hoof enthusiast

@hooves-blog

barefoot trimming apprentice, long live the functional hoof

201 posts

Stepped out of my comfort zone today and took on a big (metal) project. glued on a vet prescribed open toe heart bar with a reversed Sigafoos Series III cuff for a horse with a large subsolar and toe abscess with sole penetration after two bouts of laminitis. he has almost no frog (lost it with the abscess) and only part of the sole has keratinized. decided to boot over the shoe instead of hospital plate since the toe is also wide open and for ease of cleaning for older owner. will probably shorten the heart bar next cycle when he has more frog to prevent too much pressure. hoping after that we can switch to just a reverse shoe and cut away the remaining detached wall at the toe as it comes down. other hoof got a urethane clog nailed and cast on to help with weight-bearing associated laminitis. in the beginning this horse was so lame, it was originally thought he had broken his pelvis. he felt pretty good after, so we’re hopeful!

Update from 2.5 weeks ago: granulating and keratinizing nicely, adhesive holding strong. horse able to go on limited turnout with a buddy to keep him calm. Going to reset 10/13/18

Update for 10/13: keratinizing nicely and no longer sensitive when the exposed coffin bone is touched. opened up the old wall abscess which was completely hollow. next time we’ll use just a plain reverse rim shoe and probably add a hospital plate. also added a couple pictures of the plastic clog on his opposite hind (before glue and cast were applied).

11/12/18 update

Took off the shoe, left him booted with an open toe heart bar in the bottom of the boot to keep weight off the sole still. The reason we did this was the heel contraction and thrush he started to experience since the last time I was there. That was always a drawback to glueing so close to the heels, but it’s a reversible side effect at least so I don’t regret doing it. He’s quite comfortable without pain meds, so we also removed the clog on the opposite foot. I’ve included a photo of one of his front feet that had a significant amount of white line disease that is finally starting to get better.

#subsolar abscess #heart bar #open toe heart bar

“How far can/would you go to make a foot look shorter/more upright from the top? While I’m familiar with the concept of top dressing, domed dorsal walls, removing distortion, addressing a dished toe etc I could never wrap my head around taking lots of dorsal wall off to make a toe look shorter and to make a foot look “better angled”, especially to please an owner/vet/trainer.

At the end we don’t change angles of P3 - and could take care of too much toe leverage with other techniques without messing around with the integrity of the hoof capsule, especially in a not too perfect environment: setting shoe back and dome or champfer, rocker toe, rolled toe... “

sigh......

#hoof care industry

Had to stop in the middle of a trim to show y'all this. The back of the foot is a bit weak from our wet weather, but would you look at the wall quality on this (wait for it…….) THOROUGHBRED mare. Absolutely beautiful pigmented- to- unpigmented ratio and sound to boot. Second image just shows the bottom after it was shaped to the proper balance before addressing the top.

#hoof wall #Thoroughbred

The tiniest 😍

sanddancingwithanxiety

Hey! So I saw you recommended glue on shoes, and I thought I'd tell you that a study done on glue on shoes found that they are actually worse for the hoof as the constrict the heel movement whereas nail on shoes allow the heel to expand and contract

Oh! I didn’t know that, I thought they were better!

@barefoothooves this seems not right?

Well, I’d like to read the study, but it depends entirely on the material of the shoe itself, the glue used, and where the glue is applied. Many newer glues (like those produced by Vettec) are far more flexible than older ones, and there are in fact many glue on processes using cuffs on the outer wall (instead of glueing to the bottom of the hoof wall) that allow for complete or improved hoof expansion. Composite shoes that are glued on are always going to be 1) more flexible than metal shoes, and 2) less concussive than metal shoes, regardless of whether the metal shoes are glued or nailed.

I’m an ass.

