Heart bar shoes

A new horse, Caymen, arrived yesterday all the way from Scotland - a long journey but he travelled in fine style and was as fresh as a daisy when he came off the lorry. 

Caymen has been diagnosed with damage to the navicular bone and as a result has been shod in heart-bar shoes. These are applied with the objective of providing support for the back of the foot but, as you can see, they don't always achieve that.

Horses with navicular damage (or related soft tissue damage) always have a weak palmar hoof and so its always right to focus on improving that area. Whether with rehab here, out of shoes, or in a more traditional context, using remedial farriery, the focus is the same.

The difference is that a bar shoe aims to externally lock the foot into some sort of stability - like putting scaffolding up round a weak building - whereas rehab out of shoes aims to strengthen the foot internally.

Each route has its pros and cons. A shoe is a quick fix but over time the very stability which it encourages also leads to atrophy, as you can see in these photos. The digital cushion has more or less collapsed and the frog has also been taken out of action.

The hairline diving towards the frog indicates clearly that there is little structure in the back of the foot at the moment and thats something that we now need to change.

Rehab out of shoes tends to yield results more slowly than shoeing but the plus is that the improvements should be sustainable over the long term. Lets hope that Caymen agrees!

3 weeks on - Mrs H's update

Mrs Hoggitt has now been here for 3 weeks so as usual its time for an update.

Mrs Hoggitt from Nic Barker on Vimeo.

Photos, while interesting, don't give you much of an idea about how healthy hooves really are; to get the true picture you need to see the horse moving and so today I thought I would start with her footage. 

She came with good, strong feet but this - left - foot was definitely weaker than her right as the footage confirms. 

Three weeks on the changes in the photos are there but are fairly subtle - a shorter, more balanced hoof capsule and a better hairline. 

Her hooves, like those of the other rehab horses, have not been trimmed but have been allowed to develop in response to her movement. 

I would expect her frog and heels to become stronger again over the next few weeks but she has made a good start. 

The changes in her digital cushion are most likely the result of a changed landing - or maybe its the other way around...

Less of a change to her right foot which is as you'd expect since she was already landing heel first on this foot. 

However, coming back into work and spending more time on different sorts of terrain has resulted in a broader frog and harder-working sole. 

 

 Far less of a change in the palmar hoof - again, as you'd expect since she was already landing well on this foot.

All in all, encouraging signs from her first few weeks and I hope there will be lots more to come. 

Breakfast...

...at Tiffany's Rockley.

Breakfast is ready from Nic Barker on Vimeo.

Some footage from a May morning for your Monday morning - hope you enjoy it :-)

The link is here if it doesn't display properly for you: https://vimeo.com/165838421

Devon Haylage

I've just had an email from someone asking about haylage literally as I was about to post this, so it seemed opportune!

We normally make all our own haylage and we are very fussy about it. Not only does it have to be great quality when we make it but it has to be safe for feet - it goes without saying that its tasty stuff, smells amazing and the horses love it!

Last summer was difficult in many ways and factors outside our control meant we missed all the good weather in July, when we would normally try to cut, and only managed to make a third of our normal harvest.

Fortunately we had more than enough to get us through the winter but with horses on the track year round I knew I was likely to run short over the summer. Problem is, although its easy to find haylage, its not easy to find really good haylage which is safe for horses and their hooves.

Step forward Devon Haylage, whom I'd come across in the past when they asked to use a blog I wrote about hay and haylage. I was more than happy for them to share it, especially as I'd heard good things about their haylage from owners who used it. 

What is particularly nice is that - along with the ryegrass and timothy haylage which they stock - they also have a native grass mix, which is taken from old leys - permanent pasture like ours which has a much richer variety of plants. I've now bought in a load of small bales from them to tide us over and I'm very pleased - the horses like it as much as our own and I think it will be a safe alternative.

So if any of you are looking for haylage then do keep an eye out for theirs. They understand forage, they understand horses and they understand how important nutrition is for hoof health. 

PS: As you know, I don't often post reviews on here but when I do they are always completely unbiased and independent :-)

Waterproof trousers and rugs...BEGONE!

After a long, long wet winter and a chilly start to the spring, its all starting to come right. First week of May and at last the weather is warm AND dry AND sunny - we haven't had all three together since October but its been worth the wait.

 The horses are loving the sun on their backs - its been bright and dry for several weeks but too cold for the clipped horses to be without their rugs till now.

 As a result they spent most of yesterday soaking up the rays and wandering the tracks enjoying the hugely improved temperatures and lack of an east or north wind.

I took these photos late in the afternoon - siesta time, and just before they were about to come in for supper, so there wasn't a lot of activity going on...

 Thomas and Ginger inspecting the quad - disappointed that it wasn't a hay delivery, only housekeeping...

There is plenty of haylage out on the tracks but they'd eaten all they wanted by this stage and were only interested in sunbathing...

Another new horse - Ginger's feet

As you can tell, its been all change amongst the rehab horses but its always fun to see new feet, even if its taking me a few days to get all the photos posted.

Ginger, like the other new arrivals, has been shod but has been out of shoes for the best part of a year.  He went lame in 2015 and an MRI showed inflammation in the palmar hoof but little obvious pathology apart from sidebone.

His landing and lameness have improved significantly over the time he has been out of shoes  though you can see the central sulcus is still weak. However he still has a slight but visible lameness on the right rein and its this we need to try and improve.

He has relatively long toes but quite a good foot otherwise and his landing is mostly heel first, though he has had periods of landing toe first till quite recently.

 He does slightly overload the lateral side of his feet and this may well be a factor in his sidebone.

In this foot too the central sulcus is a vulnerable area, which has in the past been very sore. The dry weather we have now will help but the best way to strengthen his feet will be movement.

Holly's feet

These feet belong to one of the new horses, Holly, who arrived last week. She has a history of front limb lameness, worse on the RF, which has been an issue off and on for the last year. 

She has had time in shoes and has also been tried barefoot with boots but the lameness has persisted. She has been diagnosed on x-ray with thin soles and on MRI with DDFT and navicular bone damage to both front feet, worse on the RF, with a poor to guarded prognosis according to the referral vet. 

To make matters worse she has also had hind limb lameness diagnosed with ultrasound revealing suspensory desmitis so we have lots to work on. 

However, although these are weak feet with a lot of room for improvement Holly has a much better landing than these photos would suggest.

Its a fair assumption, given the lack of development in her heels, frog and digital cushion, that she has been landing toe first for a period of time in the last year but she is currently landing flat or fractionally heel first which is an encouraging sign. More on Holly soon...