can a farrier trim better than a barefoot trimmer ?

One of my old farriers sais to me that his client base was dissapearing due to those 'bloody trimmers' and I thought it may well be that the attitude can put people off farriers trimming their horses. I have used both- I have had awful farriers - farriers that I don't know how they have managed to stay in business- and I have had good farriers- I currently have a new one since I moved who has done one trim so far-but I'm not 100% convinced- it took him less than 15min to trim and he spent the whole time chatting- didnt aske about how he has been/ask to see him being moved etc I asked the farrier numerous questions and his answers were very lacking in enthusiasm I felt cheated out of my £25. I will get him back once more- partly as i've found it really hard to find a farrier willing to come over for just one trim and partly as I like to give someone the benefit of the doubt when they come recommended. I have also had a really good EP- who took 2 years to train- and really sorted out my boy's feet but she moved- a farrier recemmended by others on this forum was impressed by his feet- so I know she did a good job. I think you have to use your gut instinct as well as looking at 4 years worth of qualifications, you can pass the exams but it doesnt always mean you are good at your job!
 
I've had four farriers work on my horses. Two of them were OK at first, but both became unreliable and I was fed up sitting around wiht a group of other owners at the yard waiting 4 hours for them to turn up.

One was absolutely awful, abusive to horses, and abusive to owners, but particularly abusive in an unacceptable way to lady owners. 'nuff said. His work was extremely poor too.

The last farrier we had before we went barefoot was brilliant, and while he had the odd time he didn't turn up because of breakdowns or injuries, he kept us informed and was great with the horses. He raised TB's himself so had a good attitude to the horses. But he was traditional in his views, and really wouldn't have asked about diet.

Fariers have to look to themselves if people are using trimmers. As the previous poster asked "why are people changing and shopping elsewhere?" I know some excellent farriers who are wholeheartedly embracing the barefoot movement, but there are those, like Giles, who will always see it as a threat and do not engage in constructive dialog, only ridicule and diatribe.

Remember surgeons were very opposed to anaesthetics whern they were first available, and patients suffered the agonies of amputations without anaesthesia for 20-30 years before anaesthaesia bcame accepted. The reason? Surgeons trained to be so fast they could amputate a leg in 30 seconds, and anaesthesia was seen to diminish their accomplishments.

Times change, what was acceptable (caning children for example) is no longer acceptable, so farriers (and teachers) have to finds new ways of doing their work.
 
These thread always turn out the same - initial digging at each other then the very pro-shoes, antibarefoot brigage wade in with sarcastic comments (many of whom seem to have taken the potential lack of trimmers training personally?) before sensible people take opposing veiws and eventually reconsile, make friends and agree to disagree. How nice :D

I am pro-barefoot for the reason others have mentioned before: mainly that ANY horse can manage barefoot given the correct management, work and diet.

However, like Jesstickle mentioned, I am also willing to conceed that there are some extreme cases where those requirement are so extreme that's it not really worth it. I have a horse who is grass sensitive and becomes less confident on stoney ground if he gets too much grass. However it's manageable with restircted grazing and plenty of work. BUT, if he was an more extreme example I wouldn't be able to maintain him barefoot with my facilities. So: would I sell him to someone who could or would I shoe him?

I'm afraid I would shoe him :o I would do my absolute best to keep him as much as suited him but it wouldn't be quite enough to keep him working hard barefoot.

BUT I would get a GOOD farrier and I have enough knowledge to know if his feet were deteriorating because of shoes.

And I'm also massively pro-barefoot for sorting out problems, most of which are caused by poor shoeing, or in fact ANY shoeing in the first place. I see so many contracted heels, rubbish frogs and thin soles and it's heartbreaking, knowing that 6 months out of shoes with the correct diet and work (with boots if needs be) would fix those feet. And it's even worse when so so many owners don't even realise their horses feet are looking poor: as long as they're not cracked and they hold shoes for 6 weeks they're happy :( Then once the feet are better they could have shoes back on (if they needed them) and start from a healthy base.

