So tonight what I hope to cover is when does a horse become a senior? That word is broad
and general and vague, and I want to make sure they were all on the same page.
So, I call this my age gauge, and there's 3 ways to figure out how old is your horse,
when does the horse become a senior. So, there is 3 ways to do it; the chronological that’s
using the calendar, the physiological what changes have in the body, or the demographic
and that’s more of a scientific epidemiological thing.
When you are talking about chronological, there was a paper by someone called McKeever,
and he said “People intuitively felt, so felt in their gut, that horses over 20 seem
to behave differently. They have different medical problems than the younger horses,
they eat differently. They even saw that the aerobic capacity of the horse began to decline
or reduce performance at about 18 to 20 years of age.” So, is that all what you would
think, I mean who was thinking 15 was a senior? Who was thinking 18, late teens, 20? Older
than 20? Okay, good. So, the age is increasing as science gets better, and we are taking
better care of our horses, right? I mean are you seeing that? Back in the day, horses live
to be 20, now we are thinking they are older when they are 20, they are living to be 30,
35 and 40.
What about the fact of the body, the horses age about 3 times as fast as people. Have
you heard that before? So, like, if a person, so a horse they were saying is old now, 18,
20 years of age, is pretty much comparable to a 60-65 year old person, just about to
go on social security, not quite. (laughing)
But, then the physiological age. That, to me, of these three ways of saying how old
is the horse, when does the horse become a senior, this one's the most important, because
it’s looking at the horse as an individual, and saying, "Am I noticing changes in my horse’s
behavior or physique or his efficiency, the efficiency of the bodily functions?" So, some
physical signs of aging, you know weight loss, some body condition loss, they might become
stiff or sore, discomfort, and maybe they lose their appetite, they lose their enthusiasm
for eating, have you noticed that with the older horse? No, not this lady! Okay.
What’s important to notice is that the speed of physiological aging, varies considerably
from horse to horse, and like I said it’s a very individual thing. So, I have a thoroughbred
who at probably 13, 14 started to look old. And you get retired at 15, 16. He was retired
at 15, I wasn’t ready til 16, but that’s a different story. But, there are some horses
who are in their 20’s, and they're frisky and they're spry, and they're...they don’t
know what the calendar says about them. So, it’s very different, and you probably notice
there is some breed difference, too. There are some breeds that age not as good, and
some breeds that age well. But some other factors that contribute to this varying degree
of physiological aging: the environment, the nutrition, the healthcare provided during
the life of the horse. Okay.
And then that this quote at the bottom is by Sarah Ralston. She is a VMD, PhD at Rutgers,
are you familiar with Sarah Ralston, may be read some stuff by her? She is a very well-known
veterinarian nutritionist. She says, “As with humans, chronological age does not always
match the aging process,” and I put a little reminder here, because I am not young, you
are only as old as you feel. And, being old is a state of mind, so you’ve heard those.
And then finally demographic age. I actually forget what NAHMS stands for, but it’s a
group at Colorado that, do you guys remember? National Animal Health Monitoring System,
did I get right? Okay. (laughing)
It’s a group, and yeah that works. It’s a group out in Colorado that is doing a lot
of numbers, desk research, on horses, and back in ’98, so over 10 years ago, they
found that 7½ % of our total 7 million horse population was 20 years or over. But now,
this McKeever guy that I am reading a lot of stuff on geriatric horses, he says that
15% of the population is older, so there is proof right there that horses are living longer.