Filly arrived the day after Wiggy, whom I blogged about yesterday, so I thought it would be as good a time as any to post her new photos. These are her comparison shots between day 1 and today, a fortnight later.
Filly's farrier and I discussed marking hooves to record growth rates before she came - luckily Filly had a useful band of different horn at the top of her hoof when she arrived and we should be able to chart how her hoof grows down using this.
You can clearly see it in this photo, 2 weeks on from when she arrived.
Here is her lamest foot - RF - in shoes and - below - a day out of shoes. I blogged these photos in her initial post, which is here. Apologies to Nick, Filly's farrier, as I only just saw and replied to his last comment on there!
The photos above and below compare the same foot immediately out of shoes and today, 2 weeks later.
Clearly she is still at an early stage and lots needs to happen, not least her heels continuing to move back and be more supportive of the palmar hoof. Nevertheless she is doing quite a good job already of shortening her toe and engaging her frog and starting to allow it to work harder.
The LF was the foot on which she had recently (before arrival) been sounder and it was less under-run than the right but a few hours out of shoes was still a weak looking foot, as you can see below.
Two weeks later the foot is still weak but there are signs that the frog is developing and the heels, as on the RF, are moving back though I expect a lot more changes to come.
On this foot as well Filly has done a reasonable job of keeping her toe short while the back of her foot strengthens.
Its early days with Filly and she is nowhere near being back into full work yet but she is comfortable on the tracks and working in the school which is a good starting point.
I'm sorry the blog has been running late so far this week - if possible, I will get back on track tomorrow - fingers crossed for the computer behaving...
quote: Filly's farrier and I discussed marking hooves to record growth rates before she came - luckily Filly had a useful band of different horn at the top of her hoof when she arrived and we should be able to chart how her hoof grows down using this.
ReplyDeleteits a pity we don't have a direct comparison as i wasn't recording her hoof growth with shoes on. its certainly been exceptional this summer, as it has for very many horses. i don't recall ever seeing such extraordinary growth rates as i have this year. as Tim can verify, filly's shoeing intervals were reduced from 6-7 weeks to 4 weeks just to keep on top of it. i have however marked the feet of several horses shod in front and barefoot behind as we discussed, to see if wearing shoes has any impact on hoof growth. this way we can eliminate outside factors such as nutrition from the equation. i look forward to seeing the results in due course.
With marking the hooves I don't think you would get reliable information when the front feet are show and the hind feet are barefoot as I would think that they have different growth rates.
ReplyDeleteI think front feet grow more than hind feet as there is more weight on the front feet. This, I think, is also why it is so commonly used to just shoe the horses front hooves instead of all 4.
So if you wanted to compare hoof growth I think you need to do it on a larger scale. Probably find a big farm with the same type of horse, that get the same nutrition and record the training etc. and have half of the horses in shoes and the other half out of shoes..
Or maybe it could be enough to record the difference in front and back hoof growth and apply this rate to your experiment, I don't know. Just some thoughts :-)
its an interesting thought. However, i think we should be able to ascertain from this study if there is a difference between the growth of shod and unshod feet tbh. the difference in weight bearing is imo, unlikely to have a dramatic affect on hoof growth in the way you're suggesting. particularly as the shod foot will have more weight bearing on the wall. if the theory is correct, then weight bearing on the sole and frog would be responsible for an improvement in the growth rate, not a reduction. we should therefore see quite a distinct difference between them if the theory holds water.
ReplyDeletei just hope my markers stay put for the duration
:-)