Tag: Eventing planning

Getting ready for a barefoot winter

Getting ready for a barefoot winter- are you ready?

Getting ready for a barefoot winter; because it can be a gruesome time when your horses live out in a herd in a field. Last year there was a fortnight when I didn’t actually see the horses in daylight at all; luckily we have a lady who pooh picks, necessarily a daytime actvity, and she helped to keep an eye on them. I remember taking flash photos on my phone at feeding time to check them over, as well as making good use of the phone torch option.

Getting ready for a barefoot winter; we have promised ourselves to be better prepared this year. We have put some pea gravel down around the hay feeder so Gill doesn’t have to do the gloopy mud dance with the wheelbarrow. We each slipped at least once in the mud last year, although there were no full festival style face plants. We have made a short track going onto the field from the gate for the haylage deliveries; the truck can drive on, drop the bales and they are stored in an electric fence square next to the gravelled feed area- luxury indeed. There is still a churned up area in the corner of the field from the tractor deliveries last winter.

We have done our autumn worm counts and saliva tests. Four horses had four different results. One clear, two weakly positive for tapeworm, one with a medium redworm count. Typically Con, the loan horse who was due to go home, was the clear one, and it was our three that needed treating. So two wormed with Equitape and one with Strongid- P. They will all get wormed again for encysted redworm once the temperature drops and we will worm count and saliva test again in Spring. Since we started doing targeted worming 3 years ago, I have only had to worm for tapeworm once about 18months ago and the two old horses have consistently low faecal egg counts. We saliva test twice a year and egg count three times a year. We use Westgate labs for all our test kits, resonably priced, fabulous service, very prompt resuts and great advice over the phone.

http://www.westgatelabs.co.uk/info

Rocky is 4 now and still seems to have a susceptibility to redworm; I guess he will be the one in the herd that often needs worming. By testing and doing targeted worming we are doing our bit to slow the spread of drug resistent parasites in our area.

Apparently there is an ELISA test for encysted redworm in development: in theory we could get to a situation where none of the horses need worming for years at a time once that is available.

We have also weight-taped all the horses and, a great suggestion from a friend, I also have a selection of condition photos to allow for comparison as winter drags on.

And finally, we have acquired a new horse. Gary has an ex-racer called Beat to go hunting on. He tried him with 3 shoes on, the horse then arrived with no back shoes and actually seems to be coping quite well. We will aim to transition him in Spring once hunting is over, as Gary wants to crack on and have some fun first.

Rocky is cantering under saddle and stomping around the forest. Cal has had some foot X-rays and a combined consultation with a trimmer and a holistic barefoot friendly vet. I’m still porcessing all the information and gathering more advice to see if we can come up with new ideas to get his feet going better.

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Spot the shiny new Scoot Boot on the other foot 🙂

And the super  Equisafety Mercury jacket- my favourtie piece of equatrian clothing. No one can say they haven’t seen you!!

So lots of stuff to report on over the next few weeks I hope.

Getting ready for a barefoot winter- bring it on!!

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Barefoot Brain-ache

Barefoot brain-ache is an annoying condition, well-known to the owner of the barefoot horse. Barefoot brain-ache occurs when the answer to a supposedly simple question is no longer simple because certain dogmas are no longer taken as truth.

My barefoot brain-ache is caused, again, by the fact that Cal the gorgeous grey is completely stomping-around sound on a surface, on grass, and on smooth tarmac but not on stoney surfaces. In the last fourteen days he has stormed around the farm ride at Somerford, jumping everything, raced around the Stafford Horse Trials at 80(T) level, competed in the Delamere Forest XC jump training at 90cm, had a day of SJ and XC training organised by Equine Adventures at Somerford and done about 25 miles hacking around Delamere Forest.


Yet had you been there watching me walk him onto the truck for any of those days out you would have pulled him off the lorry and put him back in his stable (oops he doesn’t have one). Our Tarmac is quite rough from the paddock gate to the truck parking place and he tiptoes across it. The yard at Crossmere Livery where we had the SJ training is hard-core- he teetered into the arena and then jumped like a pro. The landings at Somerford XC are gravelled and prepared, none of those bother him but we have to walk down to the XC course on the grass verge because the hard-core track is too rough for him. Although to be fair he would walk on the stones now, but very slowly and carefully like an old man. His ears are still pricked, he doesn’t wear a pain face when he’s creeping down the gravel road, he just really takes his time and care. Then he steps onto the grass and sets off like a pocket rocket. He was jumping out of his skin the other day; so much so we are now on the waiting list for Skipton BE90.


