Wounds and scarring on pasterns, a "?"

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Heidi

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My 2 year old filly injured her Left rear pastern about 10 days ago. I do not know how she did it, it looks like a twine-tangle injury, but I could find no twine!

I feed round bales and remove the twine when it goes into the feeder. She is also kept in a pipe-panel corral. Each panel has a center section of flat metal to support the pipe rails, and if she had rolled and put her foot through the panel, I suppose she could have kicked the double flat metal and injured her pastern...but the wounds were even in depth/width and the upper one curved around her pastern for a bit...so I don't think it could be the fence.

The wounds were parallel, and about 1.5" apart, diagonal and ran from her heel bulb area and up, the uppermost wound curving around her pastern to the inside. Stitches not required.

I applied Furasin for the first three days and Corona for the remainder of treatment. It has been almost two weeks, and it has stopped having scabs to clean up at application-time and is no longer 'open'.

I have been told that she will scar because the skin over bones has less blood flow than skin over muscles. I have been hoping that by continually applying the Corona will allow everything to stay soft and perhaps heal without scars...what are my chances of her healing without scarring?

Heidi
 
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WE had one get caught up in rope once when tied out. She is a silver bay mare, she has a nice very noticable white line around her lower leg.
 
From what I've seen, severe rope burn type of injuries to the back of the pastern almost always leave scar tissue. Sometimes the hair grows in white, sometimes it's just a hairless scar.

We had a yearling get tangled up in a pipe & wire gate--he took off a lot of hide with a combination of scrapes & cuts. He healed up quite well; you have to look very closely--actually you almost have to feel the leg, not just look at it--to "see" that there is a scar on the one pastern. There's just a faint bump of scar tissue that is mostly hair covered.

Depending on just how serious these wounds were, you may just get lucky and get away with very little scarring. It will no doubt take a long time before you will know for sure.
 
Here are two things that I use and I swear to you it prevented scarring on a horse that should have been loaded with scars and hair grew back right.

Granulex (spray can)

Then after that, on top, mix into a paste a generous portion of Zinc Oxyde with Desitin and Corn Starch and apply liberally. Or you can subsitute powder forms of sulphur instead of corn starch.
 
Sulpher? I have MTG and recall reading something about MTG and wound healing...maybe I'll give that a try!? After I check that the wounds really ARE closed. I don't know if sulpher burns or not...

Heidi
 
My Arab had a horrible, horrible accident a few years ago where he bolted through a no-climb horse fence and into our "back 40" and got trapped in some 20 year old barb wire we didn't know was there. By the time we found him he had been standing there trapped between three strands at his chest and a loose strand wrapped around his right hind pastern for about twenty minutes, constantly kicking and sawing the barbs across his hip and pastern the whole time. The damage was horrible.

It took ages and ages to heal, long after the rest of the deep scratches on his body had healed, and eventually all the skin at the back of his pastern formed into one big leather strip (there is no other way to describe the scab) that was attached at each end and not at all in the middle. It finally fell away and the wounds at the corners eventually healed up. I expected all sorts of damage but the last time I clipped it (he's a retiree and rarely gets neatened up anymore) I was surprised to find the skin smooth and pretty much blemish-free. If there is white hair I wouldn't be able to tell, that boy has knee-high whites on all four.
rolleyes.gif


So if my then 26 year old can heal from THAT, so can your two year old. Youngsters heal better anyway.

Good luck!

Leia
 
I would use a vitamin E ointment. It will speed up the healing and minimize the scarring. Its available at any drug store but you might have to ask for it. Very reasonably priced and a good healing ointment. Its been said that it will heal up a fence hole in a hog and hair it over in three days !!! (sorry a bit longer for horses)
 
My mare has scars on her pasterns, on the hind legs....I think she had them when I bought her, but from my experience, it isn't easy to get hair to grow back on legs. Good luck!
 
I checked out Q's leg closely this am. There are no more scabs and the wound lines look smooth and clean with new skin. No bumpy flesh. I am hoping they will hair over... I guess I'll know in a few weeks?

The original wounds looked like twine-tangle (but I didn't find any twine in the stall/corral) didn't look like they'd been "sawed", they were very narrow, like she'd maybe kicked and the twine pressed into her flesh, cutting the skin before breaking the twine.

There is a possiblilty she kicked a metal part of the pipe-panel fencing, but I really do not know what caused the wounds. I go over her stall/corral every day picking poops and checking the walls/fence. Just amazing that if there is ONE THING that can hurt the horse, even the tiniest possibility of harming it, the horse will find it.

Heidi
 
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