Cushings, Prascend and changing hooves (pics)

[HashRouge]

I remember a while ago someone posted asking about the effect of Prascend on growth rings and hooves in general, and I thought I'd share a recent photo of my mare's right fore. There are big changes afoot (sorry!) as you can see! She started on Prascend early December last year, and came back into work late January this year (only in-hand, but she'd been off completely prior to that). Assuming that it would have taken the Prascend at least 6 weeks, possibly longer, to have an impact, I'm inclined to think that this is what has caused the changes. There are several distinct angle changes, which will shorten her toe, and I can see a stronger heel growing in (and they look less under-run even when compared to photos taken 2 1/2 weeks ago). Most interestingly for me though, is how smooth the new growth looks! As you can see, there are growth rings all down her hoof (they are more obvious in real life, but still visible in the pictures) and for the last few years I have got used to this as "normal" for her, despite her having a low sugar, high fibre diet, with an appropriate balancer added. The two brown looking rings are very prominent event lines, though I can't for the life of me work out what the correspond to. Similar changes can be seen in her left fore, though they are less clear in photos as the hoof is black. All in all, I'm very encouraged by the changes, and can't wait to see what her hooves look like in 6 months time!

 

[PokerStar]

My boy has been on prascend since Oct 2011, his hooves are now fab - he's 29 and acts like a 9 year old. When he first went on prascend he was just on half a tab per day with little or no effect when it was increased to 1 a day the difference was incredible in a around 2 weeks. My farrier is always amazed at how good his hooves now are. Prascend really is a mircale drug as far as I can see and in fact the growth in his neck which was about the size of a tennis ball has gone !!!