following my post below- pics of feet for those who are interested

[clairefeekerry1]

firstly, thank you everyone for your contribution to my 'desperate' post below. I am going to look at his foot situation more. its not going to do any harm is it. here the buggers are!!

i'm no expert so your thoughts welcome. what concerns me most is the last pic of his back feet. they look far too close to the ground. also the two pics of the soles of his front feet. there is not an equal gap either side of his frog if you see what i mean.

 

[tallyho!]

The last photo of those back feet look ideal to my bleary eyes. His fronts look a bit twisted/unblanced but the frogs look wide and healthy. If anything those heels are a bit long and the walls are flared at the quarters. the white line is quite tight in one but not the other - look like mine a bit and mine gets LGL despite ALL my efforts. Gah! I believe I do see a few LGL rings on that pale hoof...

I haven't followed your story yet but will do in a mo... I just thought I'd play say what you see

 

[clairefeekerry1]

The last photo of those back feet look ideal to my bleary eyes. His fronts look a bit twisted/unblanced but the frogs look wide and healthy. If anything those heels are a bit long and the walls are flared at the quarters. the white line is quite tight in one but not the other - look like mine a bit and mine gets LGL despite ALL my efforts. Gah! I believe I do see a few LGL rings on that pale hoof...

I haven't followed your story yet but will do in a mo... I just thought I'd play say what you see

thank you! what is LGL??? do you mean low grade lami???

edited to add- he was trimmed exactly 1 week ago

 

[JingleTingle]

Would disagree with the LGL rings - thought that misnomer about rings on feet was put to bed several years back? Yes can be seen on some laminitcs a very definite ring in SOME cases - but would argue that what we are seeing here is perfectly normal rings caused by change of diet etc, i.e grass, to hay, hay to hard feed, back to grass etc. etc. JUst my opinion.

 

[Meowy Catkin]

His hooves aren't as bad as I expected. I think that this photo,

makes the black hoof seem worse than it looks in the other photos.

 

[clairefeekerry1]

His hooves aren't as bad as I expected. I think that this photo,

makes the black hoof seem worse than it looks in the other photos.

i agree that photo is a bad one. can you see the gaps underneath tho? his front feet dont sit flush with the floor

 

[Meowy Catkin]

Yes, I can see what you mean.

I wish that I'd taken photos of my mare's front hooves a couple of months ago, for you to see. She had a nasty injury, closely followed by an unrelated abcess that took 3 months to get rid of. Her shoes were pulled during this time and the angle of the hoof changed on the leg without the abscess. She had been putting more weight on the leg that didn't hurt. She's got shoes back on and it is improving now. But it really demonstrated to me how pain can alter the shape of hooves.

 

[cptrayes]

i agree that photo is a bad one. can you see the gaps underneath tho? his front feet dont sit flush with the floor

If you mean that he has rolled his toes and that the outer part of the hoof wall is not in contact with the floor, both those things are perfectly normal for a barefoot horse, and indeed with many horses if they do not roll the toe and produce a mustang roll for themselves, we would do it for them to bring back the breakover and prevent the edge chipping.

There are two things which don't look right, if the photos are representative. First, his soles look very lacking in concavity, with no real depth to them at the point of the frog. If this is true, then the tip of his pedal bones are much too close to the floor and could be being bruised.

Secondly, it looks like he has bull-nose feet - the front line of his foot curves outwards. I have seen this several times on metabolically challenged horses, which would also go with the flat soles.

I think you would do well to talk to someone who really understands nutrition and metabolically challenged horses. Did being kept in off grass improve his concavity??? I know he got worse, stiffness wise, but that would be expected of an EPSM horse which did not get movement.

It could be just the angles of the photos but his feet do look as if they are pointing to diet issues to me.

ps the short back feet are fine. Barefoot feet are normally very short compared to shod ones.

 

[tallyho!]

Would disagree with the LGL rings - thought that misnomer about rings on feet was put to bed several years back? Yes can be seen on some laminitcs a very definite ring in SOME cases - but would argue that what we are seeing here is perfectly normal rings caused by change of diet etc, i.e grass, to hay, hay to hard feed, back to grass etc. etc. JUst my opinion.

Too much of a coinkydink imo. Mine has ben kept on the same land, same diet for past 8 months and his rings correlate very closely to his sore episodes. The big one he is growing out now perfectly marks where he got toxic lami when wormed last Nov.

Anyway, you shouldn't be changing a horses diet from grass to hard feed to hay to grass to hard feed or whatever. It should be kept constant. If feed is being changed this often then the rings show periods of inflammation related to change of feed which is Low Grade Laminitis.

 

[tallyho!]

CFK, I read your other post but didn't find who trimmed his feet?

p.s. you can work through this, big hug.

 

[AmyMay]

OP is he shoeless because he's being rested, or is he never shod??

 

[clairefeekerry1]

He's shoeless because he was turned away or not doing much at all. He's always had shoes previously.

 

[AmyMay]

He's shoeless because he was turned away or not doing much at all. He's always had shoes previously.

Righto