seen in the movies that a horse with a broken leg is not possible to recover. Healing of bone fractures in horses is much more difficult than in small animals and humans, because horses are very heavy (their mass can approach 1 ton) and large animals.

There may be different types of fractures in the legs of horses. Situations where the bone cracks but does not break apart are relatively simple problems. Fractures in which the bone is broken are called complete fractures. It can be said that it is a relatively simple complete fracture if the broken bone is divided into two parts and did not cause an open wound by causing damage to the skin. Fractures in which the bone is divided into more than two parts are called fragmented fractures. The condition called open fracture occurs as a result of broken bone tip damaging the skin.

During the healing process of the fractures, the broken area should not be moved and the region should not be weighed. However, it is very difficult to achieve this in horses. In addition, even if the broken leg is properly protected, problems such as infection may occur due to overloading in the part where the hoof and bone meet, as the horse will give weight to the other three legs during the healing process.