Barefoot - Rockley Farm & insurance

[Matafleur]

Has anyone on here used Rockley farm to rehab a navicular (Palmar foot pain) horse?

If so are you able to give me a rough idea of cost and was it covered by your insurance? Also, was your vet happy to refer you?

Just looking at my options at the moment, I'm hoping for the best but horse has MRI booked for next week so that we know exactly what we are dealing with.

Thanks

 

[dreams579]

Hope the MRI comes back clean, but great that you are considering rockley so early on - i really can't recommend them enough

costs i think are about £120/week including ab lib haylage, feed and minerals. I was with shearwater at the time, and they did cover it under my 'alternative therapies' section of the vets fees cover, but they only paid 50% of the livery (ie the cost of the rehab rather than the bedding/feed etc). they were actually very good about it all. I know NFU will now cover it, but not sure about any others - who are you with?

my vet was happy enough with the referral, but i think that was partly because the only other realistic option was PTS. but despite him doing his own research on the place, he was a) surprised that my horse was still barefoot after coming home and b) surprised at how well he did and coped barefoot. have a good chat with your vet about options, and Nic is also excellent at talking with vets and putting their mind at ease about everything.

Happy to answer any other questions, feel free to PM me if you want.

 

[MrsMozart]

I enquired last week, when I thought one of mine might be needing to go there.

It's around the £150 per week for rehab livery. Going by the email he sent Nic seems very nice. They work on the horse being there for twelve weeks or so.

My insurance would have paid up to £1,000 for this type of treatment, although it would have had to be referred by the treating vet.

Not sure what difference it would have made that my horse was already barefoot. We didn't get that far in our discussion and now we know she doesn't have a navicular problem.

Hope all is okay with your horse.

 

[Lancelot]

Mine went there, I'm with nfu & they paid half the costs. Vet was happy to refer, again probably because everything else had failed.
Rockley is a great place and Nic is wonderful. She won't soft-soap you, she's down to earth & works on facts - she won't just tell you what you want to hear!

 

[Bikerchickone]

My lad went there and it's £150 a week but the livery bill is split into £75 per week for bed and board and £75 per week for the rehabilitation part of it. You should be able to claim the rehab part back from your insurance company.

Good luck with your horse. Rockley was the best thing I could've done for my lad, we're going from strength to strength now. Nic's amazing and will help you through it all.

 

[Matafleur]

Thanks for all the replies - I am with Petplan who will cover alternative treatments recommended by a vet. As with others though I suspect they would only cover the rehab element.

I think the price of Rockley seems very reasonable but I am going to struggle to be able to afford it even with the insurance paying half. I am on Mat leave at the moment and the horse is out on loan although I remain very involved and will be the one making all the decisions. I would normally have the horse at home so it's not like I usually pay for livery either.

It does seem a bit too good to be true that they can get so many horses sound which does worry me a bit. Barefoot is totally new to me and tbh is not something I would usually consider.

I think I will see what the MRI shows and then talk things through with the vet including the possibility of barefoot rehab.

Thanks again for your help

 

[Oberon]

I promise you it isn't too good to be true. I've been following Rockley's blog and hearing about her rehabs for years now.

There is no tinkering with the results and no cherry picking of who she takes.

Having said that - Nic will only take a horse for rehab if she feels she can genuinely help it - there's no sense in wasting her time and an owner's money on a hopeless case.

There are quite a few of her satisfied rehabs who post on here.

There is a reason many of us rational people become totally obsessed with healthy hooves - they are miracles!

 

[PoppyAnderson]

My vet pretty much refused to refer me (suspensory though, rather than navic). I tried every which way to convince her but she wouldn't shift on it. She spoke to Nic directly but still wouldn't. Very frustrating.

 

[criso]

My horse went there about in Feb 2010 (he's Frankie is you want to search the website). He was diagnosed by MRI with soft tissue damage in both feet (DDFT, DSIL and Collateral Ligaments)

By the time he went there, he'd been lame for 18 months so claiming on insurance was not an option but that time it was £100 pw so it was pretty the same as I paid for part livery in Hertfordshire.

Like you I questioned how it could be so successful, especially when I looked at studies for similar injuries that had as low a success rate of 10%. I think at that point after having a lame horse for 18 months, I almost didn't want to raise my hopes again.

However he recovered and came back to show jump and cross country and hunt.

Slightly sad end in that after 2 years of soundness, he developed a very rare bone cyst in his shoulder (about as far away from the feet as you can get) and despite operating he's not made progress. However I got two years that I wouldn't have had.

I couldn't recommend it highly enough both from the point of view of effectiveness and the level of care the horses get.

What I would say is it takes commitment beyond the stay at Rockley and you do have make sure diet and exercise are maintained after they come back.

However those of us who got our horse back wouldn't have it any other way.