The Emergency

Every year at the Sanctuary, we juggle our grazing to keep our horses well and pain-free. When a horse is starting to show signs of laminitis, we remove them from grass entirely and feed them a specialised diet to reduce their sugar intake. But as the weather changes more and more each year, more and more horses are succumbing to the problem and we are running out of space to keep them off grass. This year, the weather conditions are proving to be particularly bad and we need to create a bespoke area of the site where groups of horses can live and recover together safely - without a blade of grass in sight!

If we can't get some of the horses into an area like this when they are having a flare up, we run the risk of losing them altogether.......

The Cause

Long gone are the days when we could expect the grass to grow throughout Spring and Summer, giving the horses months of lovely pasture, only then to start introducing hay into their diet during the Autumn to prepare them for the colder months when it would become their primary source of food.

The increasingly warm Spring seasons have had less rain, leading to even drier and hotter Summers. The grass isn’t being given the chance to grow and provide our horses with the food they need. Whilst we have all been used to the occasional dry year, it is now becoming the norm……

Horses and ponies need a certain amount of sugar to fuel their bodies, just like we do. They have evolved to live on grass, which provides sugar as its primary fuel and fibre that is essential for their gut health. But also like us, too much sugar is not good news, and when the grass they are eating is high in sugar, the problems arise.

It is tempting to think that a very short, grazed pasture is safe because there’s “nothing there,” but such short pastures present several risks. Most of the sugar in grass tends to be in the bottom 3 to 4 inches so short grass is terribly sweet and very short grass trying to grow is also very stressed, meaning that it can also be very high in sugar. When the grass does manage to pop up, it is simply more than the horses can cope with……

The Solution

So what can we do? Instead of firefighting each year when our horses are showing signs of a flare up and already need our help, we must find a way to protect them even more by futureproofing our Sanctuary and preventing them from being at risk in the first place.

A few years ago, we tried something similar for our Shetland herd (see photos in the gallery!) Shetland Ponies are prone to very painful laminitis as they evolved to live in the harsh and sparse Shetland Isles and not the lush counties of England. We created a surface area that our Shetlands could comfortably spend time in when the grass was too sweet for them – constructed with a soft surface so they could lay down and snooze, yet was grass and hence sugar free. It has been an amazing success – they have been able to live out all year round (they do prefer the space and freedom and not being confined in a barn or stable), yet our instances of laminitis have reduced dramatically, almost totally – it’s great.

Learning from this success, we hope to now provide a space for our larger horses that follows the same principles, thereby extending this care approach to them too. If we create a grass-free paddock alongside one of our fields, where the horses that are at risk can live off grass, yet still outside surrounded by their friends and not confined in a stable, we can manage their sugar intake, reduce the risk of a flare up and keep them healthy – and pain free.

It’s not a complicated idea, but it is quite a large project to complete! We hope you will help us – laminitis and insulin spikes are painful (as both cause inflammation of the laminae in the hoof) and they both can also cause a rotation of the pedal bone in the foot, which can be fatal.

By tackling the effects of the changes in weather we have seen in the past few years head on, we can care for our herds to the best of our abilities – we would love to not be in this position (poor mother nature), but as we are, it’s our best option.

Will you help us? We know it is a huge ask. You will, quite honestly, be saving the lives of our horses prone to these conditions.

Thank you!

The Science Bit

How high sugar cause laminitis and insulin spikes and the risks…..

Horses evolved to graze rough grass and scrublands which would have consisted of low-sugar plants, and they would have consumed this energy source steadily over the course of the day. As such, their bodies never needed to cope with high levels of sugar and they therefore don’t have the capacity to do so.

Typical paddock grass that we know today, can contain as much as 15% of simple sugars, meaning that a pony weighing 250kg could consume as much as 2kg of simple sugar per day just from grazing.

When a horse digests sugars, it enters the blood stream as glucose. The pancreas releases the hormone insulin, which in turn helps process the glucose by allowing it to enter the cells of the muscles, liver and fat of the body where it can be used for energy straight away or stored for later use. The horse may also put on weight hence the number of fat cells increases.

If a horse receives too much sugar in their diet, extra insulin is released which signals the liver to store the excess glucose in the blood. That all seems perfectly clever, but the horse’s own body fat cells can disrupt the process as they too produce a chemical which confuses the message being given out. This can cause the body to produce even more insulin as it thinks it needs to. Hence the spike in the insulin levels.

This sudden spike in glucose in the blood and/or insulin levels causes damage to the horse’s body, most notably in the laminar tissues of the feet, resulting in laminitis.

Laminar tissue act like velcro to support the pedal bone – the main foundation of a horse’s foot. The pedal bone secures tendons and ligaments and provides the strength and stability of the hoof so is incredibly important. Laminitis causes the supporting tissue to stretch, weaken and become damaged which can cause the pedal bone to move within the foot and rotate. In some cases, this rotation can risk the bone actually popping out of the sole of the hoof which is excruciatingly painful and leads to euthanasia in order to end the horse’s suffering.