How Long do Horses Live — And What Happens When They Get Old?

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One of the most common questions non-horse people have is “How long do they live?”

And a lot of the time they expect an answer in years. Just like with dogs and cats, it’s a little bit more complicated than that. So, let’s talk about when…and how…horses get old.

How Long Do They Live?

The common answer to this is “About 25 years.”

However, it’s a bit more complicated for a couple of reasons. First of all, just like in dogs, the smaller ones live longer. Ponies generally live longer than horses.

Mules and donkeys typically live to 30, even 35 years.

And then there’s the fact that we’ve gotten a lot better at keeping older horses alive. I’m reading about and encountering more animals aged 30 and older than ten or fifteen years ago. Improvements in equine geriatric medicine can keep our hoofed buddies alive (and healthy) longer than in the past.

The other side of the question is, when a horse gets old, what kind of ailments do they develop? Let’s look at the most common issues older horses have.

Arthritis

To be blunt, working horses are the equivalent of people who spend their entire lives working with their bodies and hands. Sports horses are athletes, even elite athletes.

The vast, vast majority of horses end up with some degree of arthritis as they age. Most of the old horses I know are on some kind of joint support supplement (horses respond well to glucosamine). Sports horses may get corticosteroid injections.

Some owners make the difficult choice to put their old horse on a maintenance dose of an NSAID…difficult because eventually, even at a low dose, NSAIDs will destroy their liver. It’s a trade off: Higher quality of life for, likely, a shorter life.

Arthritis can eventually progress to the point where euthanasia is recommended. In some cases, a horse will lie down to sleep (no, horses do not entirely sleep standing up) and not be able to get back up; if this starts happening regularly, euthanasia is also recommended. Horses can die if they stay down for too long. And getting them back up is a challenge. I speak from…