BF TB's, what does yours do.

Prince33Sp4rkle said:
imo work is as important as trim and feed.
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Rockley put work way above trim, and above feed except with the ultra sensitive ones. Rockley sent a sound horse home via commercial transporter to a friend of mine and he arrived lame after an overnight stop. Turns out they fed him just one commercial feed full of molasses, and he was straight into sore soles in twelve hours. The horse was also fine in France but found Cheshire grass to be pretty much poison! He's in Staffs on rough moorland now and that suits him nicely :)

One of my two proper rehabs shows how right you are about work, too. He had been on and mostly off lame for four years, including spells of paddock rest up to a year. In only a couple of months of what felt like endless walking he was sound, and he hunted in less than six months. Children and beginner's meet, but even so... :)

The livery hours thread has left me astounded! How on earth does anyone with a full time job in winter get any decent miles into their horses feet, with the restrictions some livery owners are applying? No wonder people are having to give up and go back to shoes :(
 
cptrayes said:
The livery hours thread has left me astounded! How on earth does anyone with a full time job in winter get any decent miles into their horses feet, with the restrictions some livery owners are applying? No wonder people are having to give up and go back to shoes :(
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A very good point. I feel endlessly guilty when I look at her feet and know they need more work.

It saddens me as the lack of grazing problems through winter really make a difference and I'm letting the side down by not getting the miles in :-(

Then along comes spring when I can finally ride and get some mileage in and the grass comes through.......

I do the best I can, boot when I need to and fight hard not to have to shoe because I really do believe it is the best thing for her.
 
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My old lady is barefoot and has been mostly for the last 10 years.
She has just had an abscess and that is her first one ever whilst barefoot (she had one many years before that while still shod).
25yo now and retired but competed to Inter I without shoes.
 
Diddleydoo said:
A very good point. I feel endlessly guilty when I look at her feet and know they need more work.

It saddens me as the lack of grazing problems through winter really make a difference and I'm letting the side down by not getting the miles in :-(

Then along comes spring when I can finally ride and get some mileage in and the grass comes through.......

I do the best I can, boot when I need to and fight hard not to have to shoe because I really do believe it is the best thing for her.
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I really feel for people with jobs that take up all the daylight hours, then sharing a small arena with six other liveries to try to get some work into the horse, then told they can't turn out because it will trash the field, unknowingly grazing iron rich and/or high sugar grass when they are allowed out, etc, etc.

Even with a horse that should find it easy (and there are many that don't) people in livery stables can have a hard time making it work. Not to mention the people looking over their shoulders and telling them how cruel they are if their horse as much as twitches when it treads on a sharp stone :(
 
cptrayes said:
The livery hours thread has left me astounded! How on earth does anyone with a full time job in winter get any decent miles into their horses feet, with the restrictions some livery owners are applying? No wonder people are having to give up and go back to shoes :(
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It's daylight hours that are the problem not livery hours, yard may be open but hacking after dark isn't an option.

I'm self employed now so can ride during the week but when I was monday to friday and Frank was in work, my usual week was
2 x weekend hacks, a sharer that hacked once a week then I would use my annual leave and days in lieu accrued to take one afternoon off a week to ride. So 4 hacks a week. Then 2 evening schooling sessions after work. If I had a lesson, that would be at the weekend. I'd hack round the block to warm up with a good gallop especially if I was jumping then round the block to cool off after so he still got some road miles in.

At present I'm struggling as I am having to travel between London and the middle east which means new baby tb is taking longer for his feet to get to where I want them to be but he'll get there. I can't get a sharer to hack him out for me till he's a bit more reliable to hack on his own.

He started with nicer feet that bay tb v1.0 but diet will affect him I suspect as we have very impressive change in growth when he agreed to eat his minerals.
 
cptrayes said:
Shoes don't grow, feet do :)

Also, materials scientists will tell you that although it seems very bizarre to the rest of us, it is frequently the harder material which wears away, not the softer. A great example of this is that a leather strap can be used to sharpen a cutthroat razor.

