While not much gets past WUWT, this story from Portugal has only recently gotten some press, well after its posting in March, and I think it warrants attention here. While I don’t know much about horses, I’ve known several people who do, so I do know that just because a horse will let you ride it, it may look for a low hanging branch to walk under to scrape you off.
Not surprisingly, I had never heard of “Acquired flexural deformity of the distal interphalangeal joint,” but I came across a web page, Can Wind Turbines Cause Developmental Deformities In Horses? about a stud farm where horses developed downward pointing front hooves after several wind turbines were built nearby.
If I were a horse, I would not want my feet to look like the one on the right:
No other changes in rearing the Lusitano horses (a famous Portuguese horse breed that I never heard of) were known. In the ensuing investigation, “two of the affected foals were placed in a pasture away from the initial one and two others were admitted at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Lisbon. In those animals, except for one that had to be euthanized for humane reasons, an improvement was observed on their condition, with partial recovery of the deformity.”
The stud farm was studied as part of a masters thesis by Teresa Margarida Pereira Costa e Curto and it surmised:
Cellular Mechanotransduction is the mechanism by which cells convert mechanical signals into biochemical responses. Based on the mechanical effects on cells it was proposed in this research project that the ground vibrations were responsible for a increased bone growth which was not accompanied by the muscle-tendon unit growth leading to the development of these flexural deformities.
That sounds reasonable to me, I know that stressing human bones increases their calcium uptake, and I wouldn’t be surprised that something like that could affect feet in other animals.
The wind turbines are obvious prime suspect, they were built nearby:
So, WUWT readers who actually know something about horses, have you heard of this case or similar cases at other farms with new wind turbines? Or, if you live near wind farms that are near farms with horses, cattle, etc, have they had problems like this?
This is just one study, involving one farm and not very many horses, clearly more research is warranted. If it’s confirmed, it would be interesting to know if other animals are susceptible to a similar problem.
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If I wasn’t a horse I wouldn’t want my leg to look like either of the pictures.
But I am sure that this disease has to be caused by global warming, because there is nothing that isn’t caused by global warming.
No way! I don’t know a lot enough about horses, but it is a common enough condition that occurs with or without wind farms in sight.
At any rate, I’ll bet vibrations originating on the farm will be orders of magnitude higher than anything from a wind turbine. Not that I believe vibrations can have anything to do with it.
My horse is fine… course there are no wind turbines in sight! So that proves those windbeaters are to blame!
Ric writes “That sounds reasonable to me”
Really? How much ground vibration is there at that distance? It would be an easy one to test anyway.
[The article includes a graph of ground acceleration and has peaks, if I can make out the numbers, and if the scale is accurate, of 0.04 cm/sec^2. “g” is 980 cm/sec^2, a big ratio of course. However, I have no idea what that feels like.
Ah, ftp://ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/ayhan/Aditya/Papers/Wald%20Quitoriano%20Heaton%20Kanamori_1999.pdf suggests the threshold for sensing vibrations is 1-2 cm/sec^2, so they’re measuring something at least 1/25 to 1/50 of what people can sense. Certainly makes it seem unlikely the cause.]
To noticeably and quantitatively substantially shake the ground over many acres like a continuous earthquake would take capabilities beyond those of anything built by modern industry. For instance, a nuclear bomb briefly disturbs the ground somewhat out to kilometers of radius, but it doesn’t do so continuously. The power requirements would be immense if you trying to do so, fantasy supervillian style.
I can’t believe wind turbines do so.
I assume this article is well intentioned, but I must be blunt:
It unfortunately has the same fallacy of many environmental myths: quantitative, mathematical illiteracy.
Such is taking a qualitative truth and misapplying it. For instance, that a ball is shaken if it is impacted is true in itself, but someone could not properly conclude that, therefore, if he jumped up and down, he would knock the giant sphere of the planet Earth out of orbit.
Is it true in itself that bones are affected by stress? Certainly. Grow chickens in a multi-g centrifuge, for instance, and the result is much different from 1g chickens. (In fact, the harm to bones from continuous zero-g exposure for current astronauts is much like the harm in event of months of totally continuous bedrest, probably solvable by the same means of even a fraction of a hour a day walking around in 1g gravity or pseudogravity, though present spacecraft have too low mass budgets, a separate topic).
