Donkeys and mules have played, and continue to play, an important role on the equine stage. Mules in particular are used for everything from pleasure riding and packing to dressage, racing, and jumping. Donkeys are family pets in many instances and, of course, are a necessary ingredient in the production of mules. While there are some similarities between donkeys and horses, there also are

My yearling Standardbred colt has been diagnosed with a dentigerous cyst by the veterinarian. Can you possibly give me some information on this type of cyst?

It sounds completely backwards, the idea that you might actually increase health risks by postponing training and competition until a horse is four or older. It goes against the ages-old and widely held belief that you cause damage by initiating work before a horse’s skeleton matures. Yet research conducted from the 1980s through the present day has steadily been debunking the old theories,

I purchased my horse a year ago knowing he had some aggression problems. He is great around people, just not around other horses. Unfortunately, when he attacks, he goes for the throat just behind the jaw line.

Cats Don’t Dance, the remaining injured Saddlebred under treatment at Hagyard-Davidson-McGee (HDM) Associates in Lexington, Ky., is recovering well, according to his treating veterinarian. On Aug. 27 he was ready to return home shortly.

The 6-year-old gelding is one of five Saddlebreds which were maliciously injected in the back of their left front pasterns with a necrotizing substance

The scientists who produced the world’s first equine clone announced that the third cloned mule foal was born about 1:30 a.m. on July 27.

The team includes Gordon Woods, DVM, MS, PhD, Dipl. ACT, and Dirk Vanderwall, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACT, both University of Idaho professors of animal and veterinary science; and Ken White, PhD, a professor in Utah State University’s Animal, Dairy and

When feeding horses at pasture or in large paddocks, it can often be a challenge to make sure each horse gets his share of the feed, while reducing waste and feed contamination. Management is the key to successfully feeding horses in a group setting, minimizing social stress and nutritional problems.

The world’s first cloned horse, created by Italian scientists from a mare’s skin cell, has been born, according to a Washington Post article.

The birth of the healthy foal, announced in the Aug. 7 issue of the journal Nature, brings to nine the number of mammalian species that scientists have cloned from adult cells, along with sheep, mice, rabbits, goats, cats, pigs,

Now is the time to make improvements to your pastures in order to have the best and most nutritious grazing for your horses next spring. A well-maintained pasture also offers a practical and economic break for you, as well. Through pasturing, your feed and supplement costs are likely to be reduced, particularly if you have a mature, idle horse, or a mare in the early stages of gestation. Plus

Approval of the Parelli Natural Horsemanship University in late June as a private occupational school by the Colorado Department of Higher Education distinguished Parelli Natural Horse-Man-Ship (PNH) as the first such institution in the country to do so, according to Neil Pye, dean of instructors and of the group’s international study centers. Key to the unanimous approval given by Colorado’s

Because of the demands of competition and sales, following the natural reproductive cycle dictated by Mother Nature often doesn’t fit into man’s breeding program. While Mother Nature’s time frame stipulates that the mare should be receptive to the stallion in late spring/early summer to produce a foal when the grass is green and the weather is warm, man, as steward of the horse, often has

The inaugural “Bridge to the Future” veterinary conference, hosted by Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, was held in Providence, RI, on Aug. 10-11. This year’s speakers included Mary Rose Paradis, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVIM, associate professor of large animal medicine at Tufts, who spoke about geriatric horses and ponies. Paradis discussed the results of a recent study designed to

There are limited options for effective treatment of horses with lameness due to chronic laminitis. A common practice involves therapeutic shoeing, which is intended to reduce pain, aid in healing, and help return the horse to activity. Recently, researchers from Texas A&M University examined four types of therapeutic shoes to determine their effectiveness at rapidly reducing pain and

Texas officials have detected the state’s first case of anthrax for 2003 in a white-tailed deer near Del Rio. “It’s not unusual to have a few cases of anthrax in livestock or deer each year in Texas,” said Bob Hillman, DVM, state veterinarian and executive director for the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC), the state’s livestock health regulatory agency.

Anthrax naturally occurs in

Busy training schedules and fears about injury often limit pasture access for performance horses. Prolonged stall confinement, however, can be detrimental to a horse’s attitude. Boredom can lead to destructive behaviors, including weaving, pawing, and ingestion of bedding. Recently, researchers from Southampton and Leicestershire in the United Kingdom, collaborated on a study to examine the