The hands-on senior examination
A senior screening starts with a thorough clinical once-over, but with older eyes doing the looking. The vet listens to heart and lungs, checks eyes that may be clouding with age, feels for lumps — under the tail and along the sheath or udder in particular, since grey horses grow skin tumours readily — and scores body condition against the last visit, because slow weight drift is easy to miss at home. How often? An annual visit is the floor for a healthy veteran; twice a year is the common pattern once a horse is genuinely old or has anything under monitoring.
Teeth get an appointment of their own
Aged teeth are the engine room of senior health. Cheek teeth wear into sharp points and waves, loosen in their sockets, and develop gaps that trap rotting feed; a horse can look interested in hay while being physically unable to grind it. A proper dental examination — mouth held open with a gag, every tooth seen and felt — is the only way to know, which is why vets build it into senior screening at least annually and often more frequently for the very old. Between visits, dropped balls of chewed hay, slow eating and weight loss are your early-warning system. Ask for the dental findings tooth by tooth if you can; knowing which side he chews on changes how you watch him eat at home.
What blood work tells you about an old horse
A blood sample turns the screening from looking to measuring. Panels for senior horses typically check how the liver and kidneys are handling their workload and whether red-cell and protein levels suggest something is quietly draining him. Vets also test many older horses for the hormone changes that become common with age, because those changes drive the thick curly coat that will not shed, muscle loss along the back, and a raised risk of laminitis — catching them early changes how the horse is fed and managed. Results mean most against his own previous numbers, which is why a baseline taken while he is well is so valuable.
Soundness, hooves and prevention review
The screening usually includes watching him walk and trot in hand on firm ground and flexing joints, so small changes in how he moves are caught before they become lameness you can see from the gate. A few strides of trot on a circle each way shows up unevenness that straight lines hide. Feet are assessed alongside — ideally with your farrier’s input — since balance that suited him at twelve may load arthritic joints badly at twenty-five. Finally, prevention is reviewed rather than assumed: worming guided by dung sample counts instead of habit, and vaccination status checked against his actual risk in retirement. Each is a small thing; together they are the difference between managing an old horse and reacting to him.
Screening only pays if the results accumulate somewhere they can be compared. Filing each year’s findings in his Pet Passport on KinsLe puts this year’s bloods beside last year’s and the dental chart beside both, so trends — the things that matter most in an old horse — are visible at a glance, and a new vet meeting him for the first time starts from his history rather than from zero.