Horses are experts at selecting the most delicious feedstuffs with their prehensile lips, sorting through hay, bedding, grass, and more to find the perfect morsel. But, they're also notorious troublemakers, getting into mischief and even consuming things they shouldn’t, including wire. | Photo: iStock

Horses are experts at selecting the most delicious feedstuffs—and weeding out the bits and pieces they’d rather not eat (even tiny pills meant to help them)—with their prehensile lips, sorting through hay, bedding, grass, and more to find the perfect morsel.  

On the other hand, horses are notorious troublemakers, getting into mischief and even consuming things they shouldn’t, including bits of wire. While wire ingestion was once considered a death sentence, researchers recently found that surgery can save some affected horses, especially if the foreign body is identified and treated early.

“Early recognition and treatment that addresses the (related) perforations, peritonitis, and abscesses results in the best outcomes,” said researcher Eileen S. Hackett, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVS, AVCECC, of the Colorado State University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, in Fort Collins