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Natural Hoof Care

September 10th, 2011 | Comments Off

Before and after hoof trim

 

Our philosophy of hoof care is to balance the entire animal through balancing the horse’s hooves, nutrition and environment.  All three of these factors work synergistically to enable the horse to have a happy, pain free attitude making him a willing partner for you.

We use The Swedish Hoof School natural hoof care techniques in our hoof care practice.  We came across them, and the school’s founder Ove Lind, while actively looking for a better way to care for our own horses.  After seeing the dramatic improvement in our horses, we shared our discovery with friends and, out of that, grew the natural hoof care rehab and maintenance service. With careful study, these techniques can be learned by anyone. We encourage our clients to become proficient themselves so that they can take over the care of their horse’s hooves if they choose.  At the very least, with the knowledge gained, an educated owner will have the know-how and confidence to be proactive with their horses’ hoof care and ensure that their horses’ feet remain healthy and balanced under the care of a skilled hoof care practitioner.

Having been trained and mentored directly under Ove Lind, our philosophy for a healthy horse is to assist the domesticated horse to develop the balanced hoof that it would have were it given the opportunity to live, move and graze in a natural environment.  This approach requires trimming the foot to remove what the horse cannot remove on its own in confined living quarters, without access to the varieties of food and the freedom of movement that would wear and maintain its feet naturally.

Horses of Course offers two-day intensive hands on clinics at our facility in California.  Please contact us via email if you would like to schedule a clinic with your horse.  As an introduction to the philosophy and method that we use, we’ve provided you with the following summary:

The Cornerstones of The Swedish Hoof School’s EasyHoofCare

  • Every hoof should be protected in exactly the manner that it needs to be at all times.
  • No man can create a perfect hoof. Our work is simply to help the horse to grow a healthy hoof.
  • Every hoof is unique and has its own natural shape.  This is why you can’t have any fixed measurements.
  • Man has no right to enforce their opinion about what hooves “should” look like.
  • Hoof shape is dynamic and changes over time according to its environment and state of health.
  • You are never, ever allowed to trim the hard sole.
  • The bars are hoof wall and must be trimmed us such.
  • Eating habits are just as important as trimming when it comes to sound hooves

The Bars and the Frog – Key Components of the Foot

THE BARS
The bars of the hoof are simply a continuation of the hoof wall. They function as a support element for the inner structure of the heel and to assist the expansion and contraction of the foot as the horse moves. They are not designed to bear weight.  Bars should be straight from the purchase (hindmost portion) of the heel to the balance point (the end of the bar, behind the point of the frog) and are delineated by the white line. They grow from the inside of the foot down toward the sole. When the bars bear weight, they either start to fold over and push the sole towards the outer wall causing flares, contracted heels, a flat foot (from the build-up of bar material which is also bruising the bottom of the foot) and heel pain as they begin to squeeze the lateral cartilages in the pinched region between the bars and the wall. They can also jam up into the foot like a splinter pressing on the sensitive heel area, causing the foot to appear “clubbed” due to the excess height of the bar.   The good thing about rehabilitating bars is that they are relatively short but still grow as fast as the hoof wall, so the bars get exchanged rather quickly.  After less than three months, a new and much steeper bar should have replaced the old tilted one.

Bars after correction*

Incorrect bars creating flares*
How Do You Correct Deformed Bars?
Laid-Over Bars

Bars should have two sides and a top edge visible on either side of the frog, and from the bottom they should look just like a continuation of the hoof wall that they are. If just the one side of the bar which faces the frog (opposite the collateral groove or sulcus) is visible, then that bar is laid over onto the sole and it will eventually bruise the foot, pinch the lateral cartilage and force the hoof wall to flare, all the while masquerading as hard sole. Laid-over bars can in fact cover the entire sole and often do.

To correct laid-over bars, they need to be freed by cutting a 90º shelf into the existing angle of the bar (as seen in the diagram below). This severs the connection with the portion of the bar that covers the sole, allowing the bottom of the foot to start flexing and within a short time the laid over bar will start to show cracking and begin to exfoliate revealing proper concavity and the true live sole.  Bars need to be trimmed regularly to prevent them from being ground bearing which can be very uncomfortable and even painful for the horse.

Diagram of the 90º used to correct laid-over bars

 

 

Embedded Bars
Excessively long bars that are not laid over but are instead jammed up into the soft inner portion of the foot are corrected by paring the bars down enough so that they do not bear any weight and are short enough so that when the foot ejects them from their embedded position (within a matter of a few weeks to a couple of months, depending on the severity of the condition), the ejected bar does not get pushed back into the foot by ground pressure. The ejected bar is then trimmed normally and the foot is allowed to heal.
THE FROG 

An Almost Perfect Foot

 

The healthy frog is a pliable, leathery pad (much like a dog’s pad) that is designed to be the first part of the foot to touch the ground in a proper heel-first landing. The frog has several important duties, none of which can be fulfilled if it is not healthy. Pivotal among its duties is its role in the circulation of blood in the foot – acting in conjunction with the deep digital cushion and the extensive vascular network in the heel region of the foot, the frog acts as a pump, supporting the function of the heart and maintaining a healthy environment for the remainder of the foot.

