Feeding for hoof health and ulcer prevention?

[Kitei]

Obie's feet were very under run and incredibly sensitive when I got him (with a couple of other issues). Under the care of my farrier they are gradually improving in all ways, but I'm still concerned about how sensitive he is. He's really going to struggle on the local bridleways as he currently is.

He's also fed a high fibre, low starch diet for ulcer prevention, basically, as he's a serial cribber. So he's on fibrebeet, hifi cubes and alfa a currently.

I'm hoping to adapt his diet for a more foot-friendly one, whilst retaining the gut-friendliness. Any suggestions for what to look into would be muchappreciated.

 

[Rosesandhorses]

Have you looked into feeding Biotin? This encourages healthy hoof growth and increases the speed that they grow. You can get this pretty cheap from most feed suppliers and you should see a difference in around 4-6 weeks.

 

[Brightbay]

Despite it being recommended, the newly barefoot horse in our field who is a windsucker and who has been down the whole Gastroguard route did not improve on alfalfa. In fact, he didn't improve on anything at all... until we removed everything from his bucket except soaked copra meal, a very small handful of grass pellets and some timothy chop (plus his Forageplus vits and minerals in the form of the Winter Hoof Health balancer). Now he's stopped windsucking at meal times, something we all thought would never happen, and he's happily hacking out barefoot (something his previous farrier said would never happen ).
It is a very stripped down diet, but so far he is doing very well on it.

 

[kobi]

As above plus out 24/7 if you can ideally on old pasture rather than rye. Also good old fashioned meadow hay.