Equine asthma is a spectrum of chronic respiratory disease affecting a significant proportion of stabled horses, causing exercise limitation, coughing, and chronic discomfort.
Equine asthma causes chronic respiratory discomfort that limits exercise capacity and reduces quality of life. Horses with severe asthma experience chronic breathlessness — the equine equivalent of poorly controlled human asthma — that causes obvious distress during exercise and can affect breathing at rest in severe cases. The condition is almost entirely preventable through appropriate management: dust-free forage, good stable ventilation, and pasture access dramatically reduce disease incidence. Treatment with inhaled bronchodilators and corticosteroids mimics human asthma management and is highly effective when combined with environmental management. Many horses are medicated without addressing the environmental cause, providing inadequate long-term welfare outcomes. Turning horses out full-time is often the single most effective intervention.