Barefoot A-Circuit Hunter

Check out the article here!

Cheat Sheet for Hoof Health

Three indicators of hoof health:

1. PLAY HOOF PEEK-A-BOO: With the hoof on the ground, cover everything but the top inch under the coronet with your hand. The top inch shows how the hoof wants to grow. Take your hand away. There should not be a surprise!

2. TAKE THE TOE TEST: On the bottom of a clean hoof, draw a line across the widest part of the foot (also where the bars terminate) and across the very back of the frog material. Draw a parallel line across the toe region. The lines at the toe and back of the frog should be about the same distance from the middle line.

3. ASSESS FROG FUNCTION: The frog should be one, tough unit, with a valley in the middle. DEEP CENTRAL CLEFT=DEEP THRUSH. Generally shedding should be minor; dramatic frog shedding can indicate that your horse’s callus is being eaten away by thrush, especially if the new frog underneath seems pale, sickly, or underdeveloped.

RED ALERT: Prominent growth rings, flared toes and growth rings that are farther apart at the heels than at the toe can be indications of laminitis.

Four things you can do to promote hoof health:

1. KEEP YOUR HORSE FIT NOT FAT! For many horses, this is not only the difference between healthy and unhealthy hooves, THIS IS LIFE AND DEATH. Feed the minimum amount to keep your horse’s weight, and exercise him as much as you and he can. DO make sure your horse is getting appropriate minerals; DO test your hay and balance to that (Balanced Equine Nutrition will formulate a supplement based on your hay sample: http://www.balancedequinenutrition.com/). Recommended products: California Trace, Grand Hoof, Focus Hoof. Avoid products with Iron, Manganese, and Potassium because these tend to be high in our area and block absorption of other minerals (Copper, Zinc and Selenium are usually deficient).

2. TREAT FOR THRUSH! If it warns you not to get it on your skin, DO NOT USE IT ON A THRUSH INFECTION, this is an infected wound on your horse’s foot and SENSITIVE. Product recommendations: White Lightning, CleanTrax, No Thrush, Thrush Off, Huuf Magic, Pete’s Goo, Silvetrasol, baby powder, Desitin as a preventative. Probe your horse’s frog every time you clean the foot, especially in the center, and remove any shedding material with scissors or a hoof knife. **NOTE: Thrush infections HURT, BE CAREFUL as your horse may react violently to deep probing of the central cleft. During muddy seasons weekly or anytime there is anything deep or black or smelly, treat with a natural topical as a preventative. Rotate products to avoid resistant bacteria.

3. MAINTAIN A SHORT SHOEING/TRIMMING CYCLE! Besides diet, the overwhelming cause of hoof deformity in domestic horses is overgrowth. This is even more important in shod horses because you are taking away the horse’s ability to wear his hooves himself, but some of the worst feet I have seen come from neglected barefoot horses out in wet, green pasture. Your horse’s genes are hardwired to think he is moving 20 miles a day over rough ground!

4. ENSURE ADEQUATE HOOF PROTECTION! Whether that is horseshoes, hoof boots, or thick soles, walls and frogs, don’t ask your horse to perform over terrain without suitable protection on his feet. Not only is this cruel and damaging to the internal structures, but improper movement perpetuates unhealthy hooves. For advice on what his hooves are capable of, check with your farrier, your trimmer… or your horse!

Scientific Paper Refutes Common Hoof Care Practices for Founder Cases

I was really excited to read about this article entitled "The effect of hoof angle variations on the dorsal laminar load of the equine hoof" by Ramsey, Hunter and Nash, (abstract available here).

It is common practice in the farrier/veterinary world to recommend raising the palmar angle (coffin bone angle) of foundered hooves (see the example photo below):

It is believed that this lessens the pull of the deep digital flexor tendon on the dorsal hoof wall (wall at the toe). Heels are often wedged up with big pads, horseshoes, even blocks of wood as shown. This belief is held by many big names in equine podiatry circles.

The aforementioned article, however, created a model to test this hypothesis. Their results were pretty simple: "For all loading cases, increasing the palmar angle increased the stored elastic energy in the dorsal laminar junction... Therefore, hoof care interventions that raise the palmar angle in order to reduce the dorsal lamellae load may not achieve this outcome."

I believe studies such as these should be collected in a volume that hoof care practioners and horse owners can carry around and hand to farriers, vets, and other horse owners when the latter say that the barefoot hoofcare movement is just another fad without scientific backing. What we all believe based on common sense just keeps being proven by the scientific community, when they take the time to look.

Farriers on Boots

There was just an article featured on the American Farriers Journal website on hoof boots! (available here.)

Hoof Balance Research at New Bolton Equine Center

Tonight I attended the “First Tuesday Lecture Series” at New Bolton Equine Center in Kennett Square, PA. The lecture was entitled “Hoof balance: An objective assessment for performance,” presented by Patrick Reilly, New Bolton’s Chief of Farriery Services. An example of Reilly's research can be found here.

Mr. Reilly gave a Powerpoint presentation about “hoof balance.” The main idea of his talk was that much of “modern” hoof care has not changed much in 200 years, probably the only section of New Bolton’s state-of-the-art center that could “boast” this lack of progress. Throughout Reilly's lecture, tone was one of a respect for science, and a desire for continued scientific research to back up farriery practices.

