Plate removal

The plates are usually removed in foals, especially those that are intended of sport activities.
This is performed in a staged way, where initially one plate is removed followed by removal of the second plate one month later.

The horse is stall rested with hand-grazing only for 2 weeks, then increasingly hand-walked for another two weeks. At 4 weeks the horse can be turned out into a small paddock. At 8 weeks the horse is returned to training.
The metacarpus is radiographed before the horse does its first breeze (work at maximal speed) to make sure that healing is complete. There may be a faint outline of the osteostixis holes still present but there should be no evidence of the original fracture and usually a significant endosteal callus.