Recovery After a Broken Jaw

[equest]

I am reaching out to hopefully get some advice or share your experience with broken jaws.
My 8 year old Thoroughbred gelding somehow fractured his lower mandible and had surgery over the weekend. The fractured part is wired and attached with metal plates to the rest of the lower jaw inside his mouth. The injury occurred on Friday and he had surgery on Saturday. I visited him yesterday and he was allowed to hand graze (and he was as greedy as usual while hand grazing). He will be fed senior feed and normal hay ration. He will be on Gastroguard as a preventative for a while.
We do not know how the injury occurred. We discovered it upon his arrival at the local horse show grounds for a weekend show. It could have occurred on the trailer or he could have been mouthing something at the home barn, and caught himself, before transfer.
The vet gave a good prognosis. No turnout for the first week or two, but lunging and light riding in a hackamore will be allowed. Walk/trot at first then progressing. The healing time is estimated at 3-4 months. At that point he will be able to be ridden in a bit.

This horse is quiet and quite lazy (stick and spurs are necessary). He has been making good progress in training as a low-level hunter (his training was previously interrupted by a bowed tendon which makes this especially frustrating). Just when things are going well, getting lead changes… such is life with horses!
I am glad I will still be able to ride him. This horse’s work ethic on the flat is negligible. A few days of time off actually makes him even lazier. He really does enjoy jumping though.

The vet emphasized that we will want to make sure the curb strap of the hackamore fits loosely so as not to put pressure on the wire which runs under the chin. I was planning on using an English hackamore, keeping the curb strap loose and maybe even covering the curb strap with a fleece sleeve.

Also, the vet said that the bloody supply to his left lower canine tooth was affected by the break, so we can expect that tooth to fall out on its own within a few weeks.
Please chime in with any experiences or advice you can share!

[PeteyPie]

@equest

I am reaching out to hopefully get some advice or share your experience with broken jaws.
My 8 year old Thoroughbred gelding somehow fractured his lower mandible and had surgery over the weekend. The fractured part is wired and attached with metal plates to the rest of the lower jaw inside his mouth. The injury occurred on Friday and he had surgery on Saturday. I visited him yesterday and he was allowed to hand graze (and he was as greedy as usual while hand grazing). He will be fed senior feed and normal hay ration. He will be on Gastroguard as a preventative for a while.
We do not know how the injury occurred. We discovered it upon his arrival at the local horse show grounds for a weekend show. It could have occurred on the trailer or he could have been mouthing something at the home barn, and caught himself, before transfer.
The vet gave a good prognosis. No turnout for the first week or two, but lunging and light riding in a hackamore will be allowed. Walk/trot at first then progressing. The healing time is estimated at 3-4 months. At that point he will be able to be ridden in a bit.

This horse is quiet and quite lazy (stick and spurs are necessary). He has been making good progress in training as a low-level hunter (his training was previously interrupted by a bowed tendon which makes this especially frustrating). Just when things are going well, getting lead changes… such is life with horses!
I am glad I will still be able to ride him. This horse’s work ethic on the flat is negligible. A few days of time off actually makes him even lazier. He really does enjoy jumping though.

The vet emphasized that we will want to make sure the curb strap of the hackamore fits loosely so as not to put pressure on the wire which runs under the chin. I was planning on using an English hackamore, keeping the curb strap loose and maybe even covering the curb strap with a fleece sleeve.

Also, the vet said that the bloody supply to his left lower canine tooth was affected by the break, so we can expect that tooth to fall out on its own within a few weeks.
Please chime in with any experiences or advice you can share!

Poor guy! Ouch!

Personally, I wouldn’t put anything that interacts with his jaw, no bits, no chin straps or curb straps, but especially not a hackamore which has a nutcracker action. The thing about a hackamore is that as soon as you pull on the reins, you are tightening that curb strap with leverage which can be considerable, so loosening a curb strap is meaningless. It will tighten as soon as you put contact on the reins: that’s how it works.

The only other alternative that jumps out at me is to use a bosal which doesn’t interact with the jaw at all, and personally, I would wait a few months until the bone is healed completely.

[Hej]

I seem to remember reading that Verdades broke his jaw as a young horse.

*DK if he continued in work while it healed, but it doesn’t seem to have had any lasting negative effect.

• Understatement of the century.

[Nestor]

My horse broke his jaw on a speculum in mid-July 2014. Just before Thanksgiving, he had the wires removed from his jaw and went back to wearing a bit.

I rode in a jumping hackamore, which basically means I was riding in a glorified halter. I did get a Mattes noseband cover for it, as I didn’t like how hard it felt on his nose. I tested it out by taking my guy out to the field to gallop, and figured out if he’d stop or not. He stopped no problem, didn’t need the reins, so we rode in it for the next few months. I was able, after a month or two, to really school our dressage work in it. He got back to working on 2nd/3rd level (had been more like 4th before the break), so it was definitely an adjustment, but it also really helped my riding because I couldn’t ever use the reins to “cheat.” We trail rode in it, we galloped in it, we jumped in it… your horse may not be quite so amenable, but it was really no big deal.