It is not an overstatement to say that a healthy, thrush-free frog is imperative to the health of the foot as, without proper circulation, the foot will eventually become diseased.  How is it that the frog itself ceases to function and becomes diseased? Typically, the downward spiral begins when the frog is elevated off the ground by high hoof walls or by shoes, which immediately cut down and eventually eliminate the pumping action of the frog / deep digital cushion combo, resulting in poor circulation. Then, combine poor circulation with a diet and footing that are favorable to thrush, and you have a powerful recipe for painful, diseased frog that becomes in essence a deep, cracked and oozing wound.  To protect such a wound, the horse avoids putting weight on his painful heel area, causing a pathological toe-first landing which is not only destructive to the joints, tendons and ligaments of the foot and leg, but also further reduces circulation in the vital heel area.

Many people are surprised to learn that thrush is not just an external annoyance but that it can be and often is a deeply embedded infection that has eaten away at a sizable portion of the back of the foot, including major sections of the deep digital cushion. This is really not so surprising on second look however, when you realize that thrush is an anaerobic infection (i.e. one that thrives in an oxygen-free environment) and that tissues which have poor circulation have a poor supply of oxygen. As the horse continues to avoid putting weight on his heel, the heels grow excessively long and start to contract in width, constricting the tissues in the heel just as a vice would, causing further pain and malfunction of the heel. This destructive cycle continues to worsen until, as is so often the case, the horse is diagnosed with navicular syndrome, ringbone or some other devastating disease and is retired (or worse) at an early age.

Healthy frog and digital cushion*

 

 

Thrush infected frog and digital cushion* Note the lack of digital cushion to support and protect the back of the foot

 

 

How Do You Correct a Contracted, Diseased Frog?
The handling for a contracted, diseased frog consists essentially of eliminating the infection inside the foot and restoring ground contact to the frog. Given conditions favorable to healing, Mother Nature will do the rest. There are various treatments available for eliminating the encapsulated thrush, but we have found that the most effective involves soaking the foot for several hours with ionized silver solution, followed by booting with adequate frog pressure and controlled exercise to stimulate circulation and the regrowth of healthy frog. Soaking can be quite time consuming and cumbersome.  We have found a mixture which when sprayed on the clean frog on a weekly basis greatly aids in killing encapsulated thrush.  This mixture is a combination of 16oz of liquid DMSO and 2 oz. of Thrush Off by Well-Horse.

It is important that the sole and the frog are not elevated off the ground by high hoof walls or shoes, during or after the soak, as that could put added strain on laminae that may already be compromised in an unhealthy foot, so soaking is best done following a balanced trim. The bars may also need to be addressed as described in the section above, as deformed or painful bars will keep a horse out of his heels and slow rehabilitation of his frog.

To heal an infected frog, diet also needs to be addressed as the high sugar content of common feeds and blood sugar spikes from common feeding practices together create the ideal environment for encapsulated thrush and will counteract a lot of dedicated effort invested in eliminating thrush for good.
Timetable for a Successful Rehab
Natural rehabilitation does take time because we are fixing problems not just the symptoms.  However, we have found that it is typically far less expensive, much more permanent and a great deal healthier for the horse than conventional approaches.
The timetable for a successful rehab depends on many things, including:
  • The severity of unsoundness in the foot
  • The owner’s commitment to communicate and brainstorm with the trimmer, be open-minded enough to learn, be willing to make improvements in the horse’s living conditions, exercise, diet, trimming schedules, support boots, necessary supplements and/or medications, and
  • The overall condition and nature of the horse
To give you a general guideline for some of the more challenging situations to better estimate the timetable for your horse, a horse with one or more of the following can take 8-10 months or more to correct as that is a minimum amount of time it takes to grow a new hoof.
Conditions Such As:
Coffin bone rotation, distal descent (sinker), navicular syndrome, laminitis, founder and wall cracks are all man-made conditions.  The Swedish Hoof School philosophy and methodology can assist the horse in rehabilitating all of these symptoms.*

Manifestations Such As:
Hoof Standing under, overweight, bad attitude, unwillingness, back pain, stiffness, stomach ulcer, bad habits, incorrect toe axis, growth rings and ridges, stumbling, brushing, interfering, forging, overreaching, scalping, knee-hitting, elbow hitting, cross-firing, speedy cutting, toe first landing, flared walls, asymmetric hooves, under-run heels, high heels, skinny frogs, fissured frogs, contracted heels, flat soles, white line disease and thrush might very well be solved in the same package.*

The road to a naturally sound foot begins with the first step.  We are pleased to be able to share this powerful knowledge and methodology with you, and are honored to be part of your horse’s return to natural soundness.

Let the journey begin!

* Photos, graphics and some content courtesy of The Swedish Hoof School

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