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  Discussion on Stunted Colt Will He Catch Up?
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New Member:
hayseed

Posted on Saturday, Jan 24, 2009 - 8:09 pm:

I have a Paso Fino/? colt who was born 9/9/2007 to a maiden 3 yr old mare. At 8 wks old he got a respiratory infection & couldn't stand for over 4 weeks. We held him up so he could nurse but he would only nurse for about 3-5 minutes. We syringe fed him Foalac every 2 hrs from 1pm to 8am. He was not fed from 8am to 1pm due to our work schedules, so there were some serious nutritional gaps.

Long story short, he recovered. At 6 months the vet said he was loose in the rear pasterns & may be club footed due to his inability to stand for so long. He thought he would never be rideable.

Over the last 6 months his legs have improved & his activity level finally looks normal (he runs/bucks/plays). If he gets tall enough, I think he could be rideable. Last month he measured 48" tall at 16 months old.

Is it likely he'll be permanently stunted or is there a chance he might get a late growth spurt? I would love him to get tall enough for me to ride. Mare is 15 hands, no idea on the sire. He was gelded at 13 months.
Member:
maggienm

Posted on Sunday, Jan 25, 2009 - 10:09 am:

Hi Julie, Welcome to the forum. I can't speak to your question but wanted to say it sounds like you have worked hard to keep him going.

Do you know if the sire was 'horse size' or a pony?
Without knowing the sire it is a bit hard to know if your colt is stunted or the same as his sire?
Member:
mrose

Posted on Sunday, Jan 25, 2009 - 10:33 am:

Hi Julie, we had a premature foal born to a maiden mare that never developed any milk and who totally rejected him. He had a rough start. Although he never got really big, he certainly grew to a normal size and was fine in all other ways. I've had other foals that were small when they were born, and they also seemed to "catch up" as they got older with the help of good food and lots of exercise (turn out.)
New Member:
hayseed

Posted on Sunday, Jan 25, 2009 - 10:36 am:

We bought the mare off the Amish. They only had horses, no ponies. About 4 months after we got the mare she was gaining too much weight we asked them if she could be pregnant & they said "no way" she was just an easy keeper & suggested we cut back on her food. She was our first horse & we got a gelding shortly after. No stallions here.

So...unfortunately, we started cutting down on her feed for about a month until we finally called the vet out & had her tested & yup..she was pregnant. That was at the 8th month mark & admittedly she probably didn't get the nutrition she needed in foal. Could that have made the baby weak & stunted?
New Member:
hayseed

Posted on Sunday, Jan 25, 2009 - 10:46 am:

Hi Sarah. Thanks for the reply. I'm told Bravo was normal sized when he was born (I would't have known the difference), but at 6 months the vet said he still looked like a new born.

He's obviously grown since but at 16 months being 48" tall is what worries me. At times I read that there are additives you can put in their food to increase growth rate, but he has always been so fragile I would worry about forcing growth on him as well. Especially since his legs aren't 100% yet.
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Sunday, Jan 25, 2009 - 11:31 am:

Welcome Hayseed,
I agree with you that forcing growth is a mistake. I would suggest the recommendations in our article on feeding growing foals, Horse Care » Equine Nutrition, Horse Feeds, Feeding » Feeding the Growing Foal, Nutrition for Young Horses.

Neither can we speak to the stunted question as we have few facts and sometimes even so it is hard to guess. I have been surprised both ways. However at 16 months I don't think this is much off a expected 14 hand plus size. I have not done the calculations but if you will go to Horse Care » Routine Horse Care » Estimating Weight, Height, and Body Condition Scoring you can get a range of expected heights. Let us know what you get.
DrO
Member:
erika

Posted on Sunday, Jan 25, 2009 - 3:46 pm:

I'm curious if dwarfism is ever found in horses. I realize it is a problem in minis, but does it ever affect regular sized bloodlines?

Although Hayseed's foal doesn't sound incredibly small considering it's age and health history, I have a friend whose maiden Arab mare 15+hh, bred to a 15+hh stallion, produced a foal that never grew past a small weanling size. It wasn't pony proportioned, looked like a perfect light-bodied Arab last I saw nearly three years old. I know it had proper nutrition and good health. Would that be considered a dwarf?

Hope this is close enough to the original topic not to be a hijack...sorry if its too off topic.
Erika
Member:
warthog

Posted on Sunday, Jan 25, 2009 - 9:34 pm:

We had two foals born six days apart - same sire and moms were the same size. First foal was probably eight inches shorter and smaller than the second born. By eleven months they were pretty much identical in size and weight.

My guess would be that if a foal recovered at a fairly young age you won't lose much but paso finos run from 13 to almost 16 hands in size with a huge variety in body style and bone also, so there is really no telling how big he'll be. If he's well now I'd be willing to bet bet he'll catch up quite a bit.

One more tidbit - we own a very nice sized mare and her first foal ended up quite small. As far as I know he was not ill and his sire was good sized also. So sometimes you just get a smaller baby.

Oh - there was a study on thoroughbreds since thoroughbred breeders have a tendency to discard (sometimes literally) first foals because they are thought to be smaller, and although they are indeed smaller at birth, they had caught up by age 1 year and statistically there was no size difference between the maiden mare foals and older mare foals so this idea that first foals end up smaller is false on the average.
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Monday, Jan 26, 2009 - 11:48 am:

Dwarfism in people is often defined by height alone when they are less than some arbitrary standard. By this definition certainly some individual horses could be defined as a dwarf. However an abnormally short height is caused by hundreds of different conditions which cause a stunted size.

Here is a report of dwarfism in Freisans by a similar mechanism to the cause that effects most human dwarfs, genetic achonDrOplasia or dyschonDrOplasia. Note that these Freisans' had some of the same disportionate body characteristics of this common form of human dwarfism. Other forms of shortness in humans have proportional body parts and often have a hormonal or nutritional cause such as growth hormone deficiency. Though I don't find any good reports of such I do not know any reason horses could not suffer from them also.
DrO

Equine Vet J. 2008 May;40(3):282-7.Links
Phenotypic diagnosis of dwarfism in six Friesian horses.
Back W, van der Lugt JJ, Nikkels PG, van den Belt AJ, van der Kolk JH, Stout TA.
Department of Equine Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, Yalelaan 114, NL-3584 CM Utrecht, The Netherlands.

An extreme form of abnormal development, dwarfism, is common in man and some animals, but has not been officially reported in horses. Within the Friesian horse breed, congenital dwarfism has been recognised for many years, but no detailed report exists on its phenotype. The most salient feature of the dwarf synDrOme is the physeal growth retardation in both limbs and ribs. Affected animals have approximately 25% shorter fore- and hindlimbs and approximately 50% reduced bodyweight. Postnatal growth is still possible in these animals, albeit at a slower rate: the head and back grow faster than the limbs and ribs leading to the characteristic disproportional growth disturbance. Thus, adult dwarfs exhibit a normal, but a relatively larger head conformation, a broader chest with narrowing at the costochondral junction, a disproportionally long back, abnormally short limbs, hyperextension of the fetlocks and narrow long-toed hooves. Furthermore, a dysplastic metaphysis of the distal metacarpus and metatarsus is radiographically evident. Microscopic analysis of the growth plates at the costochondral junction shows an irregular transition from cartilage to bone, and thickening and disturbed formation of chonDrOcyte columns, which is similar to findings in osteochonDrOdysplasia.
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