Busy weekend and new feet required

A very busy weekend with Buddy going home, two new horses - Beanie and Red - arriving and both Beano and Remi's owners visiting. It felt a bit like rush hour at times but we all survived!

These feet belong to new boy Beanie (yes, its going to be very confusing having Beano and Beanie concurrently but at least they are completely different in colouring so there is no risk of mixing up the hoof pics!).

Beanie has been out of shoes for some months and his feet have apparently improved already but he still has an incredibly weak palmar hoof and thin soles as you can see and that - along with his toe first landing - is what we need to try and improve while he is here. There is lots to post on the blog this week!

More on angles, breakover and sole depth

I posted yesterday about the changes in a foot which came out of shoes with poor biomechanics and a weak palmar hoof. The dramatic angle changes you can see there are fairly common and are most often seen in horses who - in shoes - are described as having flat feet, long toes and under-run heels. 

This horse, by contrast, has been out of shoes for many years. He has a much healthier hoof capsule already but contrast the 2 photos, taken about 9 weeks apart. The changes which are happening are similar but less dramatic because this horse - like Buddy - also had feet which needed to improve.

Like Buddy, his frog and heels are becoming stronger and his breakover is moving back, resulting in a shorter toe. 

You can see confirmation of this in the lateral shots - again the time difference is just under 9 weeks. As  with Buddy, there is a clear angle of new growth but its not as severe a change. 

Here are the same photos with the green line showing the point of breakover and the angle of the new hoof capsule; the blue line is (roughly) the ground-bearing surface of the hoof.  

The difference is more subtle than with Buddy but the principles are the same. The hoof is growing a shorter toe and better-connected hoof capsule and as a result the load has shifter towards the back of hoof - where it should be!

Beano is a good illustration of something which I have long believed - that hooves aren't static and that a weak, unhealthy hoof isn't past repair. On the contrary, poor hooves are far from genetic and  - in most cases - horses are pre-programmed to grow the best possible hooves if they are given the opportunity to do so.  

Angles, breakover and sole depth

Here is the promised post on breakover, dorsal wall angles and sole depth. This is actually just the first in the series as these are photos of Buddy and I have another series of photos from Beano which are equally interesting but which I will have to post tomorrow. 

This photo shows Bud the day he arrived. Not a dreadful hoof but its very interesting to compare his breakover and angle change now (below) after nearly 12 weeks. These sorts of steep angle changes are common when horses come out of shoes and usually the new angle gives a very clear indication of where the new breakover will be. 

In this case, it will result in Buddy having a much shorter toe and will also improve his hoof-pastern axis. This is going to take another few months, as his new hoof capsule has only grown in about a third to a half over the 12 weeks he has been here. 

The other huge benefit of a steeper dorsal wall angle is that as well as a shorter toe it indicates a hoof capsule which is much better able to protect the sensitive structures within the hoof. Its common to see improved concavity and much thicker soles once the new growth is complete. We don't usually have follow-up x-rays once horses go home but as a rule in a hard-working barefoot horse the coffin bone is held higher within the hoof capsule than in a shod horse so it would make sense for the new angle and improved sole depth and concavity to go hand-in-hand.

Its always much easier to see the new angle at the dorsal wall rather than at the heels - which is where sole shots are important...

This line  - looking at his sole nearly 12 weeks in - shows where his breakover will be once the new hoof capsule has grown in. You can already see where it will be because there is a clear change in the sole between the new and old growth.  You can also see how the balance of his foot is altering. Today the frog is very substantial and the heels are the broadest part of the foot even though he has more improvement to come. 

By contrast, when he came out of shoes the broadest part of his foot was towards the tip of the frog and the toe and the heels were relatively contracted. 

In a horse who has been out of shoes a while, similar changes can still happen but tend to be more subtle - that's tomorrow's blog :-)

Not enough daylight, not enough time...

I was hoping to get a post up with some really interesting hoof pics and some illustrations of what the hooves were doing.

I've got some absolute crackers to post from the horses here at the moment which are fascinating as a way of showing how breakover changes, how sole depth increases and how foot balance shifts.

Instead, I haven't had a chance to upload the photos which I took yesterday but did have lots of chances to be hailed on, snowed on and generally frozen (tho' to be fair these pics aren't from today - the snow today melted fast!). Luckily I could thaw out by shovelling, sweeping, scraping, and then coming in to do emails and phone calls but its still that dreadful time of year when the days are too short and the jobs list is too long - and I'm sure I'm not the only one feeling this way!

I will sort the photos out and get the post up as soon as I can, honestly...

Feet - just one piece of a bigger jigsaw

I've enjoyed reading a great blog post here from my friend Jane:  http://magicsownlittleworld.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/self-healing_4.html - good stuff, and not just because we are singing from the same hymn-sheet as far as hooves are concerned :-)

By happy coincidence I was also sent a link to this thread on HHO (thanks Sez!):

http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=591506 and what do you know - another owner who found that  - when it comes to hoof balance - her horse really was the ultimate expert :-)

Its really satisfying to think that more and more people are now prepared to take a step back and respect what the horse is telling them about their hooves.  

And what do you know, once you start looking at the bigger picture and not the hooves in isolation, it all starts to make perfect sense. 

Fine fellows

I saw these fine fellows when we were out on Saturday...

...very smart - and yes, that is blue sky :-0

Little and large

I've been reminded that I promised to put up photos of Bryher and big Dave. They aren't turned out together but are good mates and spend a lot of time chatting over the fence...