I also hate seeing different parties on my dash dance around one another to shit-stir, so I’ll bite and put it all out in one place:

The abstract is here: Heel movement in horses: comparison between glued and nailed horse shoes at different speeds. (pub’d Nov 2010)

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY:

It has been suggested that the heel of the horse’s hoof expands in the stance phase and this reduces the concussion at impact and helps pump blood into the hoof. Therefore, farriers usually leave a gap in the heel region when using the traditional nailed shoe. Recently glued shoes which are attached firmly to the heel have been developed and these could restrict heel movement.

OBJECTIVE:

To compare the degree of mediolateral heel movement between glued and nailed shoes.

METHODS:

Seven Thoroughbreds were used. Either their fore- or hind hooves were shod with plain aluminium shoes, attached first with glue and later with nails. Measurements were collected continuously with a displacement sensor fixed between the medial and lateral hoof walls at the heel. The horses ran on a treadmill at a walk (1.8 m/s), trot (3.5 m/s), canter (8 m/s) and gallop (12 m/s). The mediolateral heel movement in a nonweightbearing position was set at zero for each hoof and thus positive and negative numbers represented expansion and contraction, respectively. Average values of 10 consecutive strides at each speed were compared between the 2 shoeing methods by paired t test.

RESULTS:

At all running speeds, the heels expanded in the first 70-80% of the stance phase and contracted at breakover. The total heel movement calculated as the sum of the maximum expansion and contraction value was less with glued shoeing than with nailed shoeing for walking (all limbs), trotting (all limbs), cantering (leading forelimb and both hindlimbs) and galloping (both hindlimbs).

CONCLUSIONS:

Glueing restricted heel movement, suggesting possible interference with shock absorption and blood pumping in the hoof. Further study is needed to evaluate the influence of glued shoeing on hoof mechanics.

IMPORTANT TIDBIT:

“Seven Thoroughbreds were used. Either their fore- or hind hooves were shod with plain aluminium shoes, attached first with glue and later with nails.

So something like these:

So the study only looked at ALUMINUM SHOES.

Remember THESE on the market as GLUE ON shoes as well!

And from a prior post by @barfoothooves:

Lets not let personal prejudices towards certain users we may hold long-standing grudges toward, or whom we don’t always see eye-to-eye with, be a reason to spread misinformation or to cherry-pick science.

The goal should be to share knowledge and to have a willingness to CHANGE our long-held viewpoints if it means providing BETTER CARE for our horses.

That’s the important part, right?

It wasn’t me that shared it

Thank :’)

For those that don’t want to read, they used Equilox, which as the name implies, is known for its tight bond and rigidity. Often used for fractured coffin bones.

I’d love to see this done with different glues and composite shoes!

#glue on metal shoes #misinformation #studies

Detailing bars

First photo: untrimmed and neglect bars folded over the sole

Second photo: defined bars in their correct location

To define bars take the curl of your hoof knife and, starting at the point where the heels turn and become the bars, take small slivers of bar away until you can just see the bar’s white line. A little at a time remove all excess bar until it is a straight line from heel purchase to midway down the frog and is flush with the sole. If the bar has grown significantly out over to sole or smeared into the sole, remove it down to true sole level. In the case of this horse, the bar had grown over chalky, exfoliating sole, so it was very obvious where bar ended and sole began. Look closely at the tubules. Bar tubules are “lines”, sole tubules are “dots.” Bar material is the same as hoof wall. Tap of various areas of the foot with your pick or knife and see if you can sense the difference.

I’ll try to get a video up of defining the bars, but this will have to do for now!

@mooseings here’s another bar trimming post with a description

oh noooo good TB feet. what ever will we do?

#ideal #Thoroughbred

To give a bit of back ground on cases like this, base narrow in the hind legs is a conformation that causes a horse to stand closer at the hooves than at the origin of the legs at the hips. Often times a heavy muscled horse will suffer from this disability. Having base narrow hind legs cause hooves to wing in, so the horse is more likely to interfere. A horse with this type of confirmation can’t develop speed for rapid acceleration. The horse would also suffer from excessive stress and pressure on the outside of the hocks, fetlocks and hooves. This can lead to degenerative joint disease, ligament strain, hoof bruising and quarter cracks, therefore, it must be remedied. In the case we have here, the horse had base narrow confirmation in the hind legs. We applied Super Fast to create a lateral extension, which helped align the hocks.

