crumbley smelly soles

Boxers

Boxers

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My horses soles are very crumby and smelly. When I picked out his feet yesterday some layers of his sole even flaked right off. His feet are very smelly too. He lives out at the moment although last week he was at camp and stabled full time on staw. However, his feet were like this before camp.

I cleaned them out and sprayed them with gentian violet.

Any ideas? He's not due for shoeing for another 2 weeks and I will ask the farrier about them then, but just wonder if I should be putting anything on them?
 
It sound like you horse's soles are exfoliating, which is perfectly normal. When a horse grows a new sole underneath, the older sole exfoliate off. Normally its a constant thing. Like your skin regenerating. With a barefoot horse its hardly noticeable because the ground helps to remove it. With a shod horse however, the sole builds up and eventually when there is enough, it starts to come off in chuncks. Mostly tho its when you pick out the feet. Because the sole is building up instead of exfoliating off naturally, there is more chance for bacteria to set in.

Your farrier should scrap the exfoliation off on his next visit to reveal the next layer of sole. He should never scrap off healthy sole, only the flaky stuff.

For the infection, try soaking in either borax or milton solution. on the milton bottle it will say how much water to dilute it with and its very easy to get hold of.
Soak all hooves with the infection for about 20 mins, and if the horse is good you can have both fronts and both hinds done together. But if hes like most horses you may have to do a foot at a time.

You may have to do it more than once to get rid of the infection.

The reason borax and milton are good is because they are non necrotising, meaning they do not kill healthy tissue, only the bad stuff. A lot of chemical ones from vets and tack shops tend to be necrotising, so infection can grow back strong again because of all the dead tissue.
Basically, if you cannot use it on your own skin, why would you want it on your horses hooves.

Ps, dont worry about putting any hoof dressing or oil on them, i shouldnt think he needs it.
 
Other stuff to soak in are cleantrax and an apple cider vinegar solution. http://www.equinepodiatrysupplies.co.uk/cleantrax.html

Also 4 x 4 or tractor inner tubes are good and cheap (free from garage) to use as soaking boots. Car tyre inner tubes work well for Shetlands and minis.
I wouldn't be surprized if the frogs are affected as well, soaking will help them too. You could put sudocreme on after soaking if you really feel the need to have a barrier from the wet. If the central cleft of the frog is deep an anti fungal cream squirted/pushed deep into it has helped a couple of ponies I know with deep thrush as well as soaking. Time out of the wet each day will help too if possible.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about the smell (without smelling them myself obviously ;-)) as it could be that it is just the rubbish getting under the dead sole - it doesn't necessarily mean that it is the live, healthy sole that is affected. Personally I would probably pick off any bits of sole that come off easily with your fingers / hoofpick and then spray Red Horse Sole Cleanse all over the foot. I have had really good results with it - and it is natural and non-necrotising. Soaking is great, but I would probably only do that for a deep-seated infection - definately a good thing to do though every so often (even more so with a shod horse as well in fact as it will penetrate under the shoe and in nail holes etc and help to keep it healthy), but it is a bit of a faff ;-).
 
get either nettex purple spray (from feed merchant usually) or hydrogen peroxide solution (pharmacy) and put that on clean feet twice a day. The 1st kills off anything that's growing that shouldn't be using anti-fungal chemicals. The 2nd kills off any foreign cells by making them explode! you will see white fizzing going on.

both easy to administer and have similar effects.
 
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