You will NOT want anything that puts pressure on the lower jaw. The nerves down there are connected in such a way that you will be causing immense pain to your horse. You probably want to wait after surgery regardless, because while my surgeon said it would be fine to ride the day after he came home, he said NO WAY for a good week (he was rearing, out of the blue). And that was in something that did NOT put any pressure on the lower jaw. I can’t imagine using an English hackamore…

My horse does have some lasting damage because of it. Where he used to always let his tongue peak out on the right side (I swear it’s too big for his mouth), it now sticks out at times while riding. That started immediately after he broke his jaw. He even did it in the hackamore. I assume this is because in certain positions, he’s at least still uncomfortable, if not in pain. I’ve learned how to ride him to keep him comfortable and happy, but it took years.

[equest]

@Nestor

My horse broke his jaw on a speculum in mid-July 2014. Just before Thanksgiving, he had the wires removed from his jaw and went back to wearing a bit.

I rode in a jumping hackamore, which basically means I was riding in a glorified halter. I did get a Mattes noseband cover for it, as I didn’t like how hard it felt on his nose. I tested it out by taking my guy out to the field to gallop, and figured out if he’d stop or not. He stopped no problem, didn’t need the reins, so we rode in it for the next few months. I was able, after a month or two, to really school our dressage work in it. He got back to working on 2nd/3rd level (had been more like 4th before the break), so it was definitely an adjustment, but it also really helped my riding because I couldn’t ever use the reins to “cheat.” We trail rode in it, we galloped in it, we jumped in it… your horse may not be quite so amenable, but it was really no big deal.

I am ordering the jumping hackamore today. I definitely can appreciate how it would create less pressure on the jaw versus the “English hackamore.” My vet, like yours, said that he could be lightly ridden right away in addition to lunging, but I plan on giving him the rest of the week (I’ll hand walk/graze at first and later this week I’ll lunge lightly). He is not allowed to turn out during the next week, so it’s important to get him out and moving around.

[2tempe]

my trainer has a horse that managed to break his jaw TWICE (events a year or so apart). After he got wired together, she was told not to graze him because of the way they can bite AND PULL the grass out. She got him a muzzle for turnout. Thankfully for him no lasting effects after either time.

[Liscar]

My horse broke his lower mandible, we can only assume by playing halter tag (his most favorite game - UGH). It’s been a about 15 years now and he’s done well. Once healed, he had no issues with bits, etc. He’s got a lump there, but it’s barely noticeable to me, and not at all to someone who doesn’t know it happened. I do notice in the winter he has some stiffness when he eats, but I assume that’s from the cold temperatures. He does have some dental issues (he effectively has periodontal disease), but I don’t believe it has anything to do with his jaw being broken.

[Peggy]

My horse broke his lower jaw by catching it on his gate chain. The chain that was supposed to protect him by not letting him open his stall and escape. If there was any displacement it was negligible because you really couldn’t see anything on the initial radiographs, but his jaw was more wiggly than it should have been.

So, off to the horse hospital we went. Fortunately, it was literally a five-minute walk down the road. No plates, they just did wires to connect the two parts across the broken part.

I think it was two weeks of no riding, just hand walking. There was also flushing of his mouth, which I finally decided was easiest with a hose.

Then we were allowed to ride with a hackamore. I would not recommend the one I used as it was a model with straps that crossed under the jaw. Reading the above, I now realize that was a really bad idea and, in fact, when the vet removed the wires, one appeared to be in about the same place as where the straps crossed under the jaw. I ended up riding with one rein attached to the noseband and the other (the curb, if you will) attached to the cross-under straps as an emergency brake. We even jumped with the thing. It does teach you not to pull.

The jaw was fine. My vet took out the wires at about eight weeks. It was a bit of an ordeal as she wasn’t the one who originally put them in and she had to radiograph the jaw to locate one of them. We were on the verge of calling him and asking him to come down the road.

I waited a few days after the removal to use a bit. When I did it was a rather odd feeling as I felt like no matter how lightly I pulled, his chin was coming to his chest.

The only lasting effect had nothing to do with the jaw. Either in his struggle to free himself or in the process of whatever they do to move them into the surgery room, it exacerbated a then-unknown issue in his neck. Several months after the jaw incident it became apparent that something was wrong as my formerly fearless horse started to stop at jumps. Then a RF issue (collateral ligament strain) seemed to re-appear and, in the process of verifying that, we found the neck arthritis. I flatted him for two years after that, but never jumped again, The second of those two years it was a struggle to keep him going and happy and I ended up retiring him towards the end of the year, at age 14.

[equest]

Thank you all for the contributions.
My boy is doing well, eating well, eager to hand graze. He’s a quiet and relaxed horse so his mellow attitude is an advantage during stall rest. I’ll update as his healing progresses.