What Causes Laminitis

Laminitis commonly known as founder is a painful disease that causes severe lameness in horses.

What causes laminitis.

In this post we ll go over what laminitis is what causes it and how to prevent it. Relatively less commonly horses can get laminitis from overload typically associated with non weight bearing conditions in one limb thereby overloading the opposite limb. 80 causes predispositions and pathways of laminitis henry w. Starch black walnut oligofructose fructose and insulin.

The causes vary and may include the following. While the exact mechanisms by which the feet are damaged remain a mystery certain precipitating events can produce laminitis. This can all occur before any symptoms are apparent and once the process has started it is extremely difficult to stop. There are 3 main causes of laminitis.

Before we get into what causes laminitis in horses let s quickly cover what is laminitis. Although laminitis occurs in the feet the underlying cause is often a disturbance elsewhere in the horse s body. Common causes of laminitis in horses laminitis in horses is caused by the number of different factors acting alone or in combination. Overload inflammatory and metabolic.

The most famous example of this was the american racehorse barbaro who had a. The type of food that causes laminitis is rich young spring grass with high levels of fructans. However rich grass can cause the problem at any time of the year and even frosty grass in the winter can damage the digestion in the gut so much that the wrong sort of bacteria starts to multiply and release toxins. Many causes of laminitis have been suggested but currently only 5 causes have reliably induced laminitis experimentally.

Laminitis involves the failure of the bond between the hoof wall and the distal phalanx commonly called the coffin bone pedal bone or third phalanx p3. Laminitis means inflammation of the laminae of the horse s hoof.