On Monday evening we attended a fabulous equine lower limb dissection workshop. Campbell, the vet leading the evening, is hugely knowledgeable and experienced, with an enquiring mind and a learning mind-set, and with a tangible love of horses and passion for their form and function. He delivered a detailed, entertaining and fascinating evening about the anatomy of the equine forelimb, spending lots of time on the hoof. It was absolutely amazing to feel, touch, prod and see the various layers of the hoof as they came apart, to actually see and feel and stroke the laminar tubules, to fondle the pedal bone and to see the navicular apparatus in its full detail.
The specimen feet were actually pretty good. It had been a shod horse and as such I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. The foot had a thick, strong, spongy frog and a really good beefy digital cushion, certainly much better than any of my horses had in shoes, and even better than the frog in Paddy’s funny clubby forefoot now that he is a barefoot stomping around horse. Campbell gave the best verbal description of the shock absorption mechanism which the hoof provides that I have ever heard from a vet or a farrier. He really emphasised the crucial role of the frog and the digital cushion as well as the hoof wall flexing on impact.
I asked him how a metal horse shoe affected the shock absorption system- his reply was that good shoeing should not compromise this function at all.
Now I will say that if all horses were fortunate enough to have the robust feet that the dissected horse had in shoes then I might even agree with him! Although I do want to know how long the dissected horse had been in shoes, how old it was and whether it was regularly shod. Because the feet were so much better than the shod feet that I regularly see out and about, with closed, collapsed heels, atrophied frogs and weedy digital cushions.
Had Paddy’s feet looked that good in shoes I might never have embarked on my barefoot journey.
But Paddy had terrible feet in shoes, and the horse himself had become a danger to farriers, so I did start my barefoot journey, and started reading and questioning. And no matter what your views on barefoot versus shod I think there are two facts we can all agree on.
- Iron shoes do not expand
- Iron shoes are applied with the hoof off the ground so the hoof is not in its fully expanded state at the time when the rigid iron shoe is applied.
There are a couple of points which are obvious to me but apparently still open to debate
- The barefoot horse loads the whole foot structure during locomotion, and so the whole hoof absorbs the shock, as Campbell described beautifully, the frog, the digital cushion, the sole, the wall, the capsule, and the blood in the capillary bed acts as a complete energy absorption system.
- The shod horse loads the shoe and therefore the peripheral hoof wall during locomotion. Now I accept that the hoof wall is connected to everything else, but we have already established that iron does not expand and that the iron shoe is not set wide enough to allow maximum expansion, so even if some of the absorption function of the hoof is available to the horse in shoes, it must be compromised to some degree. Most importantly in my understanding, as the frog does not generally contact the ground in a shod horse, the back of the foot cannot work in the same manner in a shod horse.
Campbell had a lot of really sensible things to say on the conditioning of the horse, how they need road work and concussion to toughen up their tendons and increase their bone density, how all structures including the foot needed work to develop and to fulfil their potential.
But he does seem to believe that horses need shoes to work, especially in this country, where we don’t have the arid conditions that allow horses to develop good strong feet?
It wasn’t the time to mention track systems
Or the arid desert like conditions (NOT) on our field just a few miles down the road from Nantwich Equine vets.
It wasn’t quite the forum to mention hoof boots.
Or barefoot hunters, eventers and endurance horses, doing all the miles they can, barefoot or booted.
I did think I would love to have the opportunity to talk and ask questions and discuss stuff with him more.
And we are still struggling in the search for a barefoot friendly vet who would investigate poor hoof performance an an indicator of underlying metabolic or systemic problems rather than a local hoof problem to be solved by shoeing.
Abscesses are a foot problem, yes. We had those, we had many even in Paddy’s normally stonking feet a couple of years ago. We subsequently realised that the iron content in the forage was very high. Since moving house and changing forage supply, not a single abscess.
Bruised heels, yes, we have experienced those, barefoot and shod.
Footiness, yes. Actually I take the footiness sign very seriously; as a sign that our whole horse management is not working for whatever reason. Footiness is low grade laminitis, and in the barefoot horse, this subtle sign is very obvious when not disguised by shoes.
The answer though is generally alteration to the diet or exercise regime, not the horse needing shoes.
Cal, my grey, is the perfect example of a horse that “can’t cope barefoot” actually having other issues.
I have struggled to keep Cal barefoot. Had he not fractured his carpal bone I might even have shod him again by now because he is not an easy barefooter. As it is I am determined to minimise concussion to the knee to delay the onset of arthritis. He was very flat footed, thin soled, with under-run heels, when he arrived in shoes. He stayed like that in remedial shoes, and for a good while during barefoot transition! He now has thicker soles, decent heels and his hooves no longer look like Turkish slippers. But up until two weeks ago he was still footy on stones. He needed hoof- boots to hack out comfortably on stony tracks.
His hoof photos have always looked like case study photos of horses with low grade laminitis.
I have asked for him to be tested for Cushing’s three times, for insulin resistance twice, and we did foot X-rays to check the pedal bone angle and guide the trimmer. Cal is the reason I have spoken to nearly every trimmer and barefoot friendly farrier in the country and combed their websites looking for answers. Cal is the reason I have read, researched and investigated every possible cause of imperfect performance in the unshod hoof. Cal is the reason we balance minerals to our haylage supply, optimise gut support consistently and support the gut additionally for travel or other stressors. I have learned a huge amount about horse anatomy and physiology because of Cal.
I would have been much happier to have been guided and advised by a knowledgable and supportive vet throughout that process.
Three weeks ago we got our field treated with the minerals and products recommended by the Albrecht soil analysis. We took the horses off the grass until the stuff had washed in, typically just as the dry sunny weather kicked in. The horses were limited to the yard, feed area and dirt track down to the trough. Work was busy so it took me a while to put up our track system. All in all Cal was off grass completely for 10 days.
The first ride after the Bank Holiday was a revelation. We were late back from Scotland so we went for a quick hack, no boots as we weren’t going far, and he stomped around the forest tracks with absolute glee.
So there we have it, after four years of tweaking. Simple answer, the horse is grass sensitive. Although he doesn’t test positive for insulin resistance, to have functional feet, which to me are a barometer of whole horse health, he has to be off the grass completely.
The track is now up, and goes all the way around the field. The other horses are eating the track grass down. Once the grass is mostly gone, I might try Cal on the track for a few hours at night so he gets to do exercise laps with the others.
His feet look great, and maybe he too will now acquire official rock cruncher status.
Had Paddy taken 4 years rather than 3 months to get from shoes off to rock crunching I am sure I too would be one of those people that believes my horse can’t cope barefoot.
Luckily, we always get the horse we need at the time LOL