Roadwork is great for bare feet and loads of people hack a lot in the circumstances that you describe. Until recently, I hunted.

I agree with you about slip on wet grass, especially if it is dry underneath, but I find the much better grip on tarmac more than compensates for having to keep the horse better balanced on wet grass.
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I am aware they grow, but not always quickly enough. He didn't have much foot left when he was BF behind, can't say he slips on tarmac either shod (not often anyway)? Horses for courses :) I would like to keep my D barefoot, but he's ever so footy on the stoney tracks.
 
Girlracer said:
I am aware they grow, but not always quickly enough. He didn't have much foot left when he was BF behind
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He may have had short feet but you said earlier that he was sound. Barefoot feet are supposed to be short. If the horse is sound, then IMO there is no such thing as 'too short'.
 
NellRosk said:
An unbroken pony shouldn't be really footy, what are you feeding him?
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Lo-cal balancer, high fibre chaff, and hay! He's fine on everything apart from the stony tracks round the yard :( but they are very stony, and not little small stones.

Trouble is though CPT barefoot takes an awful lot of work to get bang on, particularly with a horse that doesn't lend itself to being barefoot. And perhaps selfishly I spend a lot of money to enjoy my horse so want to continue to do so, not only that but the costs that go with it aren't really viable for me. Nothing against people who are barefoot, it's just not viable for everyone :)
 
Girlracer said:
Trouble is though CPT barefoot takes an awful lot of work to get bang on, particularly with a horse that doesn't lend itself to being barefoot. And perhaps selfishly I spend a lot of money to enjoy my horse so want to continue to do so, not only that but the costs that go with it aren't really viable for me. Nothing against people who are barefoot, it's just not viable for everyone :)
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Posts of mine on other threads running right now will show you that I completely agree with you on this.

I just wanted to correct the impression that I felt some people could be left with that short feet are any reason to shoe a horse. Provided the horse is not footie and is sound, it does not matter how short they are, is the only point I was making.

Have fun now the weather is improving :)
 
I've got 3 Tbs in work at the moment barefoot. My main boy does a bit of everything and, finances willing, will event later this year, the other is my boyfriends schoolmaster and my mare is coming back into work after time off with navicular due to bad farriery. I treat them like normal horses, they hack, xc, jump etc and I pay a bit extra attention to their diets - we've had some footiness the last couple of weeks so I added mag ox and it's gone.

I often see pictures in here of folks horses and I can see how terrible their feet are yet the owners are doing nothing and dont acknowledge the issue until the horse is horrifically lame. That was me a couple of years ago - my farrier told me that the flat feet, under run heels and thin soles - were just typical Tb feet. Then my mare went lame.... There's no excuse for bad feet, the information is out there and it's our job to make sure, shod or bare, we do the best we can for them. It can be hard work to get them going but for many of is its worth it.
 
Scarlett said:
I often see pictures in here of folks horses and I can see how terrible their feet are yet the owners are doing nothing and dont acknowledge the issue until the horse is horrifically lame. That was me a couple of years ago - my farrier told me that the flat feet, under run heels and thin soles - were just typical Tb feet. Then my mare went lame.... There's no excuse for bad feet, the information is out there and it's our job to make sure, shod or bare, we do the best we can for them. It can be hard work to get them going but for many of is its worth it.
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This.

Quite a few posters on this forum are quick to say that their horses can't/couldn't go barefoot.

Firstly it's highly probable that they can/could but it's not always easy/a quick fix/option/desire for the owner. That's not a dig; some situations do make it incredibly difficult etc but it's an incorrect statement to say X horse can't and the "typical TB feet" fallacy has been shown to be "typical" management and farriery not breed specific.

Secondly some of those so quick to say BF can't work or isn't an option have posted pictures that show far from ideal shod horses. To continue on their current path is sure to lead to issues and, ironically, BF would probably be the last option at the end of the road for them to try.

