Cushing's disease is noted by a growth on the pituitary gland of a horse, and it can cause an excess of hormones, excessive drinking and excessive urination. Discover how Cushing's disease can cause unkempt hair and flaky skin in horses with information from a veterinarian in this free video on Cushing's disease in horses.
I'm Dr. Gary Garcia, Keystone Equine Associates. We are in Odessa, Florida outside of Tampa. A couple of symptoms of Cushing's disease in a horse. First of all Cushing's disease is basically a growth on the pituitary gland, part of the pituitary gland of the horse. This causes excessive hormones of different sorts. It also causes the adrenal glands to over produce steroid. A couple of things you see based on that is something called PUPD, which is excessing drinking, excessive urination. A big complaint by most owners is that the stall is wet, quite wet when they go to clean their stall. Another factor that you see or another symptom that you see is something called hirsutism. And hirsutism is when you have an excessively long hair coat or very unkempt looking hair coat that does not shed naturally. And that is a fairly classic sign that most people see with Cushing's disease. Other things you see is sometimes thin, dry, flaky skin in the horse, and you do see sometimes a pendulous abdomen in the horse from the muscles breaking down, and just stretching out. So if you have a horse showing any of these clinical signs you definitely want your veterinarian to test the horse for Cushing's disease. It is quite common for people to just put them on the treatment for Cushing's disease, but it is not recommend to do that. Let's find out if your horse actually has a disease before you go ahead and spend money on the treatment, and also that can be detrimental to the horse treating it for something that it doesn't have. So if you have a horse with showing any signs of Cushing's disease get it tested, call your veterinarian, and hopefully you can get it treated without much delay. Again this is Dr. Gary Garcia, Keystone Equine Associates in Odessa, Florida. We urge you to contact your local equine veterinarian for further information and questions. Or you can log onto our website at keystoneequine.com. Thank you.
Specialty: Horse Health
