Advice about hoof boots and pads

criso

criso

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I need some advice about using pads in hoof boots.
My horse lost a back shoe a week ago and seemed to cope without it so well that when my farrier came on Saturday we decided to give him a go without shoes on the back.
Although he had been fine with one bare foot on Saturday he was footy on the same tracks on Sunday
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So it looks like I may have to protect his feet. I have a pair of Boa boots which fit nicely so they are an option to use.
What sort of pads should I be looking at if at all? does anybody subsitute their own padding? I have used the Boas with a cut up nappy inside in an emergency when he had a abcess and had a front shoe taken off which made him comfortable.

The other issue is he finds the boots very slippery on grass and mud and our two main exits out of the yard to the hacking paths involve grass, a track then more grass.
Do other people find this?

He was much more surefooted in the mud without shoes though.

Thanks for any advice.
 
He has got to the stage where is pulling back shoes off in the stable and field despite various boot combos. He does it with enough force to bend brand new shoes in half and then hobbles round with them half hanging off his feet.
I think in that scenario it is worth giving it more than 48 hours to see if he can cope without.
 
Does he need pads in them? I tried my horse in Boas for awhile, they came with some neoprene bits that part of it went inside under the hoof and the other part did up by velcro round his fetlock, this did reduce the rubbing failry well (although they did still rub a little bit), but then I used to ride him for a good hour or more in all gaits over varying terrain so was inevitable that some grit, sand, mud etc would get in.

Most horses take quite a bit of time to adjust to not wearing shoes. If you want to carry on without them then you'll need to avoid stony/rough surfaces for awhile as horse will be footy on them, instead work mainly on soft ground initially as well as gradually introducing and building up to lots of work on roads or similar level solid surfaces as these help harden the feet. Would be worth reading one of the websites on barefoot/shoeless to get as much info as you can as there is an art to doing it properly.
 
You don't necessarily need pads, but they can be beneficial in the early stages of going barefoot.

These are what I used to get from my EP when my horse needed them:

http://www.aepsupplies.co.uk/index.cfm?sid=21583&pid=330565&item=26499

They are Sole Mates pads. They look like a square of thick dense sponge with a gritty surface. You have to cut them to size to fit in the boots. At first you think you're not going to get the horse's foot in there as well as the pad, but half a ton of horse squashes the pad inside the boot. It then makes an impression of the sole and frog for even support and stimulus which encourages growth and makes the horse really comfortable even if they have problems such as thin soles or TB feet.
 
I have used Vettec Sole Guard, have you looked into that (or something similar)?
I haven't see the pads LadyArchangel posts but I am rather intrigued by them!
 
Paintedlucky - I got some gaiters with the Boas too. Never used then as they didn't rub but then I wasn't riding in them. Will bear those in mind.

Got there tonight and walked him round the yard for a while to see how he was and he looked pretty good.
Then popped the boots on to see how he felt about them as he has never worn them on his back feet. Walked round the yard and school to get the feel of them and then led him along the path that goes from the yard. It is fairly stoney but has grass verges on either side so I gave him the option of which route to take and he happily walked beside me on the path.

The good thing is he is not a horse to tolerate even the slightest discomfort without making his feelings felt so I think he will tell me what he can cope with.
 
None of my horses required pads in their boots when I took their shoes off - so you should be fine.

The most crucial step towards a sound and happy barefoot horse is diet. Did your farrier advise you on your horse's diet? If not he should have done. Get the diet right and everything will fall into place. By diet I mean cutting out all sugars and molasses. You could also start adding magnesium oxide supplement to his feeds - mag ox seems to be important in the UK for the development of strong barefeet.

Conditioning of the feet is also crucial. By all means use boots to start with but unless his feet get to work out on all sorts of surfaces then they will never strengthen and improve. Bit like someone who's only ever worked in an office. They have very soft skin on their hands. If they suddenly started working outside they'd get lots of blisters. But over time their skin will harden up and they won't get blisters anymore. However it's kinder to do it gradually and avoid the blisters.
 
The gaiters are great but you do need to be careful the hard tounge stays under the sole and isn't pulled up onto the heel - it did once with my boy and gave him a nasty cut
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It would be very unusual for a horse to need pads inside a pair of boots. They are useful for stimulating sole and frog growth however.

If grip becomes a problem you can gte studs for hoof boots (by easycare - you drill and hole and screw them into the sole. However the Easyboot Grip boot might be a better idea if XC type grip is needed.

You should find that after a couple of weeks of daily booted work his feet with change shape (should spread, inc the frog) and he may not need boots any more.
 
Thanks for the tips.

Didn't talk about nutrition on this occasion but we have discussed it before.
I avoid sugar as much as I can as well as unmolassed sugarbeet as he reacts to it and behaves like a hyperactive child
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Basically he get Top Spec Alfa or Alfa A Oil and a little low sugar herbal chaff.
He does get haylage which I know not everyone agrees with but he comes out in hives on hay so I have no choice. The grazing where he is is not especially lush.
He also gets formula4feet which I think has magnesium in it as well as other elements to help horn quality.

When my farrier saw his feet on Sat he was amazed at how much they had grown and improved. I changed to him in Sept and he has worked wonders in a really short time.
 
I'd stop feeding the Forumla4Feet straight away - commercially prepared foot supplements aren't the best things for barefeet - you can bet if there is mag ox in there it won't be at anywhere near the right levels. It's much much cheaper to buy pure mag ox (plenty of people selling it on ebay) and add that yourself. Start at 50mg a day - if droppings become loose then reduce amount, if they stay firm then keep feeding at that amount until you see an improvement in the toughness of the hinds over stoney surfaces.

