I care for a 4yo Percheron gelding that has been dealing with health issues starting around 4-6mo after he arrived at the end of August 2023.

His history: I viewed and test rode him at the beginning of July 2023, he was started for riding and driving, I even test rode him. I looked at all four hooves, he had a construction nail in his back hoof that we pulled out and he walked fine on it. All hooves looked healthy but I decided to have X-rays done on his hooves as a precaution because of the nail. He also had X-rays done on his cannons and hocks, his PPE came back clean so we moved forward with purchase.

He arrived at the end of August- beginning of September and a front hoof had been completely overgrown with sole over the frog. I mean the one sulci was just gone, there was nothing to pick. The sole had just grown over the sulci and onto the frog, never seen anything like it and neither had my farrier. He wasn’t lame so we just decided to slowly chip away at it each trim. He was on 24hr turnout and the pasture had some serious hills/slopes on it. After about two months we started to get concerned he was developing OCDs, about two months later we got X-rays and one had a full bone chip separated and the other had a slightly more minor OCD.

2-4mo after that he started coming up lame on the front overgrown hoof. Treated it as an abscess, it popped, but lameness continued. Then we took X-rays and found the overgrown hoof also had deterioration of the coffin bone on one side. He has been on stall rest and small turn out (about 40ft x 20ft area) since then. The vet said he will have recurring abscesses until the coffin bone heals. Vet said that there must have been some sort of trauma to the hoof between my looking at him and his arrival here but we have no idea what could’ve caused it. Since spring of 2024 he has been on this routine of stall rest, small turn out, and abscess treatment, around 6mo.

Recently despite being on stall rest and small turn out the worse OCD has seemed to be bothering him more. He’s been trying to avoid putting weight on it when he can and the last few days has been stocked up more in that leg. He currently gets Surpass paste on his hocks and vet said next option would be Equioxx, we will likely start that soon but I know it’s going to take a toll on his organs over time, and he’s only 4. His OCDs cannot be operated on, our local vet doesn’t have the facilities or surgeon to do so and drafts are extremely sensitive to anesthesia so our vet said putting a draft under will give us a 50/50 chance if he’ll even wake back up. If we wanted to take him to a different vet we would have to put him on a boat which will be expensive and very stressful for him, plus the inherent risk he may not even wake up after surgery.

I feel bad for this poor guy being so young and dealing with so many health issues and also for the owners who had only just bought him with a clean PPE. The last X-rays of his hoof were in July and showed some progress on the healing of his coffin bone, albeit very minimal. So the hoof care and stall rest could continue for as long as a year as far as I’m concerned, while his OCDs will always be a problem and best we can do is pain management.

Im just considering his quality of life. We bring other horses over to him to groom over the stall gate but he is DESPERATE for more social interaction. There’s also a chance he may never be cleared for our large pastures at the risk of worsening his OCDs since he will charge down the big hills without any concern for his injuries.

I’m just wondering what others would do in my situation. How long would you continue trying and treating him before deeming his quality of life as questionable? I don’t want to give up on him but at the same time I feel like he has SO much life to live left and I can’t imagine the rest of it confined to a 14x14 stall and tiny turnout area plus limited socialization with the herd. He’s already uncomfortable and unhappy and I can’t imagine him being like this for 10 more years let alone 5.

If his hoof recovers the great, but he still has OCDs. Would you still keep him on limited turnout to extend his hock health or would you put him back at 24hr turnout and just let him enjoy what life his hocks have left until he really can’t handle it anymore?

We’ll be doing more X-rays of his hoof in a few months to check healing progress and go from there but I’d love some outside perspective. I’ve never dealt with a horse that got so many problems in such a short time while so young and I just don’t want to be too emotional to draw out suffering or be too separated from my emotions to suggest euthanasia unnecessarily or too soon.