Source

app-uh-latch-un

Corrective trimming/hoof care techniques for conformational problems past the age of growth plate closure is generally detrimental overall.

That’s a sweeping statement and also untrue. Conformation issues regardless of age will start to affect the balance of the feet, allowing certain areas to wear down (sometimes too much) while others grow in excess, which exacerbates the problem. Not attempting to correct these problems and align the joints to their natural state (whatever that may be for the horse) is extremely negligent. While it will not change the growth of the bones or restore the final alignment back to “perfect conformation,” extensions such as these can be useful for the exact reason stated: to realign the joint and its spacing. I do wish there were a lateral and medial view, because I wonder if some of this was a trim issue, but I digress.

#vettec superfast #angular deformity #kinda but not really?? but it is??

Let’s see some cute mini feet for a change, eh?

#miniature horse

“This is an 8wk old quarter horse with a valgus angular deviation at the knee and a slightly varus fetlock. The medial plates are growing faster than the lateral which is pushing the leg toward the lateral side, causing abnormal weight bearing on the medial heel. We applied a medial Super Fast extension. Learned something important on this one. The vet asked if we poured alcohol on the Super Fast surface if it would dissipate heat faster…did a quick bench test and it almost immediately reduced the exotherm by 8-10 degrees (we had a meter). We did this on the foot after the Super Fast set for 1 minute. Seems like this might be a viable method when heat is a factor…like middle of summer or on sensitive areas.” -Vettec

#vettec superfast #angular deformity

Can a horse regrow its entire hoof capsule? In this case, yes! More info at the source

three-sports-one-horse

@barefoothooves !!!!!!!!

Oh yeah, absolutely. Got a coronet band? Hoof will regrow. The biggest obstacle is usually infection and proud flesh. This is a really great documentation of the process :)

This looks like one of those cases where I genuinely cannot understand why the horse wasn’t put down.

Young horses actually recover really well from this sort of thing. Older horses can too. Once the capsule is completely gone/not putting any weird pressure on the internal structures and the material has keratinized/hardened, they are often quite comfortable and move around in a mostly normal fashion until the hoof wall and sole regrow.

That’s interesting. How does that work exactly? Because it looks so raw and painful. I don’t know how comparable it is to, for example, losing one’s finger- or toenail? Because that’s really painful!

I didn’t see an exact reason given for why this horse lost the capsule. The usual reasons that the body will reject a capsule are significant blunt force to a large area of the coronet band (getting caught in a gate for instance), infection/extreme metabolic issues, or frost bite. The hoof wall usually detaches significantly at the coronet band, often completely. This is the painful part. Sometimes the entire thing falls loose on its own or it needs to be helped off. As you would expect there is bleeding from the papillae/corium. Once the bleeding stops (which is reasonably quickly as long as all major blood supplies are intact), contact with the air will immediately begin to dry out the exposed structures. Sometimes a yellow keratin layer will form over them that is fairly hard. For a young horse, it would only take a matter of months to see a mostly regrown hoof. For an older horse it will take a bit longer, usually closer to a year.

In the meantime a good way to keep the hoof clean is with baby diapers and a padded hoof boot for the injured hoof and the intact one. If the capsule sloughs because of trauma, the infection rate is pretty low if the hoof stays clean. If it was caused by an infection in the first place you have to be super careful, but it isn’t impossible to heal these. If a sloughed capsule is the only issue and there are no other things causing lameness, horses are out grazing and walking fairly quickly. NSAIDS go a long way to manage inflammation and pain, but it’s not like they are typically used in a long term fashion. Keep in mind the hoof is constantly growing, even as it is being torn from the body. Research has seen foal hooves grow at a rate of 15mm/month and older horses at 6-12mm/month depending on life stage and health.

