Friday 26 February 2010

Changing hoof loading


More rehab photos, another new arrival who is growing a new hoof capsule at an impressive rate. As you can see from the (sorry, slightly blurry) upper photo, he has poor medio-lateral balance, confirmed by X-rays.

In shoes, his hoof was shunting laterally and collapsing medially, but if you look at the new hoof angle, and project where the hoof capsule should be when it has grown down, he will have much more medial support, which over the longer term should improve his soundness.

The top band of new growth really is growing in at that angle, its not just a camera angle - in fact in real life the difference is even more dramatic - and this hoof growth has developed in less than 4 weeks, and despite the fact that he is not able yet to do much work. He has a very weak and under-run caudal hoof but this is also slowly starting to strengthen, although that process will be a long time.

1 comment:

cptrayes said...

That takes the biscuit for speed of growth - faster than anything I've ever seen!

C