What Does My Horse’s Blood Test Mean?

This step-by-step graphic will guide you through your horse’s blood test results.
Share
Favorite
Close

No account yet? Register

ADVERTISEMENT

Red blood cells, white blood cells, serum, platelets … veterinarians look for a lot of things when they run a blood test on your horse.

Called a combined complete blood count/chemistry profile, or CBC for short, this test’s results show what’s happening in the horse’s bloodstream at the moment the sample is drawn. While they can’t produce a perfect report stating that your horse has disease X and needs treatment Y, the various numbers, shapes, and sizes of the blood components can tell the clinician the horse is possibly anemic, losing blood, or fighting an infection or an immune-mediated disease.

Because all these figures and indicators are confusing, we’ve taken a visual route of describing a typical blood test and what its results might mean for your horse.

Share

Written by:

The Horse: Your Guide To Equine Health Care is an equine publication providing the latest news and information on the health, care, welfare, and management of all equids.

Related Articles

Stay on top of the most recent Horse Health news with

FREE weekly newsletters from TheHorse.com

Sponsored Content

Weekly Poll

sponsored by:

Where do you primarily feed your horse?
299 votes · 299 answers

Readers’ Most Popular

Sign In

Don’t have an account? Register for a FREE account here.

Need to update your account?

You need to be logged in to fill out this form

Create a free account with TheHorse.com!