A good farrier doing a good job shoeing a horse should do no damage to the feet. They won't be as strong or tough as a barefoot hoof but they shouldn't have any pathologies. I know horses who've been shod for years and years but are sound from the word go once the shoes come off: that's a good farrier doing a good job.

The problem there is finding a GOOD farrier. Barefoot horses will usually correct themselves is their trim isn't quite right - poor balance or overly long (or short) heels with be grown out by the horse (who always knows best!) within a couple of weeks (often days) with no long term affects. Only an idiot would keep forcing those incorrect trims on the horse once it's made it clear it doesn't want them! And even if they do: it grows out quickly.

But shoeing perfectly FOR THAT PARTICULAR HORSE is a serious skill and one many farrier aren't quite up to. After all, unless you allow the horse to show natural wear (by being barefoot!) how do you know what their ideal balance is? A heel a couple of mm too long on one side (for the horse - it may be asthetically perfect) won't have the chance to grow out and correct and they're stuck like that for weeks. It starts to damage the legs and internal structures of the feet. If they're lucky the farrier may notice isn't not quite right and correct it next shoeing. Or more likely they're just do the same job again - after all it's only a couple of mm.......

Or the farrier leave the heels a little too long for the horses' needs - only a couple of mm mind, but still a little long. The heels are then forced to grown in and forwards by the shoe (in a barefoot they'd grow outwards and down) and the next shoeing it's harder for the farrier to get the heels back. 6 months down the line you have a horse with underrun, contracted heels and on the road to navicular, and it's bloody difficult to fix it with shoes from there.

I know some very good farriers but they are not magicial and I would rather trust my horse to grow the correct feet he needs than have a human force them.

And that's why I believe the trim is rather irrelevant. A good farrier will do the same trim as a good barefoot trimmer. And it's quite likely that neither will be absolutely perfect for that horses needs and it'll wear then to how they need within days.

Sure, chopping random bit off the foot (and that seems to be much more common with farriers that barfoot trimmers!: I've had quite a few chop the frogs off and par off their sole callous' :eek: ) won't help the horse but a basic simple trim really isn't rocket science and leave the rest to the horse: it's our job to provide the management and exercise they need to grow a good foot.

And that's the edge I feel a barefoot trimmer has over farrier: they provide help and advice on HOW to provide that correct management, something a farrier rarely does (most could if they felt it was important). From experience most farrier will just suggest shoeing the horse if the bog-standard horse-management doesn't work for that particular horse :(

(p.s I had the big hunter shod a couple of months ago for a set as she needed studs - the farrier (who is actually very good and does an excellent barefoot trim) was appalled at putting shoe on her :o )

Oh, and I prefer the term 'barefoot'. The word 'unshod' to me suggests that 'shod' is the natural state for a horse :confused:
 
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And another decontracted foot picture - sadly not with a shoe, but two comparisions, just a couple of weeks apart

comparefeet.jpg
 
My horse and pony have been barefoot for years now and I have always used farriers as Id not looked in depth at the barefoot management and the availability of barefoot trimmers.

Ive recently moved house and had to leave my old farrier behind and use a new one. The old farrier habitually left too much on at their heels which I never questioned as I felt that he would rather chat about other things. The new farrier, one of the best in the county, did a fab job balance wise, but he rasped off my horse's toe callous and left her footy. She has never been shod and I have never known her to be footy. I had to change.

Now use an EPAUK trimmer and am very pleased so far.
 
That's interesting Caroline - that's similar to what happened to Bramble, my laminitic. Over the 3 months his hoof got smaller overall. He always looked like a little pony with big feet! Now he looks in proportion.

But I think like yours the back of the foot actually did expand - it was more a change of shape of the quarters and toe.

