Horse Injury Care
Kathy Anderson
Author
08/28/2024
Added
4
Plays
Description
Horse Injury Care
Searchable Transcript
Toggle between list and paragraph view.
- [00:00:00.960]I think it's very important for anyone to understand a little bit of basic emergency
- [00:00:04.260]care and some wound care for our horses. And so first what I'm going to show you is how
- [00:00:08.520]to wrap a leg if you would say potentially have an injury, some type of cut, here somewhere
- [00:00:13.120]in the middle of the lower leg. Some of the materials that we're going to use are basically
- [00:00:17.760]a 4x4 gauze pad and we're going to put it just as if we had an open wound on that horse.
- [00:00:22.860]Then we have a type of a wrap, this is a quilt wrap that we're going to use. Many times when
- [00:00:27.400]a veterinarian first comes to wrap a leg they might use a roll type gauze and that's an
- [00:00:33.000]excellent pressure type of wrap but over time if you have to wrap that leg continuously
- [00:00:37.560]one of these types of wraps is very handy because you can wash it and replace it. Also
- [00:00:43.100]many times what your veterinarian initially will use is vet wrap which is this which is
- [00:00:48.120]very nice and you can get a nice good pressure on it and it will stick to itself and so it
- [00:00:52.680]really is an excellent wrap to use. However you can only use it once, it's not reusable
- [00:00:57.000]and you don't want to use it all at once. If you do use it all at once you're going
- [00:00:57.380]to have to be careful because you can get this type of wrap a little bit too tight and
- [00:01:01.540]so that's a little bit with our vet wrap. What I'm going to show you today is how to
- [00:01:04.940]wrap this with a polo wrap because they are nice, you can reuse them and once you've gone
- [00:01:10.520]through some initial stages of wanting a lot of pressure this is what you can use to wrap
- [00:01:14.540]that leg every day if you need to change it.
- [00:01:17.920]So we're going to say that this horse has a potential injury here somewhere in this
- [00:01:22.080]area and right over that laceration cut whatever it might be we're going to put some type of
- [00:01:27.360]usually an ointment or a salve whatever your veterinarian recommends and we'll put some
- [00:01:31.740]type of 4x4 or gauze pad over there just to help to protect that area.
- [00:01:36.540]Sometimes we might also wrap it with a little bit of roll gauze and that just depends on
- [00:01:41.080]the location of the injury and how severe it might be.
- [00:01:44.920]Then whether you're using the roll cotton or a regular wrap such as this we're going
- [00:01:51.020]to wrap it in the same way where we're going to bring it around that horse's leg and handle
- [00:01:55.060]it so we're unrolling it as we take it out.
- [00:01:57.340]Take it around that horse's leg.
- [00:01:59.540]It's very important that we keep it very smooth down the back of his tendons, the backside
- [00:02:03.840]of his legs because those are very, lie just underneath the skin and unless, if you have
- [00:02:09.460]a lot of wrinkles and that in this wrap you could injure those tendons.
- [00:02:14.300]So with the Polar Wrap I'm going to start it somewhere in the middle and take it around
- [00:02:20.240]to the front and bring it around and start relatively in the middle of the horse's cannonbone
- [00:02:25.820]taking it down.
- [00:02:27.320]And each layer is going to overlap the previous one and then I'm going to start it back up
- [00:02:32.920]the leg like so, finish it just underneath that horse's knee and then I'm going to wrap
- [00:02:40.000]it back down lower so it comes out and finishes somewhere right kind of in the middle of that
- [00:02:45.700]horse's cannonbone.
