A new study from the UK suggests that how we handle the first few hours after a wound occurs matters more, and varies more, than we might like to admit.
Researchers at the University of Nottingham, in collaboration with the British Horse Society, asked owners to report on real wounds in their own horses, from injury through to healing, rather than studying horses already in a referral hospital. They gathered data on 219 horses (Birnie et al., 2026). Of course, this is a self-selected UK sample, so it does not map perfectly onto South African conditions, but the picture of what owners actually do is useful anywhere.
The wounds were familiar. Wire and fencing caused 38% of injuries, well ahead of kicks, and two-thirds were on a limb, most often the lower hindleg. The location matters, because position beats size in terms of importance: a small puncture near a joint can be far more dangerous than a large, shallow gash.
The more uncomfortable findings from the study, though, are about us as caretakers. A quarter of owners who gave first aid did not wash their hands first, and another quarter used water only when washing. Many of us reached for purple sprays, Sudocrem, creams and powders, that familiar collection, several of which can actually slow healing in real terms. Vets in the study favoured honey or silver dressings and hydrogels instead, and almost never used the purple spray.
Four things are worth taking from this study:
- Check your tetanus cover today.Eight percent of horses in the study were not properly covered. Tetanus is almost always fatal and almost entirely preventable, and a wound is how it gets in.
- Hygiene first, antibiotics second.Eighty percent of vet-treated wounds received antibiotics, which surprised the experts. Good cleaning and dressing often makes antibiotics unnecessary, and due to antimicrobial resistance patterns we need to protect these drugs and save them for cases that really need them.
- Have a plan before you need one.Know how you would transport a horse in an emergency, and how you would fund treatment. In South Africa, where referral hospitals can be a long drive away, that planning is not optional. Several owners in the UK also failed to plan for these eventualities, but distances are less of an issue there.
- When you are not sure, ask.One in five owners hesitated over whether to call the vet but if in doubt, send a photo, describe what you see, and call. The cost of an unnecessary call is small compared to the cost of septic arthritis.
Source: Birnie et al. (2026), Animals, https://doi.org/10.3390/ani16101474