Vetted a gorgeous filly with 2 shallow OCD's in her stifles that the vet (very good, well respected vet) thinks is on the tail end and that they will clear themselves up with 30 days of stall rest.  My question, are OCD'd the deal breaker they used to be? 

My other one had an OCD removed out of her back stifle, she was never once lame on it, and has been in barrel training with zero issues in her 9 months of training, and yet people find out that she had one removed 18 months ago and it disuades them, no matter the fact that it has never bothered her and she xrays clean now.

OCDs aren't created equally and there are some that are worse than others. If its a lateral trochlear ridge OCD of the stifle, I don't get too excited. I remove and move on with it. If it's on the medial femoral condyle, I get a little more worried. If it's just a flattening with no other signs of problems, no additional OA, and I already own the horse, I just go on with it. If theres a osseous cyst like lesion in the medial femoral condyle, I do not purchase. Or a decent enough OCD of the MFC where I can see a fragment or cloaca. Those are deal  breakers.  OCDs elsewhere are a case by case basis. 

When they have OCD surgery it never looks completely normal compared to a joint that never had surgery because they have to curette out at least some subchondral bone. I bought a horse who had OCD surgery before he was broke to ride. I was glad the previous owner took care of the surgery and fixed it before the horse ever leearned what pain was. But again it was a lateral trochlear ridge OCD which have pretty good prognoses anyway. 

Sounds like you know waht you are looking at/talking about:) I should send you the xrays lol; the vet was sure it was on the tail end of it correct itself.

depending on the age of the horse that could very well be so. When caught early in weanlings and yearlings, you can do some things with their nutrition as well as try injecting the joint with stanozolol and some other things to try and get it to improve. I don't know the exact odds, but a significant amount do with reduced/controlled activity and diet change +/- injections or other therapies. 

Well...she IS a vet. So there's that.

I will always pass on them if I find one in a PPE. I've passed on three this year! 

I have done feeding programs for a number of them. The hard thing to get across is that what they are seeing is what was started several months before. They may well get worse for a while, even with a nutrition adjustment. Typically, if not too advanced, we try to bland the diet out to limit the inbalance in growth rate between hard and soft tissue. 

Would you mind taking a peak? I would love a second opinion!

Were they older horses or younger horses? If the vet says they are mild and they look to be correcting themselves, would that have changed your thoughts? I know i have had 3 vetted this year that I passed on, one had the start of navicular, the other had coffin bone issues, and one was just a flat out mess.