As I've posted before, and Scarlett has said above, if we decide to take on any animal the onus is on us to do our best by the animal. The information is available and you never stop learning. In fact the more you learn the more you realise how little you actually know! It's very humbling. So if you decide to shoe your horse then at the very least educate yourself on what a well shod foot looks like and how the hoof functions along with the impact of shoeing. It's rather strange to be dismissing nature's architecture when the preferable alternative appears to be badly shod, bullnosed, thin soled feet, shod too short with underrun heels to mention only a few of the man made "issues" we cause. Ditto the information on BF feet, feeding, management, fittening, saddle fitting, therapies, vet care; the list really is endless. I don't think there can be any definitive statements about horses because there's always an exception!
 
TPO said:
So if you decide to shoe your horse then at the very least educate yourself on what a well shod foot looks like and how the hoof functions along with the impact of shoeing.
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Reminds me of cptrayes good shod feet post (very old now)... There were some rather enlightened users afterwards!!!!
 
Thank you, very interesting read.

One day I'll be pc literate enough to post my horse's feet saga in photos. I find it all so frustrating! At the root of it shoeing is just plain bad science; no vet or farrier has been able to answer, explain or justify their reasons for insisting that shoes are the only thing that will help my TB and this is despite him proving them wrong and improving BF. Head. Bang. Wall
 
This is what bugs me, too.

People, especially vets, demand scientific research results for barefoot before they will recommend it, in spite of the fact that no horse is born with shoes on. And yet there is NONE that stands up to any serious scrutiny for shoeing, remedial or normal. What there is has tiny numbers in the study, with no control groups.

My favourite was a study of horses with navicular. They started with a decent size group - eighty two horses. They shot twenty seven as being beyond help. That left 55. Of those, the study said that some, number unspecified, had so little lameness that it could not be seen. Then in their results they claimed over fifty percent success rate for remedial shoeing, leaving out the twenty seven that they shot, and including the ones who were never lame in the first place!!!!
 
TBF to our vets,they were very open minded when the original mare went BF, but are still amazed every time they vac fig or CS, to find them STILL BF...i think they expect that by the time they get to CS level especially, shoes are a must.

I do know they tell other clients about our BF success so thats a good thing at least even if they remain baffled by it lol!
 
Prince33Sp4rkle said:
TBF to our vets,they were very open minded when the original mare went BF, but are still amazed every time they vac fig or CS, to find them STILL BF...i think they expect that by the time they get to CS level especially, shoes are a must.

I do know they tell other clients about our BF success so thats a good thing at least even if they remain baffled by it lol!
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I think being open minded is half the battle. I've used three different practices and, more so the first equine practice, they are pretty adamant that TBs need shoes... Maybe it would be different if I had a cob and mum's Conn x (who's feet and action/gait have improved dramatically since she bought him and pulled shoes) doesn't get any comments.

My tb doesn't have good feet so that doesn't help but they are improving out of shoes and the twice he's gone back in them after surgery at vets insistence his feet have gone backwards.

Original practice used to spout gems like "the frog shouldn't be in contact with the ground", "if I pulled the shoes of all the TBs in a racing yard they'd all be lame, proof that TBs need shoes". I mean really, what hope is there?! One of their vets, after telling me I needed to shoe for support and protection but couldn't explain how a steel rim done either, told me how she HAD to shoe her 2yr old to keep his feet together as he had such bad WLD that they couldn't shift. I dared to mention that he didn't need shoes and to look at his diet and management. I'm sure you can imagine the response!

Ironically when trying to talk me into shoeing I'm always being told to be more open minded towards farriers!

Considering I just pulled a hospital plate and hind shoes put on by uni vet hospital farrier under the surgeons supervision and the nails were through the sole (have pics but no idea how to post) that's not something I'll ever be open minded about!

Sorry - very ranty today!
 
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