First, Reilly discussed the common measures that farriers use to measure hoof “balance:” namely, medial/lateral (side to side) generally judged by comparing the hoof wall length on the medial (inside) and lateral (outside) of the hoof; also, by whether or not the hairline is parallel to the ground when viewed from the front; and the solar view, where the amount of sole on either side of the frog is compared. Also, farriers will often sight down the hoof from behind when picking up the foot to judge medial/lateral balance at the toe and heel. Traditional farriery holds that the foot should be symmetrical on both sides, and should land flat at all gaits. Reilly mentioned that these ways of measuring balance are often in conflict with one another, presenting balance assessment problems for farriers.

Further complicating matters, balance can also be assessed in motion. Medial-lateral imbalance in landing patterns during movement has been thought to occur in the following manner: the hoof will land on one wall first, and then roll over and load the opposite wall more heavily. It was believed that this would lead to deformation of the hoof capsule due to uneven distribution of this weight..

The main bulk of Reilly's presentation was devoted to research using pressure sensitive material to record the impact distribution of shod feet on various surfaces, at various gaits. Interestingly, the data recorded suggest that the aformentioned model of loading the secondary impact wall is not accurate; actually, the horses in the study landed and bore greater weight on the same wall (outer, in both cases).

Also interestingly, the amount of loading “imbalance” in landing patterns varied depending on the gait. In both horses presented with medial-lateral loading imbalance, the halt showed more loading on the (taller) medial wall, but in the walk and trot, the horse landed first, and more heavily, on the (shorter) lateral wall.p>

Reilly then presented what he had to do in order to get the horse to land “flat:” basically, he applied a ½ inch wedge to the medial side of the hoof wall. Only this height of wedge induced the horse to land “flat,” but also meant that there was an increase concentration of pressure on the medial heel. Reilly did not recommend creating this kind of extreme “correction” in actual practice, calling into question traditional farrier attempts to “balance” the hoof using wedges. Interestingly, this previously barefoot “pasture sound” horse was already taller in the medial hoof wall, possibly beginning to compensate for its own imbalance in movement. Traditional farrier practice would often recommend lowering the medial wall to “level” the hoof, which would have actually made dynamic balance worse.

Finally Reilly presented what he considered a “sound” performance (dressage) horse. Showing images of this horse’s feet, my first impression was that the toes looked very long. Reilly chose this horse because his front and hind feet were almost complete mirror images of each other, to presumeably record the loading distribution on a "sound" horse..

This horse seemed to land toe first, especially at the extended trot. His assumption was that, since this horse was sound, a toe first landing is considered sound and normal at certain gaits. Reilly hypothesized that the toe-first landings were due to the lowering of the hindquarters which delayed touchdown of the front feet so they were no longer hyper-extended when they landed. However the long toes made me wonder if perhaps this horse either has some heel pain he is compensating for, or conversely the horse is landing toe-first because the toes have been left long in the trim and the breakover is delayed. Clearly more research, using different hoof shapes and gaits, is needed in this area.

In the presentation, it was clear that Reilly’s focus is the shod hoof; however he did mention as an aside that he removed the shoe and tested one of the hooves with just the padding beneath. He said he thought that the hoof would have shown to be less “peripherally loading” but in fact it was almost the same as shod. In retrospect, I suspect that this was because the hoof was still trimmed as if to apply a shoe, but obviously, it would be great if further study was done in this area as well.

One other interesting part of the study was the lack of pressure in the quarters of each hoof tested. Indeed, most quarters in the research did not show even the minimal amount of pressure necessary to register with the equipment. These hooves were trimmed “flat” in preparation for shoeing, with no “relief” in the quarters. I am very interested in what goes on at the quarters… something complex must be happening there. So often, bare hooves break at the quarters first… if they are not bearing weight, what physics causes this breakage? And what is the impact of different styles of trimming (a.k.a. "scooping the quarters") on weight distribution during movement?

Finally, Reilly touched on an experiment where he manipulated breakover, moving it out in front of the hoof, and also behind the toe at various intervals. He then measured the amount of pressure underneath the tip of the coffin bone. What he discovered was very interesting. As expected, when breakover was moved out in front of the hoof, pressure at the toe increased. As breakover moved back, pressure decreased, until a certain point (I believe it was past 2 cm behind the front of the hoof), where pressure at the toe began to increase again. What I suspect is that past 2 cm behind the hoof, the shoe is beginning to move behind the front of the coffin bone; I can imagine that this could produce a lever action and press the bone forward and down into the toe at each landing. Obviously radiographs and further research would help in understanding this phenomenon.

This research, while geared at the shod hoof, is definitely needed and I am excited to hear about further developments. I have heard that Hilary Clayton is using this same technology in hoof boots to measure forces on “unshod” hooves; maybe a future review will cover her research! Regardless, Reilly and I are in agreement: it is time scientific, peer reviewed studies replaced outdated habits in horse hoof care.

Welcome!

Welcome to the website of Kate Simmer, Hoof Care Specialist serving Southeastern Pennsylvania and Southwestern New Jersey. This site will serve as a place to document data and photos of the hooves in my care. It is also my hope to create a forum for hoof care specialists of all kinds, horse owners, and equine professionals to discuss the form and function of the horse's hoof.