Hoof care

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ellis9905

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Im after some advice and opinions from you knowledgeable people!

im about to loan a new horse ( yay!) and on the whole hes great. His hooves just arnt great, he has front shoes and struggles to hold on to them for 6 weeks. his feet get quite cracked and chipped

there seems to be so many different adiditives and suppliments on the market im a little perplexed as to which may be best to try.

i appreciate that there will be no over night miricle cure and any suppliment would take time to make any improvement.

owner currently paints hooves with a cornucrescine

ive always had hardy ponies before that have always just been trimmed and left unshod !

thanks for any advice :)
 
Well, the cornucrescine clearly isn't working for a start ;).

What hooves need is a low sugar/starch diet, and sufficient levels of balanced minerals. The best way to achieve the latter is a forage analysis and a bespoke feeding plan. Alternatively, there are a few supplements available which have been designed to balance typical uk forage. Look up pro hoof or pro balance + and the forage plus balancers.
 
Ugh, I can't believe people feed gelatin to horses. That is just so casually depraved. They could be eating a relative. Gah.
 
95% diet - low sugar,starch and calories. If you do a search on here you'll find loads of info (brown button above). It can be a complete minefield.

My boy is fed Topspec Light balancer and has never looked better, and his hooves are fab. Grazing muzzle at all times, and soaked hay. It really is trial and error though.
 
As has been said, diet is really important, more important IME than anything that you can paint on the outside.

Do you know what he is currently fed?
 
If he cannot hold on to the shoes then they shouldnt be going on. Basically says there isnt enough good quality horn to bang nails in to.

Take them off, boot the fronts till they recover better, get the diet sorted and dont waste your money painting stuff on, this only prevents the hoof being able to breathe and causes fungal infections rather than actually doing anything. The hoof quality is from diet, environment and stimulation.
 
Agree that diet should be the first thing to look at before you start spending money on expensive pots of cheap oil.
 
What's the horse being fed on, for starters? As my farrier said, the only thing that'll make a difference to the hooves themselves is what you put in through the mouth. Make sure he has a good, low sugar, low starch, high fibre balanced diet. Lots of feed balancers contain all the nutrients needed for hooves, but there are also specific one for feet like Farriers Forumla or Formula for Feet which I've heard mentioned on here plenty of times. Some other people add Micronised Linseed as well. Other than that, you can use water on the hooves to get the moisture in. After shoeing or sometimes if the weather's been very dry I'll put on Effol or Kevin Bacon hoof dressing after damping the hooves down to seal the moisture in. Good luck, let us know how it goes :)
 
ellis9905 said:
His hooves just arnt great, he has front shoes and struggles to hold on to them for 6 weeks. his feet get quite cracked and chipped
Click to expand...

Hi,
I don't know much about feeding for feet, but more knowledgeable people than me have replied so that's ok!

I just wanted to add something else to consider. A year or so ago, the little ginger pony's hooves started to go in a pretty shoddy state - always bruised, cracked/chipped, shoes loose a couple of weeks after fitting, etc. I was looking at buying Farrier's Feet Formula (or something like that?) when, by chance, the farrier that shod other horses on the yard offered to put ginger's loose shoe back on for me whilst he was there. He was such a nice guy and so good with the pony that I asked him to do the full set next time - never use anyone else now.

Pony's shoes have never been loose, his hooves are white again and very rarely chip. He is now shod every 8 weeks as opposed to once a month, even though he hacks out at least 5 times a week and some of that is road work. I also swear by Effol - love that stuff. Can't believe the difference - obviously not saying your farrier is definitely to blame, but it was the case for mine.
 
That is a good point about Farrier. If Farrier not fitting shoes well, then it will contribute to weak hooves.
 
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