Dengie Healthy Hooves causing footiness???

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Procrastination

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has anybody experienced Healthy Hooves (or other laminitis friendly chaff) causing footiness in their horse/pony?

Basically my mare went quite footsore about a month ago. Two things happened, 1. I had ridden her over a particularly stoney track, by the time we got to the track I had to get off because she seemed very sore. 2. Around the same time as this incident I started feeding healthy hooves. She has been pottery ever since.

She is 6 yrs old, always been barefoot and never had any trouble until this episode. She is sound on Tarmac, both walking in hand and being ridden, but not sound over stones - even in hand she is footy over them. I've now got boots for her all round, they seem to be working quite well for us. She is being ridden an average of 30 miles a week so a fair amount.

But the footiness is persisting. It's only really just occurred to me that the healthy hooves could be to blame, although it does seem fairly unlikely?! She was getting about a medium handful a day which I have stopped as of yesterday. She's now just getting a scoop of unmollassed speedibeet to take her vet prescribed supplement. She's out 24/7, doesn't get any extra hay only grass which is still poor in our field.

I guess the answer to my question will become apparent in a week or two if the footiness subsides but in the mean time I'm just interested to hear if others have experienced this. Or if anybody else has any suggestions for things I may have overlooked.
 
Some horses can react to alfalfa, I'd expect to see an improvement if it is that, although it sounds as if she was getting a tiny amount. I'd be more suspicious of your grazing to be honest.
 
touchstone said:
Some horses can react to alfalfa, I'd expect to see an improvement if it is that, although it sounds as if she was getting a tiny amount. I'd be more suspicious of your grazing to be honest.
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I can't discount it, for sure, but we are in the northwest so up until recently we've been struggling to get above 8-9degrees. Certainly when the footiness started I really don't think the grass was to blame, although that's not to say it's not compounding the issues now :-/
 
I should probably also add that she has been on this grazing for coming up to a year - haven't had any problems until this episode.

Also worth mentioning that she had two months off over winter - came back in to work in January and her workload has increased significantly to the point where we are now. She is pretty fit and a condition score about 3.5 I would say.
 
Now I can't remember exactly but I believe healthy hooves wasn't specifically invented for laminitics, I remember ages ago someone telling me it was not the best as they do use molasses in the recipe. Better feeds for laminitics are either D&H safe and sound or dengie healthy hooves MOLASSES FREE, or dengie HI-FI molasses free.
 
shortstuff99 said:
Now I can't remember exactly but I believe healthy hooves wasn't specifically invented for laminitics, I remember ages ago someone telling me it was not the best as they do use molasses in the recipe. Better feeds for laminitics are either D&H safe and sound or dengie healthy hooves MOLASSES FREE, or dengie HI-FI molasses free.
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Ah yeah sorry I forgot to say this is definitely a molasses free version! Which makes it even more unlikely that it's causing the problem!
 
The weather has been strange this year, a mild wet winter and now we've got the sunshine and Frost's overnight, it's a typical time for the sugars to go crazy in grass, and if your grazing is poor then it's more prone to being stressed. If stopping the healthy hooves doesn't work I'd look to restricting grazing, they can be fit and slim and still be prone to lgl.

It might be worth adding mag is and salt to the diet and see if that helps?
 
I started her on magnesium about 2 weeks ago but so far haven't noticed any change. I've tried salt before but she won't eat it, her feed is small so getting a decent amount of salt in to her that way I think is impossible as it must taste revolting.

Is it possible to have LGL yet see no obvious changes to the hoof? She has brilliant looking feet and is always getting compliments about them from trimmers and farriers. Her white line is tight, we don't have any problems with getting grit stuck in it, she has massive frogs, she doesn't have any growth rings on her hoof wall, her soles are super hard...on the face of things she should be rock crunching :-(
 
I feed it to both of my barefoot boys over the winter months, the older of whom has cushings, and they've always been fine.
 
Aren't most horses footy on stoney paths, mine certainly are. Also wet ground will have softened their soles, lots of abcesses this year according to vets and farriers.
Perhaps shoes would help.
 
Never had an issue with it with any of mine. You were feeding such a small quantity it would be unlikely. Mooseontheloose is spot on, I've heard of loads of abscesses, soft soles and thrushy feet this year.
 
I completely understand that some people want their horses to go without shoes - for all sorts of reasons. We never shoe our ponies behind, but always in front, as they have to work on different surfaces and even strong healthy feet can suffer on flinty going.
Also, a pony that has had laminitis may have some rotation of the pedal bone pushing the sole down and make it even more susceptible to bruising.
We've even, in the past, had a pony shod with front shoes on back to front to relieve pressure on the toe, support the heel and keep it's soles off the ground (could confuse anyone tracking it). It worked brilliantly. I think shoeing knowledge has moved on since then and more specialist things are around for good farriers.
I don't want to get into a barefoot/shoeing argument, each to their own, but if a horse is footy it's saying it's in pain.
 
I would suspect the riding over the stoney track is your issue. I keep mine barefoot as do most of my friends, front boots are your friend over stoney ground and we never go without them for rough ground.
 
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