Why are horses legs wrapped?

To support and protect them.

There are many reasons horse's legs are wrapped and there are many different types of wraps and boots. Some wraps are meant to support, protect, or simply to hold on a bandage or icepack when a horse is injured. Wraps can also be used to ship horses. When a horse travels its legs will be wrapped to prevent being injured during the journey.

Different types of boots are made to support/protect in different ways and some are made to support/protect different areas of a horse's leg. You'll see splint and sport boots on a horse that's doing a high-impact sport like jumping or racing. Skid boots may be found on a reiner or a barrel racer to keep the horse from skinning the back of its legs when it skids to a stop. Bell boots go over a horse's hooves to keep the backs of them from getting knicked and cut when a horse does something called "overreaching". Overreaching is when a horse's hind hoof reaches so far forward that it hits the front heel. It also protects from "knocking", which is when a horse's legs are set close together and tend to hit each other in passing.

There are also boots that go over the knee and hock joints that are simply meant to support the joints.

There are many different reasons why a horse's legs might be wrapped, and there are even more kinds of wraps! Just to mention a few; there are exercise bandages used to protect a horse's legs while they are being exercised, and what we like to call stable bandages which are used to give a horse's legs stability and support after they have had a hard workout or show. They can also help prevent a horse from 'stocking up' which is when the fluids in the horse's legs build up-and that is not good!