Developmental orthopedic diseases including OCD and physitis affect a significant proportion of young horses and are largely preventable through appropriate nutrition and exercise management.
DOD prevention is a welfare opportunity where early nutritional and management decisions have lasting consequences for an individual horse's skeletal health and quality of life. Young horses with significant OCD lesions experience joint pain that affects movement comfort and behavior. Surgical intervention is effective but represents a welfare event and cost that appropriate prevention might have avoided. The nutrition-DOD relationship is well-established: balanced mineral nutrition during pregnancy and early foal growth, avoidance of excessive energy intake in growing horses, and appropriate exercise management all reduce DOD risk. Breed selection considering DOD prevalence data also contributes to welfare.