Alfalfa isn't great for barefeet either - legumes are high in sugar (whatever it claims on the bags). Dried alfalfa can be tolerated better but some horses seem to react against something in the drying process, or possibly the added preservatives. The Topchop Alfa is preservative free so is MUCH better than the Alfa-oil. Most of the herbal chaffs (like the Mollichop one) is quite high in sugar and you might be better cutting out. I like the TopChop lite because again it's preservative free.

Haylage should be fine as long as it's baled quite dry. The usually problem in this country is from the grasses it's sourced from - rye grasses are bad, mixed meadow grasses much much better, but anything with a lot of clover in (anothe legume) is to be avoided.

Ultimately all you can do is remove as much sugar as you can, add in the mag ox and gently work your horse on challenging surfaces, upping the work load when they tell you they are ready - before long you'll be wanting to pull his front shoes off too
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Thanks for the advice however due to allergies and other needs that have to take precedence I wasn't looking to debate his feed however since you've brought it up.

He is prone to allegies and I do not want to go back to an itchy lumpy unhappy horse on antihistimines and steroids on a semi permanent basis.
I have spent a long year through trial and error finding out what he reacts to and have come up with something that works for him. I'm sure you understand why having got to that point i don't want to tinker too much.

He also gets excitable and stressy on some sugary feeds so I do try to avoid sugar where I can.
Sugarbeet even in its unmolassed form is a particular problem as he goes completely psycho. And I don't really want to give him cereal based feeds but would rather keep him on forage.
I don't like feeding mixes or cubes anyway as there is more likelyhood of there being something in them he will react to.

He gets the herbal chaff as it encourages him to eat his supplements and medicines. He gets 1/2 a scoop of that all year round.
Though not as high as many there are quite a lot of molasses in the mollichaff I agree and if anyone could recommend a completely sugar free herbal chaff I would buy it tomorrow.
What I have found through trial and error is that all sugars do not seem to be equal and having tried various he doesn’t react to the mollichaff.

He then gets the Alfalfa in varying amounts at different times of the year when he needs extra e.g in the summer very little, In winter he gets up to a scoop. I prefer to decide the proportions myself rather than buy chaff and alfalfa premixed such as hi fi or top chop lite.
The Top Chop Alfa is quite new and I also like it. .

Like most people I have little choice in the grass make up of the haylage I use and it is supplied by the farmer and included in the livery. It isn't especially rich though.


I would be interested in your exact objection to f4f as a supplement rather than commenting on supplements in general. His feet have responded well to it.
It also doubles up as a general vit and mineral supplement, if I remove that I would be feeding another general vitamin and mineral supplement but his feet have improved on F4F in a way they did not when I was feeding a standard multivit so would need a very good reason to swap to something that didn’t work as well.
Plus it is very palatable which means I don’t have to add more sugary chaff to get him to eat it.

Could you advise the recommended dosage for magnesium per day for a 550 kg horse (as active ingredient not as an oxide) then I can check that against the level in the F4F. However if I did have to top it up again I would have to add more chaff to get him to eat it which may defeat the purpose.

I took him out yesterday without boots as the hack I was doing was mainly fields.
There is about 50 yards of stoney track coming out of the yard but it has a grass verge so I let him choose his own path which was actually a bit of both.
 
Formula 4 Feet is a well tried and tested foot supplement and any trawl of this forum will find that people who use it are universally in praise of it and have noticed positive results. Criso I would stick with your convictions and the F4F.

Although I do accept there is a role to play in dietary considerations and the role of sugars, this is being way overblown except in laminitis cases. There is a place for common sense and pro-barefoot as I am, some of this extreme theorising isn't helpful.

My horse came back from being unable to put one foot in front of another to being back in full work and competition. She has solid well balanced bare feet that never chip or crack and I never have to think about between trims. Key to this has not been a complicated list of devil foods and a laboratory of supplements, just regular trims by a DAEP and a controlled programme of conditioning the feet within the usability scale.

Common sense and the trim is what matters.
 
His diet sounds fine. He's not being stuffed full of rich grass (the biggest culprit) or lots of hard feed. F4F is one of the best on the market and has everything good feet require, inc enough magnesium. Stick with it.

I'd go with a mixture of boots and completely bare, until your horse doesn't need them anymore. The hard flat surface of the inside of the boots will sitimulate foot growth quickly. But if he slides on grass, go bare if you're going to be doing a lot of grass work (when he shouldn't need boots anyways).

THE biggest thing you can do to make him comfortable is sort out his frogs. I've come to relalise that it doesn't matter what the rest of the foot looks like - if the frogs are big, healthy and fleshy they will be comfortable over everything. And conversely, even if the rest of the foot is perfect, if the frogs are a bit pathetic they will struggle (my problem with Toby's fronts at the mo!)

It's a bit of a vicious cycle however - big healthy frogs are the sign of healthy feet, but also the cause of healthy feet (they use their feet properly if they've got healthy frogs, so the rest developes as it should).

Make sure you've killed all thrush and, if need be, get pad inserts for the boots that stimulate the frogs to grow.
 
Tried him with the Gaiters that came with the Boas yesterday as his feet were a bit wet from the field and thought the boots might rub.
They make the boots much more difficult to put on but once they were on I was really happy with them and so was he.
We were planning a ride that was all roadwork and tracks and he was fine.
Looks like we're in for a cold snap so be interesting to see how the harder ground affects him.
 
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