Shadowrider - 2014-04-07 10:33 PM We had a calf horse fracture his navicular on the front. The vet sent xrays off all over the country to 8 different Big Vets to see what they thought. His was a verticle one, not good. 2 of the vets said turn him out and see what happens, horses can sure prove you wrong, the other 6 said put him down. We chose to give him a shot. I have a laser and lasered him and put magnetic bell boots on for a month, then turned him out to big pasture with broodmares. We did put a bar shoe on him for 3 months, this horse just limped slightly. After almost a year, he wasn't limping anymore, he does move a little different and you have to really look to see which foot it is. Took him to vet and shot some xrays and wow. It calcified and they told us to use him. I breakawayed some on him, then we gave him to a 10 year old boy to learn to rope and goat tie on. We have him back and he is such a really nice teaching horse, so will now be teaching my Grandaughters to breakaway. So don't count her out, she could suprise the vets!

casualdust07 - 2014-04-08 7:33 AM I would look into stem cell treatment. The kind they take from bone marrow and culture for 2-3 weeks. We just and a lecture on this at TAMU and they used it to fuse a hock who's tarsometarsal joint got severed in barbed wire. it was incredible. Because the wound was open they couldn't fuse it with a plate, so they had to just bandage and give stem cells and hope for the best. it healed really well and laid down a lot of new bone.