A newborn foal, teetering on spidery legs, has a knock-kneed, awkward charm that can melt the hardest of hearts. But it’s not so charming if, after a couple of weeks, his legs still look as if they’re bending in all the wrong places. Some crookedness of the limbs is to be expected in most newborns, but generally it resolves of its own accord within a week or two. When it doesn’t, you might have a foal with an angular limb deformity.

A number of factors can contribute to the birth of a crooked foal, including genetics (inheriting faulty conformation from sire and/or dam), fractures leading to growth deviations, and hormonal imbalances the mare might experience while pregnant. The foal’s abnormal position in the uterus also has been implicated in some cases, as have unbalanced nutritional programs that fail to provide the fetus with the nutrients it needs for optimal bone and cartilage growth.

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