#composite shoes

[equinesandeducation]

New shoes 🙌🏻

[barefoothooves]

Terraflex (130) vs Natural Flex (160). They both have pros and cons regarding application.

The Terraflex are very easy to see through, which means easier nail placement. You can also nail directly through the shoe without needing to pre drill holes. They come in three different amounts of flexion (the one shown here is in the middle). They come with either toe clips or quarter clips, which are more for helping you seat the shoe than anything. I’m not sure I care for the clips, I feel like they delay breakover too much. The material is fairly easy to nip through and rasp to customize the size/breakover, but you can see it’s hard to smooth the edges with the rasp. They are thicker than a metal shoe, but not as thick as the other brand. I fitted this shoe normally on the foot, and left the quarter clips on this time, only adding a little more bevel at the toe quarters.

The Natural Flex do not flex to the extent that the other brand does, but with some effort I can get a slight bend with my hands. They are technically clear, but it’s difficult to see the white line even marked in sharpie. I felt better pre drilling the holes for this shoe. It was very difficult to nip this shoe into the desired size, but rasping was easy and cleaner on the edges. They come with a weird little toe block that I nipped off because it delayed breakover too much. I believe the material of these will last longer/get more resets. I set these shoes back and added an extra bevel at the toe since this horse struggles with toe cracks.

Overall, they’re very similar. I imagine the stiffest model of the Terraflex would feel much like the Natural Flex. Both can be nailed or glued (the Terraflex with cuffs that heat seal to the edge of the shoe). Both can be used with or without packing material (they’re a little trickier to clean out, but it’s not impossible, I like to flush them with bleach water). Both flex, have good tread, and can be almost infinitely customized (bevels added to one side only, increased bevel at the toe, shoe thickness adjusted, I imagine even wedged to some degree). Both need a little extra attention paid to getting the nail heads in past the tread, but other than that the application of both was very straightforward.

[equinesandeducation]

Out with the old, in with the new!

(@madrivervalleyicelandics, in reply to your last post about them lasting so long, it’s soo true!! I love it)

[equinesandeducation]

Frelsi showing off her duplo’s 😎