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The animals
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Lameness
| Imagine the searing pain of a twisted ankle. You can barely put weight on your foot, but you have a heavy load you must carry for miles along narrow, rutted dirt tracks, strewn with rocks and potholes. Every step is agony.
Research by the Brooke has shown that up to 90% of horses and donkeys working in the countries where we operate are lame or walk abnormally, mostly because they are suffering acute pain in the foot, leg or joints.
What are the main causes of lameness? |
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Overworking
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Overloading
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Giving an animal an unbalanced load
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Poor and uneven terrain
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Putting an animal to work too young
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Pulling poorly maintained carts - particularly if wheels are not symmetrical
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Poor farriery, for example, where a horseshoe nail is in the wrong place
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Lack of hoof care leading to overgrown hooves
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| How does the Brooke help animals suffering from lameness? |
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Treatment with painkillers and dressing and bandaging
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Rest for the animal, and follow up checks from a Brooke vet or community animal health worker
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Training owners to prevent lameness altogether | | | %239%23.jpg)
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| How can lameness be prevented?
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 | | | Owners are shown simple ways to prevent and recognise the signs of lameness before it becomes a serious problem, such as checking and cleaning their animals’ hooves daily, and making sure that their animal is not overloaded. Common welfare problems within communities can also be discussed and addressed in the many sessions run by the Brooke. |
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And it’s so important that problems are addressed. Lameness can mean a lifetime of working in agony, or even abandonment by poverty stricken owners who can’t afford to keep animals who cannot work.
Yet the cost for a footsore horse to be reshod is as little as 74p, and £16.80 could pay for all the lameness treatment carried out by a mobile team for a whole month – which could prevent a lifetime of agony for so many working horses and donkeys.
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