I'm pleased wiht this hoof - this is as it should be - a nice meaty frog hitting the ground first on a nice heel first landing. If only they were all like this one! :)

DSCF0573.jpg
 
jesstickle said:
Well you are not 'designed' to live past 40 or so but you will. Your horse will outlive it's wild relatives as will your dog if you have one. We meddle for good and for bad. I am not 'designed' to wear shoes or clothing but I'm glad I do. If you are going to say it is wrong to shoe horses, it is also wrong to medicate them when they are ill.

Anyway, I really wasn't talking about horses. Just about peoples misconceptions of evolution
in general :)
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thank you, this is a fantastic point to make.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jesstickle
Well you are not 'designed' to live past 40 or so but you will. Your horse will outlive it's wild relatives as will your dog if you have one. We meddle for good and for bad. I am not 'designed' to wear shoes or clothing but I'm glad I do. If you are going to say it is wrong to shoe horses, it is also wrong to medicate them when they are ill.

Anyway, I really wasn't talking about horses. Just about peoples misconceptions of evolution in general.

thank you, this is a fantastic point to make.
End quote



Ummmmm - actually we ARE evolved to wear clothes, otherwise we would still be covered in hair like other mammals and prehistoric hominids (?) were. Early man mutated to lose his hair and wore skins to keep warm and stayed cooler in hot weather by removing them. This gave less hariy ones an evolutionary advantage which is why we now end up mostly hairless.

And no, we were not evolved to wear shoes, which is why I and thousands of people along with me, are having NHS treatment for achilles tendon problems caused by shoe imbalance, where the manufacture of shoes to fit "most people" does not suit our bone structure and movement. Ring any bells :) ?

Medication helps an ill horse. Which is why it is not wrong. Shoeing is very unhelpful to many horses and unnecessary for most. And it disguises ill horses instead of treating them. Which is why I think that only those that really need shoes should have them.
 
jesstickle said:
These photos are really really interesting. I could look at loads of them. Thanks for posting them everyone :)
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Glad you like them.

TWO farriers, one newly trained and bang up to date with theory, and the other with oodles of experience, told me the owner of this foot would NEVER work barefoot because he could not stand with one foot unshod in order for the other one to be worked on. This horse is the origin of my mistrust of farriers, his imbalance in shoes was plain to anyone with eyes, yet I could not get my farriers to correct it. Take a ruler and measure from the centre of his frog to the side, then measure the other side, then multiply that difference to account for the small size of the photo and you will see what I mean. His frog was 3 inches from one side of his foot and four inches from the other. He had big feet :)

Anyone who says your horse has feet too flat to go barefoot, I defy you to have a horse with flatter feet than this, they were actually convex, not concave.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IaGqwoQlnmA/TSyfS4_TIlI/AAAAAAAAAqo/wA_arfFtrgA/s1600/17SEP006.JPG

And this is that horse eight months later practising for his first barefoot affiliated novice event (note the takeoff and the landing - it is lumpy road planings, very common on cross country courses. The fence is about 4ft high and 6 ft wide).

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_IaGqwoQlnmA/TSyflWRub3I/AAAAAAAAAqs/gMnmC1Xj94k/s1600/Tetley1.jpg
 
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cptrayes said:
Glad you like them.

Take a ruler and measure from the centre of his frog to the side, then measure the other side, then multiply that difference to account for the small size of the photo and you will see what I mean. His frog was 3 inches from one side of his foot and four inches from the other. He had big feet :)
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My horse has a foot where the frog is no where near in the middle. That is how he wears it himself though?

And those are some flat old feet, I will definitely grant you that! Lovely horse despite the soup plates though :)
 
My tb that I'm on about maybe trying bare foot with is on a diet off at lib hay, topspec comprehensive balancer with speedi beet in a handfull off hi fi mollases free. He's turned out for 12 hrs a day and full time in the summer as he hates being stabled. How you you change his diet to help? Or what diet would you put him on to?
 
Ummmmm - actually we ARE evolved to wear clothes, otherwise we would still be covered in hair like other mammals and prehistoric hominids (?) were. Early man mutated to lose his hair and wore skins to keep warm and stayed cooler in hot weather by removing them. This gave less hariy ones an evolutionary advantage which is why we now end up mostly hairless.