So if any other barefooters out there have any tips or tricks to share, I would love to hear them.
Barefoot brain ache answers to date:

We are building a hard-core feed area in the field to counteract the winter mud; hopefully this will help to toughen up his feet and get him used to rougher surfaces.

These symptoms can reflect low-grade laminitis: the laminar connection at the coronary band and the top inch of hoof always looks good and tight but by the time the hoof wall hits the ground, the white line is a bit stretched and the toes are a bit like slippers. I can counteract the slipper tendency by light trimming with a radius rasp every couple of weeks, so his feet look very good most of the time now. I have tested for all forms of metabolic compromise, he has never been positive for insulin resistance, his ACTH was borderline for Cushing’s once but a trial of treatment with Agnus Castis,  Freestep Superfix and then Pergolide for 3 months didn’t make much difference so we have now stopped.

We changed the haylage to organic with a much better mineral analysis profile, as described in a previous post, and the foot sensitivity definitely improved but hasn’t vanished. Other parameters are vastly improved after the haylage change though; muscle tone, coat quality, general well-being.

His sole is thickening up nicely- he shed a load of sole at the end of winter but still has a good toe callous. He does have some minimal thrush around his frogs but nothing too horrible, and this goes altogether when the ground is dry.

So continues the barefoot brain ache: is Cal lame? What does lame mean?

Definition from Wikiepedia

“Lameness is an abnormal gait or stance of an animal that is the result of dysfunction of the locomotor system. In the horse, it is most commonly caused by pain, but can be due to neurologic or mechanical dysfunction.”

So he does have an abnormal gait that is likely caused by pain but this only occurs on a very specific surface and resolves immediately when the surface changes with no lasting effects. It can also be prevented by wearing boots.

When is a horse lame?

So to be lame, I would guess the change has to be persistent, occur on different surfaces, and I suppose on both reins because we all know now that uncorrected crookedness can look like lameness on one side on particular, and in fact used to be called “bridle lameness” before slow motion film made this dysfunction really obvious in Olympic dressage horses.

When Paddy and I were doing our tour of polo yards with Mel, one place we were at had an arena where they had simply scraped the grass off the top and left the soil as the surface. This “arena” grew stones every time they harrowed it. Now Paddy has always been a rock cruncher but if he stepped on a big rock whilst schooling he would hop off it and carry on. Our host, a vet and barefoot sceptic, used to say he was always lame…but the mis-step was a protective mechanism and only lasted for a stride; is that really lame or just sensible?

“A sound horse is a one who has no lameness or illness.”

So a rock crunching barefoot horse is most definitely sound, because if we accept that the feet are the barometer of whole horse health, (no foot no horse) and if they are functioning correctly, the rest of the horse must be pretty healthy too.

So is a gimping barefoot horse sound?

“The horse is sound for the service intended by the owner or rider. By sound, I mean the horse is comfortable: He’s not going lame from performing his job (barring accident or acute injury).”

Said Phillip Dutton in a fab article “What is Serviceably Sound? “

http://practicalhorsemanmag.com/article/what-is-serviceably-sound-11664

Cal is definitely serviceable sound. For what I want to do (eventing on mostly grass), his feet are good enough. He is not going lame from performing his job.

If we wanted to do endurance we would have to boot, but that’s fine, many of the winning horses in the Tevis Cup are booted. Unfortunately Renegades aren’t made big enough for half Irish bog ponies. We have had two pairs of Old Macs in 5 years, although these have had a tendency to fly off at speed. I’m currently road testing a pair of Cavallo Trecs- they flap around a bit but stayed on cantering around the hayfields last night.

So my conclusion to the barefoot brain ache is that Cal is serviceably sound, and in fact is perfectly sound, according to those definitions I have found.

Would he pass a vetting?

Only if the lungeing on a circle on the hard was done on super smooth tarmac.

How then do you vet a barefoot horse?