Hey all -
Just curious if anyone else has noticed an uptick in injuries? Most of my horses are lightly trained and race 1x per month, so it seems strange that so many should be injured on the regular.
I’ve had my ponies on roughly the same training regimen for 3-4 years now. I’ve noticed much more frequent injuries the last maybe two years. With the frequency, I keep thinking to myself that about half the racing string have been injured at some point, possibly more.
I’m in the same boat. Thankfully, no broken legs yet. But commonly, it’s overheating. Maybe I just haven’t bred sound ponies?
I’ve definitely noticed an upsweep in injuries this year (and often with horses freshly shipped to the track or having rested for a couple weeks following a race). Usually heat or cuts. No broken legs.
I’ve gotten a couple bowed tendons this year, among other more minor injuries. I’ve gotten to a point where I come in expecting to see an injury notification. That being said, I’ve been investigating the histories of those horses that seem to be injury prone, and they seem to come from mares that were either injury prone themselves or who have consistently produced injury-prone offspring. I know that up until this breeding season, I hadn’t been paying much attention to soundness in my breeding stock, so there’s a chance that my carelessness has caused a lot of this for me. I don’t know if that’s the case for everyone, though.
The code behind the injuries definitely hasn’t changed, but I haven’t looked to see if the overall soundness level is decreasing over the years.
I actually looked into the “injury via bloodline” thing and did discover a few mares/studs were consistently throwing injury-prone offspring. I booted a few out. May need to give the whole herd an evaluation, as I really only focused on specific stallions and mares…
Oh good, so it’s not just me?
My horses only walk the minimal amount during training and I still get plenty of injuries, including an occasional serious one like overheating or broken legs. I wish there was a way to set training requirements, i.e. not to train if below a certain energy level. My training schedule sometimes has them go for a short walk the day after a race, which seems to lead to more injuries (even if it would be totally ok in the real world to walk a half mile the next day).
@ivycreekfarm - you can set minimum energy levels for training. See this thread here New Feature: Automatic Training Limits
Oh my gosh, THANK YOU! I hadn’t seen that post yet. Hopefully this helps to reduce our injuries!
I was curious and counted up “Last Injuries” in my Training summary per horse and while it doesn’t account for ALL injuries all the time, there’s a notable upswing for # of recorded last injuries per year:
2020 - 7
2021 - 11
2022 - 18
2023 - 40
Most of my horses already had twice as many starts this time last year versus now, many of my 3yo+ horses are on new training schedules this year vs. prior years, but 2yo’s haven’t changed and that’s still a dramatic leap. And this was all BEFORE the training energy restriction, lol (for me I already had it set to a minimum of B and I still had a ton of injuries. Now it’s set to A and I’ve still had a string of injuries like heat/limping/swelling).
Maybe everyone -is- weak-boned and genetically unsound, now.
I started investigating that idea and I’m not sure where prevalence for injury comes in. There are several that have very sound dams that are injured several times. If I had time it would be easier to investigate soundness in sire lineages. I think it would be super interesting.