Wednesday, December 19, 2012
This is Luke. He appeared online as a free horse last week, and a
local rescue group agreed to take him if someone could go pick him up in
Laramie, WY. I had time yesterday afternoon before the snowstorm
rolled in, so a friend and I went up to get him. He spent the night at
my place last night and the owner of the rescue picked him up from me
this afternoon to take him down to Berthoud where her rescue is
located. He looks pretty good in these pictures, it's hard to show
exactly how thin he is. I would put him at a 0.5 to 1 on the body
condition scale, and it's amazing to me how an animal this emaciated
stays upright. It may sound a bit morbid, but he would have been a good
candidate for painting the anatomy onto a horse, because you can see
and feel every tuberosity and joint on him. Just bones and hair. He
has a little bit of a belly in these photos because he was able to
slowly eat grass hay all night out of a small mesh hay net in the
stall. Hopefully it wasn't too much, but I didn't want him to be cold.
You have to reintroduce feed very carefully to a horse in this
condition so that you don't overload the liver and kidneys with
protein. He is old, probably a 25 year old quarter horse, and I wish
him all the best in his new start.
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