I don't wish to be pedantic but we originally evolved in a very hot part of the world and evolved to be hairless so we could sweat as a cooling action (or so it is hypothesised). We went hundreds of thousands of years hairless before we decided to put on clothes.

The point I'm trying to make is that we for whatever reason, decided to put on clothes. Worked out ok for us didn't it? We decided to put shoes on horses. They'll evolve to deal with it eventually.

Anyway, that is by the by and irrelevant to this discussion. It is interesting though. Or at least my sad self thinks it is :D
 
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jesstickle said:
Ummmmm - actually we ARE evolved to wear clothes, otherwise we would still be covered in hair like other mammals and prehistoric hominids (?) were. Early man mutated to lose his hair and wore skins to keep warm and stayed cooler in hot weather by removing them. This gave less hariy ones an evolutionary advantage which is why we now end up mostly hairless.

I don't wish to be pedantic but we originally evolved in a very hot part of the world and evolved to be hairless so we could sweat as a cooling action (or so it is hypothesised). We went hundreds of thousands of years hairless before we decided to put on clothes.

The point I'm trying to make is that we for whatever reason, decided to put on clothes. Worked out ok for us didn't it? We decided to put shoes on horses. They'll evolve to deal with it eventually.

Anyway, that is by the by and irrelevant to this discussion. It is interesting though. Or at least my sad self thinks it is :D
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You HAVE to be joking? Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that we wait the hundreds and thousands of years that it would take for evolution, severely hampered by people choosing to breed from stallions with feet which had problems with shoes but who have been successful, for horses to evolve so that they can manage shoes better?????? Why don't we just stop using the shoes?

Lions, tigers, orangs, chimps, bonobos, meerkats .............. (the list is endless) all live in very hot places and have hair. It was an evolutionary advantage for man to become hairless and clothe himself when it was cold. It's the same principle that we use when we clip horses. We DID evolve to wear clothes, sorry.
 
cptrayes said:
You HAVE to be joking? Are you SERIOUSLY suggesting that we wait the hundreds and thousands of years that it would take for evolution, severely hampered by people choosing to breed from stallions with feet which had problems with shoes but who have been successful, for horses to evolve so that they can manage shoes better?????? Why don't we just stop using the shoes?

Lions, tigers, orangs, chimps, bonobos, meerkats .............. (the list is endless) all live in very hot places and have hair. It was an evolutionary advantage for man to become hairless and clothe himself when it was cold. It's the same principle that we use when we clip horses. We DID evolve to wear clothes, sorry.
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It's selective breeding. It's why we have so many breeds of dogs, cattle which are placid, pigs which are long and lean etc. And of course I'm not actually suggesting it. All I am saying is we use selective breeding in so many ways to suit us that it wouldn't be much of a step to imagine this situation either.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110106164616.htm

Wearing clothes allowed us to leave Africa but we did it before we ever went anywhere cold.
 
jesstickle said:
My horse has a foot where the frog is no where near in the middle. That is how he wears it himself though?

And those are some flat old feet, I will definitely grant you that! Lovely horse despite the soup plates though :)
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Can't believe your still battleing on :p thought you gave up
 
Have a post on the UKNHCP forum and ask that question.

There is a basic barefoot friendly diet most of us use and then add as we need to

Unmollassed Beet
Linseed meal
Brewer's yeast
Magnesium Oxide
Mineral mix (I use the Norvite Equine Specialist one as it is balanced to soils in my area - one of the texting farms is down the road)
A sprinkle of seaweed
Rosehips etc...as they seem to need.

My big lad gets some sprouted oats - he looses weight this time of the year and while he can't tolerate cereals well, he seems to get on OK with sprouted oats.

