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What new wound research means for our horses

Most of us will have, at some stage, dealt with a wound, whether our horse has come in from the paddock with a gash or we spot a kick mark that wasn’t there yesterday. It is the everyday emergency, and a new study suggests that how we handle those first few hours is more variable, and more important, than we tend to realise.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham, working with the British Horse Society, asked owners to report on real wounds in their own horses, from the moment of injury through to final healing. Rather than studying horses already admitted to a referral hospital, which is where most published wound research comes from, they went to the people who see the wound first. They gathered detailed data on 219 horses, with full outcome data for 139 of them (Birnie et al., 2026).

It is worth saying up front that the study is a self-selected, owner-reported sample, mostly from the UK, so it does not tell us how common wounds are or map neatly onto our conditions here in South Africa. The authors are candid about the limits of the study in their write-up. What the study does give us, though, is an honest picture of what many owners actually do, and that picture is useful wherever you keep horses.

The wounds themselves

The findings of the study will not surprise any experienced stable managers here! The single most common cause of injury was wire and fencing, at 38% of cases, well ahead of kicks at 15%. The most common site was the lower hindlimb, with two-thirds of all wounds occurring on a limb (Birnie et al., 2026).

This fact matters because, unfortunately, limbs are where the trouble hides. As Horse and Hound’s veterinary contributor Karen Coumbe pointed out when the study was published, the position of a wound matters more than its size. As she notes, a large, dramatic-looking gash over muscle may heal cleanly, while a small puncture near a joint or tendon sheath can be career-ending or worse if it reaches a vital structure. Ultimately, the horse that looks lamer than the wound seems to justify is the one to worry about.

The study also revealed that the healing of wounds takes a lot of time. Wounds closed in a median of 60 days, and horses took a median of six and a half weeks to return to their previous level of work after the injury. Three of the 139 horses with outcome data were put down as a result of their injury (Birnie et al., 2026). Interestingly, and consistent with earlier research, ponies tended to heal within a tighter, more predictable window than horses.

Old fashioned methods

As is often the case, the more uncomfortable findings are about us, not the horses.

Owners gave first aid in two-thirds of cases, which is the right instinct. However, a quarter of those who did gave it without washing their hands at all, and another quarter washed with water only (Birnie et al., 2026). For a wound that is, by definition, an open door to infection, that is a serious issue and a simple gap for most of us to close.

Then there is the tack-room cabinet. The products owners reached for most often were purple and blue sprays, Sudocrem, silver creams, wound powders and, less often, manuka honey. Anyone who has spent time around horses in this country will recognise most of the ingredients on that shelf, but the trouble is that several of these familiar staples are not ideal on an open wound. Purple and blue sprays, oil-based creams and some powders can interfere with healing or obscure the wound surface, and the evidence has moved on from these to newer strategies, but the research suggests that many of us are unaware of this. Tellingly, when vets in the study treated wounds, they leaned toward honey and silver dressings or hydrogels, and almost never reached for the purple spray (Birnie et al., 2026).

None of this means throwing out your first aid kit in a panic (as we nearly did!). It instead means knowing that ‘what we have always used’ and ‘what helps the wound heal’ are not necessarily the same thing.

Antibiotics

One finding from the study deserves particular attention from a profession-wide point of view. Of the wounds seen by a vet, 80% received systemic antibiotics. Coumbe described that proportion as somewhat surprising, noting that effective cleaning and dressing can often make antibiotics unnecessary, and that these are precious medicines we cannot afford to overuse (Birnie et al., 2026) due to resistance patterns.

Antimicrobial resistance is not an argument against antibiotics when they are needed, but it is an argument for good wound hygiene as the first line of defence, so that antibiotics can be held in reserve for the cases that truly need them.

The bit we can plan

Perhaps the most important findings were about owner preparedness, and these do (mostly) translate directly to our conditions.

One in five owners was unsure or not confident about whether a wound needed a vet at all (Birnie et al., 2026). That hesitation, in the moment, is the difference between a wound caught early and one that has become a problem by morning.

In the study, 16% of owners had no access to emergency transport if their horse needed referral, and just over half had no insurance for veterinary fees, with around one in ten saying cost had limited their horse’s treatment. Costs ranged from nothing to several thousand pounds (Birnie et al., 2026). The specific figures are UK ones, but the lesson applies here too. If your horse is a long drive from the nearest equine hospital, as many in South Africa are, the time to work out how you would move a horse in an emergency, and how you would fund treatment is definitely before the incident, not once it has occurred.

The tetanus finding was also very relevant to our picture. In the study, 8% of horses were not appropriately covered against tetanus (Birnie et al., 2026). Tetanus is almost always fatal once established and almost entirely preventable, and a wound is exactly how it gets in. If you do one thing after reading this, make sure every horse on your property is up to date with their tetanus vaccine. There is no good reason for a horse to die of a disease that a vaccine prevents.

When to call the vet

The study’s clearest takeaway is also its simplest: when you are not sure, ask. A phone photograph or short video is easy to take and gives your vet a far better basis for advice than a description down the phone (though a picture can flatter a wound, so describe what you are seeing too). Call without hesitation if a wound is near a joint, tendon or the back of the knee or hock, if it is deep or a puncture, if the bleeding will not stop, if your horse is lame or seems dull and off, or if you simply cannot tell how bad the situation is. The downside of an unnecessary call is small compared to the downside of a missed septic arthritis.

Our take away – the first aid kit

One of our biggest takeaways is that a sensible, evidence-aligned first aid kit is important for all of us. In it, we need clean water or sterile saline for flushing, a means of clean lavage, a mild antiseptic such as dilute chlorhexidine, non-stick primary dressings, padding and bandaging and clean gloves. We’re going to, at least in our first aid kit, remove the purple spray, the powders and the oil-based creams that may all have a role later on, but not in the immediate setting.

The British Horse Society, which supported this research, is due to release free wound-care resources for owners in September 2026, built on this and related work. We will flag them when they land.

References
Birnie, R., Hannelly, E., Dubuc, J., Burrell, K., England, G.C.W., Burford, J.H., Freeman, S.L. (2026). Owner-Reported Cohort Study of Causes, Management and Outcome of Traumatic Wounds in 219 Horses. Animals, 16(10), 1474. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani16101474
Freeman, S.L., Ashton, N.M., Elce, Y.A., Hammond, A., Hollis, A.R., Quinn, G. (2021). BEVA primary care clinical guidelines: Wound management in the horse. Equine Veterinary Journal, 53(1), 18–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/evj.13289