- [00:02:47.760]A couple of things to remember is you can see that I left some of the white quilt at
- [00:02:51.440]the bottom and the top and that's really important so that this bandage does not cut out the
- [00:02:57.300]circulation of that horse and this is, if you can feel it, it's not overly firm but
- [00:03:02.060]it's firm enough to give that leg some support and help that wound heal up as
- [00:03:07.160]as possible. Many times you're going to want to take this off daily, hydro that leg, run
- [00:03:12.180]cold water on it, and then replace it until that wound is nice and healed up. Sometimes
- [00:03:17.040]you'll run into a horse that has some type of injury to their foot. They might have stepped
- [00:03:20.540]on something and run a nail into it, they might have a bruise, an abscess, or something
- [00:03:24.800]wrong with the horse's foot. It's important if you notice that before your veterinary
- [00:03:28.520]can get there to go ahead and pull the nail out or whatever it might be and go ahead and
- [00:03:32.960]protect the bottom of that horse's foot so you don't make the injury even worse. So one
- [00:03:37.160]thing you can do is you might put some iodine or betadine on there. Go ahead and cover it
- [00:03:41.800]with a piece of gauze to help cover that area that might be affected. Also, it's handy if
- [00:03:48.340]you have some basic household foil, aluminum foil, that you can go ahead and cover the
- [00:03:52.900]bottom of the foot with that foil. Then really one of the best things to secure all that
- [00:03:58.120]onto that bottom of the horse's foot is some duct tape. And we're going to go ahead and
- [00:04:01.860]take and pretty much just basically cover this horse's foot with the duct tape. And
- [00:04:07.160]that duct tape to keep everything kind of clean and protect the bottom of that foot.
- [00:04:16.580]So I'm going to take it several rounds, so pretty much just cover everything over his
- [00:04:21.380]foot, secure it on down, and go ahead and you can see it's going to make a pretty
- [00:04:32.220]nice bandage there on the bottom of his foot. They also like to say that it's a
- [00:04:37.160]good vapor barrier, so it's not going to allow moisture to the bottom of the foot.
- [00:04:41.000]Something that's very important, however, is that the duct tape only stays on the hoof
- [00:04:45.160]wall. You don't want it to get up over into the hairline of that horse because you can
- [00:04:49.680]have some issues of circulation. So that's just an example of one way that you can wrap
- [00:04:54.280]the bottom of that horse's foot if you have an injury that you find. This horse just happens
- [00:04:58.200]to have a cut on her leg that I thought I'd take just a moment or two and talk about.
- [00:05:02.720]They're going to get cut any different kind of ways. She might have stuck her leg through
- [00:05:06.160]a fence.
- [00:05:07.160]I'm not exactly sure how this happened. This cut is really very much on the good healing
- [00:05:11.320]side of it. Some cuts you can suture, some cuts you can't. Part of it depends on what's
- [00:05:17.020]happened to them. Part of it depends also when you might have found it. I'm assuming
- [00:05:21.400]most likely when this cut was first found, we did go ahead and have it wrapped to some
- [00:05:26.060]degree. Now at the point of where it is, you can see there's nice granulation tissue coming
- [00:05:30.720]in. It still is weeping just a little bit, but it is healing up quite well. We want to
- [00:05:35.840]be careful that it heals up nicely.
- [00:05:37.160]It's nice and smooth that we don't get what we call proud flush developing. Even on this
- [00:05:41.260]cut at this stage, it's probably not a bad idea to do hydrotherapy, basically run water
- [00:05:45.700]on it to help keep it clean. One of the most difficult things about wound care on horses
- [00:05:50.240]is trying to keep the flies out of it. At certain times of the year, through the summer
- [00:05:54.380]months and fall months than it is, can be a very big problem of flies getting into those
- [00:05:59.300]wounds and really slowing down how that they're going to heal.
- [00:06:02.600]So sometimes there's different sads and ointments you can put on them. Sometimes you might have
- [00:06:07.160]to keep a wrap on them basically so the flies stay out of them, which those flies will slow
- [00:06:11.720]down how well that they do heal.
- [00:06:13.180]you
- [00:06:13.260]Thank you.
The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!
You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.
Log in to post comments
Embed
Copy the following code into your page
HTML
<div style="padding-top: 56.25%; overflow: hidden; position:relative; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1;">
<iframe
style="bottom: 0; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; border: 0; height: 100%; width: 100%;"
src="https://mediahub.unl.edu/media/22827?format=iframe&autoplay=0"
title="Video Player: Horse Injury Care"
allowfullscreen
></iframe>
</div>
Comments
0 Comments