#capsule slough

star-crossed-equine

Half-day old baby feet, for your viewing pleasure.

@barefoothooves

Ahhhhh they are so precious and perfect 😭

Arabian/Morgan gelding that definitely needed a trim but had amazing wall quality. The bright white inner wall, which is incredibly small here, is more susceptible to disease because of tubule shape and density. If the wall quality was poor this hoof would have been far more distorted than it currently is. This foot will turn around quickly.

Some markups for a new client today. This horse was trimmed aggressively in the toe by another farrier four weeks ago, but the heels and bars were left quite tall and the severe thrush and white line disease left untreated. The hoof wall from quarter to quarter is completely detached from a significant bacterial/fungal infection. The wall itself bends under pressure, as there is a large open cavity just underneath it. Unfortunately the owner is now quite worried about any trimming happening at the toe, so they’ll be getting these, along with soaking and cleaning instructions, to help them understand why a resection is necessary.

#hoof markup #wld

A client of mine got a mini horse named Itsy Bitsy. She has the cutest feet! 😍

#these are still the most beautiful mini feet i have ever seen #miniature horse

towards a gentle academic

be up front and honest about the things you do not know

acknowledge the intrinsic value of others’ knowledge bases, even if they do not seem important to you from your institutional context

do not feign mastery where you have none

respect the gaps in others’ knowledge bases

be generous, not only with others

but also with yourself

you overwork yourself at the risk of legitimizing a culture of overwork

privilege voices and perspectives that have historically been left out of the academy

nothing is ever neutral or apolitical

support the progress of other scholars

collaboration over competition

<3

burnalltheoxers

Hey hoof nerds!

Check this out: Brego’s Hoof Wall Resection

WARNING: Graphic pictures. Do not continue if you don’t want to see. Brego had his hoof wall resection yesterday. According to my vet, it was NBD for Brego (of course, he had good drugs on board and lots of people taking care of him). For me, it was super nerve-wracking - I was so worried they would get in there and find something really bad. Plus, I wasn’t there for it, so I had to wait for updates as my vet could send them. The procedure went off with no problem. He got a special set of custom shoes for support, and then they started removing the hoof wall. As they started digging, they discovered that the entire hoof wall, all the way down, was dead - there was no connection to the laminae underneath. When they got to the top of the hoof, they didn’t find a keratoma, but instead a pocket of damaged and infected cells. That area got cleaned and debrided until nothing but healthy cells were left.

The theory that the vets (there were four in attendance) and the farrier have is that years ago, Brego either had some tiny bit of infection or foreign body travel up from the toe all the way to the coronary band, or he had some slight damage to the coronary band. He blew out an abscess in exactly the same spot almost two years before we got him, so this whole thing probably started back then. He then went two years with no abscess, blew one out last spring, then went ANOTHER year with no abscess, then six months, and then it really became a problem this year. But, guy has been walking around with a compromised hoof for quite some time, and he’s so stoic that nobody even suspected. As for recovery, the plan is a little up in the air. He’s staying at the hospital for the next week, and right now his hoof is just wrapped with daily bandage changes. We may continue with daily changes once he comes home, or we may put a hoof cast on him. He’ll definitely be on stall rest or in a very small paddock for a while, but whether that is weeks or months we won’t know until we see how he progresses. Once we are sure the hoof is growing back in normally, the vet wants him to get as much (careful) movement as possible since movement helps the hoof grow. Total time to grow an entirely new hoof is 9-12 months, but he should be able to return to at least light work long before that. So, please keep your fingers crossed for an uncomplicated recovery and a beautiful, perfect new hoof! And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for… the gory pics. Seriously, if you don’t do blood, please don’t look.

Keep reading

theluckiesttiger

So cool! But seriously, heed the warnings guys!

knz-sweetpea-deactivated2020080

@barefoothooves look at this here hoof

Very cool! Resections suck but in a way they are kinda fun. So I understand why there was an audience lol. Keep us posted on the progress.

#hoof wall resection

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