But wind turbines don’t change stress on bones in surrounding kilometers to a quantitatively sufficient degree for this article’s implication.
I’m not a fan of wind turbines in particular. But, if arguing against them, let’s rather use the many valid points which can be made.
They banned DDT for less…
I don’t know about the case you mention above, but the illness has been common. At least that is how it appears by this article.
http://www.equipodiatry.com/article_flexural_deformities.htm
I live surrounded by the world’s largest wind farm & lesser infestations thereof, & amidst thousands of horses without having heard of the association of this deformity with the hideous uneconomical bird & bat massacring monstrosities. My sister in law is a large animal vet, so I might have were it a problem.
And even the bird & bat masscre is I think being exaggerated. Hit them for what they actually do: they hurt our wallets and support fraud.
“Tim Walker says:
September 26, 2013 at 8:57 pm
http://www.equipodiatry.com/article_flexural_deformities.htm “
Good link. That shows non-absurd causes. For instance:
“Congenital flexural deformities are present at birth”
“Proposed aetiologies [causes] of congenital flexural deformities include malpositioning of the fetus in utero, nutritional mismanagement of the mare during gestation, teratogens in various forages ingested by the mare and maternal exposure to influenza virus, or the deformities could be genetic in origin (Kidd and Barr 2002; Hunt 2011).”
“Acquired flexural deformities generally develop when the foal is aged 2-6 months and generally involves the DIPJ initially. The aetiology of this deformity is unknown, but speculated causes include genetic predisposition, improper nutrition (i.e. overfeeding, excessive carbohydrate [energy] intake, unbalanced minerals in the diet) and excessive exercise.”
“It is the current author’s opinion that a large contributing factor to this syndrome is contraction of the muscular portion of the musculotendinous unit caused by a response to pain, the source of which could be physeal dysplasia or trauma from foals exercising on hard ground. […]
Any discomfort or pain in the foot or lower portion of the limb coupled with reduced weightbearing on the affected limb appears to initiate the flexor withdrawal reflex, which seems to cause the flexor muscles proximal to the tendon to contract, leading to an altered position of the DIPJ. This shortening of the musculotendinous unit shifts weightbearing to the dorsal half of the foot causing a decrease in sole depth and bruising of the sole, reduced growth of the dorsal aspect of the hoof wall, and excessive hoof wall growth at the heel to compensate for the shortening of the musculotendinous unit.”
“A genetic component must also be considered for acquired flexure deformities, as some mares consistently produce foals that develop a flexural deformity in the same limb as the dam or grand dam in which a similar deformity is present. The genetic component of the flexural deformity may be the ultimate determinant of the severity of the deformity.”
“a horse will let you ride it, it may look for a low hanging branch to walk under to scrape you off.”
And I don’t blame it.
Looks like Equine Excreta to me.
Lets see, one study…gee, add a computer model and you’ve got the basis for an entire consensus proven theory!
It will be ignored even if true. It is demonstrably true wind farms kill bats and birds by the thousands, including endangered raptors, but the greenies ignore that while obsessing over six or seven birds killed accidentally at a refinery when they got thru the netting and into an oil pond. Gotta have your priorities straight you know.
I’m not quite sure how a question can be considered as fallacious.
Dear Ric,
Your heart was in the right place and it took your mind in the right direction (which is why the hardened hearts at IPCC end up in such ludicrous positions). I think, however, that the trail petered out into implausibility, once we all went down it a ways. I did a little bit of research on Bing and I think a more likely explanation for the “injury” might be found in the area of tourism. If that horse rancher uses the horses for tourists to ride on trails which have been ruined by the hideous sight and sound of windmills, that rancher might want to find a way to get rid of the windmills.
Sigh. I wish, in a way, that the horse injury story was true, then we might get rid of blight and an investment scam at the same time. What’s a few thousand dead birds and bats, but, a HORSE… . Nope, it wouldn’t work. Not dead. They can move. It is the rancher who would suffer (move or get rid of my horses). And he or she is just a person. What are people? Per David Suzuki and his ilk, they are just “maggots.”