Lots of good things as treats - all the kitchen peelings, including ginger which they love, bananas - skin and all, carrots, parsnips, fennel seeds, fennel root itself, celeriac, turnip, fenugreek seeds, the natural dried bananas or dates are much appreciated, as are almonds - I look on these things as just providing some additional value to the diet and the so much love new tastes. They get quite excited when they see a carrier bag!

Oh Topspec - sorry - not brilliant, two of mine were just not doing too well when I was feeding it and the laminitic got laminitis. The big lad went just quite fruit loop.

I think that the problem wiht all of these balancers is that if you feed the amount that you need to give them the recommended intake of mins, then there is far too much energy value in it for most of them. Anyway how can a balancer work if the diet has not been analysed - it;s just a marketing ploiy really to sell you an expensive enriched feed.
 
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P.S. my pony got laminitis when we were feeding Anti-Lam! On the advice of a nutritionist!

That was before I fell in with that awful barefoot crowd - it all pushed me in the right direction :) I'll be wearing a burkah soon.
 
brucea said:
P.S. my pony got laminitis when we were feeding Anti-Lam! On the advice of a nutritionist!

That was before I fell in with that awful barefoot crowd - it all pushed me in the right direction :) I'll be wearing a burkah soon.
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Well, I go more the Sinister Cult direction (see siggy)...he's getting the Anti-Lam at the moment, because I was concerned that the hay he was getting in his pony-jail...er, no-grass paddock...was short in some essentials. He gets some MagOx on top of that. Are there two versions of Anti-Lam, a balancer and a supplement? Whatever he's getting is meant just to be the mineral supplement on a low-cal fibre base. It was someone from Metabolic Horse that suggested it. He's really the good doer to end all good doers! Time for another talk with my trimmer, I think.
 
I haven't read all the post due to lack of time, but my boy is done by our farrier, and before we had him, with both owners, he was done by a farrier too, not a barefoot trimmer. His feet are in excellent condition! I suppose it depends on the breed of horse and the quality of the farrier though! :) xx
 
There is only one anti lam and it's classed as a supplement not a balancer. My lad changed from anti lam to the lite after he had been lami free for a year and as advised by topspec nutritionist. And the lite is a lot cheaper
 
jesstickle said:
It's selective breeding. It's why we have so many breeds of dogs, cattle which are placid, pigs which are long and lean etc. And of course I'm not actually suggesting it. All I am saying is we use selective breeding in so many ways to suit us that it wouldn't be much of a step to imagine this situation either.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110106164616.htm

Wearing clothes allowed us to leave Africa but we did it before we ever went anywhere cold.
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Not true. Desert areas in Africa are stinking hot during the day and can be very, very cold at night.
From Google on Desert Survival.

"Wide Temperature Range

Temperatures in arid areas may get as high as 55 degrees C during the day and as low as 10 degrees C during the night. The drop in temperature at night occurs rapidly and will chill a person who lacks warm clothing and is unable to move about. The cool evenings and nights are the best times to work or travel. If your plan is to rest at night, you will find a wool sweater, long underwear, and a wool stocking cap extremely helpful. "

and Wiki

"Even the Sahara is cold at night, in the winter it can go below freezing (about -5 at the lowest) - and because the air is so dry it feels a lot colder."


And if you can imagine a situation where people will choose in large numbers to breed from stallions because they have feet that do well in shoes, rather than because it wins races, is a World Cup showjumper or Totilas, then you have a more vivid imagination than I do. But even if your vision could be the future, why bother? Why not just dump the shoes, since a very small proportion of horses actually need them?

Loving this discussion :) !
 
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I would imagine that we are doing that. Most world cup show jumpers, gold cup winners and dressage horses are shod. The ones which are likely to win are going to be the ones that stay sound long enough to be fittened/trained, ergo we are selecting for horses which go well in shoes. Inadvertently I grant you but I am pretty sure that is actually what we're doing.

We didn't actually want TBs to have long legs, it is a by product of them being quick but I would say they are definitely more leggy than a native pony.

We are a funny old species. God only knows why we take so much enjoyment in winning races and jumping fences that we go to all this trouble.
 
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