Sad, isn’t it? The daily slaughter of birds and bats should be enough for the so-called environmentalists who are so enamored of windmills (because it feels good to them) to call for their perpetually economically inefficient operation to be STOPPED. Such kindhearted, caring, people — NOT.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Ric. It was worth a try.
With gratitude for all the fine posting you do on WUWT (and for your Guide),
Janice
There’s so much bogus weirdness blamed on “global warming” that it’s kinda nice to see some of the bogus weirdness blamed on the “green energy” people for a change.
Would it have to be vibration of the ground? Why not of air? Could stress cause such a problem? Those windmills put out sound that greatly disturbs people living nearby, and upsets livestock too. It might be easy to dismiss such the possibility raised in this article by assuming the vibration has to be ground vibration and “impossible”, but let’s not be so quick to rule the turbines out.
If the horses written about didn’t suffer such problem until after the turbines went up, then there might be something to the theory, no matter how much people don’t want there to be.
Aerial photos of other horse farms with similar problems would be useful here. It would also be interesting to see the aerial photos of those who claim to live near wind farms with horses that don’t suffer from such problems, to see just how close they actually are.
I could claim to live near a wind farm, for instance, but in actual fact it’s some miles down the road.
If I was living in a paddock and something new and strange loomed up on the hills making strange noises day and night, and I didn’t know what it was, I might end up a nervous wreck, too.
Sorry, mods, I don’t know what I said… (“in mo-d-eration” at 9:37pm).
P.S. Ric, if that rancher is intentionally injuring his or her horses to try to get rid of the windmills, then, that rancher should have all his or her horses immediately confiscated and never allowed to own a horse again! Just had to say this so you would know, given what I wrote at 9:37pm, that I would not approve of such a terrible thing, even if it DID get rid of all the windmills.
I thought this was going to be something to do with replacing wind-powered subsidy harvesters with horse-powered windlasses.
Leads me to a completely OT question: There’s an old mining engineering textbook, written by a Scotsman (why are we not surprised) maybe 200 years ago? Can’t remember the author’s name, but it was revised and reprinted numerous times. I know an opal prospector who has a copy that could be 100 years old. (He looks a little younger, but not much.) Loads of notes in the margins, but otherwise carefully preserved. The guy still uses it, just converts the “horse” bit to some other motive power such as a diesel stationary engine or electric winch. Claims it provides solutions to problems that are “too difficult” today.
Horses are wild animals, and the smaller ones like Shetland ponies are the least tractable. Racehorses are notoriously scatty, and nobody who works with them for long avoids getting kicked or bitten.
OTOH, very large, heavy breeds can have stable and intelligent temperaments. The novel “My Friends, the Miss Boyds”, by Jane Duncan, about growing up in a community that relied on horses, is instructive. Set in Scotland in the early part of the C20th, the importance of having good horses is unmistakeable. And, that included treating them as individuals, because they were not like the cows that obediently turned up for milking every night.
It’s interesting – dogs just couldn’t wait to be domesticated, but horses only hang around humans because they have to.
Google time!
Live document:
http://tobacco.health.usyd.edu.au/assets/pdfs/publications/WindfarmDiseases.pdf
Birth defects of cattle, chickens, behavioral problems, etc.
And many human problems too.
TL,DR.
[Thanks, I sent Dr. Chapman a note. -Ric]
I do hope this post was meant as some kind of twisted joke?
I hope not , have you ever been downwind from a equine wind turbine on a hot day? I love them but there is a time and place.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
September 26, 2013 at 10:03 pm
Google time!…
*
Thanks, Kadaka! Interesting! 🙂
Horses probably have a IPCC like sensitivity to dead bats.
Ric writes “so they’re measuring something at least 1/25 to 1/50 of what people can sense. Certainly makes it seem unlikely the cause.”
I would think a paddock next to a reasonably busy road with heavy trucks would produce larger peaks albeit much less regularly. I suspect they could be barking up the wrong pole.