How to combat excessive shoe wear?

P

Patches

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Now, I know the obvious answer is to ride on the roads less or have them shod more frequently.

However, I've done all that. I have reduced the hacking distances and am riding in the field some days as well as having a lesson on a surface. All this should be reducing the wear on her shoes. She is also shod every four weeks.

It's three weeks yesterday since she was shod and her heavy duty shoes (by heavy duty I refer to the fact that her shoes are thicker than Tweenie's) have worn like this behind:

Left hind
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Right hind not so worn, but still flat at the toe (which is my fault for trotting on roads. When she's reshod, she's grown so much foot that the flat toe becomes rounded in the shoeing period....not worn back to white line etc)
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More worryingly is that the farrier isn't due until Friday. Her left hind has worn all the clenches away on the outside edge. Whilst I can't wiggle the shoe about, it is now raised along the outside edge as the nails have worn away. I assume this means no riding now until the farrier has been....which is pants as I'm trying to get her and keep her fit.

Here's the outside edge of left hind. It's thinner than it looks as I'm not square on to it for the picture.
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What do I do? She's recently been seen by the vet who's not concerned about the wear to her feet. She's sound, even under flexion. Interestingly it's her right hock with spavin, and she's not worn that foot as much.

I am just at a loss to work out how to prevent this level of wear. She has road nails riveted into her shoes....they are worn off. She has borium melted onto the toe.....it's worn off.

GAH!!!!! I want to ride her and keep her fit and it now looks like I can't ride at all for a whole damn week.
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I have this at the mo,asked farrier and he said it is because he is using himself well behind
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dont ride is the only answer,lol
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not what ya want to hear when price of shoes is expensive enough eh?
 
forgot to say,ask farrier for advice especially if she is wearing down 1 side more than the other???He ma be able to put a slight raise on them
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Spooks shoes are like that after four weeks - probably worse! He wears the inside edge of both of his hinds out completely, but luckily my farrier has an amazing knack of getting the shoes to stick like glue!!

Spooks wears them so badly because he has a wierd action and twists his hinds just before he lifts them.
 
With the price of metal at the moment, is it possible your farrier has gone to a cheaper supplier? If the quality of the metal is reduced, they wont last as long, perhaps the metal used was never designed for shoes? -Just a thought
 
my horse was shod 8 days ago and the toes are like razor blades already. I am despairing. At £70.50 a set is just not funny. He was in ultra heavy shoes last time but with just the front toe clip he seemed to be tripping all the time. not tripping in his current shoes but they will be gone in another week or two!
 
I get the same problem as I do all road work due to lack of anything else! My farrier puts slightly more heavey duty shoes on which are thicker and also has some brilliant road nails that last really well. He does not charge extra for these but they give me a few more miles.
 
My mare slides her back feet when she walks, first two sets of shoes she wore right down like P has..
My mare is very similar build and conformation to yours, and even stands with her back legs back.
My farrier put road studs in the back, permanent ones.. They stop her from sliding her feet as much, and we now last the whole time without them wearing down significantly.
I do do alot of roadwork
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Do you have road nails put in? I can't have shoes without road nails in for L as she slides around like she's ice skating. Also going for the natural balance shoes on the back has really helped her. Her backs don't seem to wear anywhere near as much, obviously she doesn't wear the front of the shoe down now, and *touch wodd* they aren't coming loose. The fronts started to come loose at the end of last week (farrier coming this week, but a week early) and they're just "normal" shoes.

The NB shoes have stopped L from dragging her toes and tripping up as well, and she moves totally differently. Worth chatting to your farrier about them maybe?

How much work are you doing with her - how long are your hacks? You say you're trying to get her fit, but if I'm remembering correctly, you already do something like 3 hours a day on the roads with her anyway so has this been upped? The only horses I know who do that much work are hunters and they all go through shoes like there's no tomorrow. My YO when I lived back home in Shrops hunted three times a week. Her mare was shod every 3-4 weeks, and farrier usually came out twice during that period to put a lost shoe back on....
 
I've reduced the length of time on the roads now, to help prevent shoe wear...and because we're doing work in the fields to get her fit as well as having a lesson on a surface (which I realise I hack to but it's only ten minutes away).

She has Tungsten Road Nails riveted into her shoes on both the inside out and outside, to stop a "rocking" point laterally as the shoe wears (which you can get if you only have one nail on the outside edge of the shoe).

She normally has Borium melted onto the toe of the shoe as well. This was missing from the last shoeing as the farrier had left the box of Borium squares in the van of his partnership farrier. This stops the wear on her toe generally speaking, but she will still shear off the Tungsten studs at the rear and turn her grooved shoe into a flat plate.

I would say I probably only spend about 7 - 9 hours on the roads now per week at a maximum. Some weeks it'd be more like 6 (weather being a factor as I won't hack out in howling gales and very heavy rain). Some times we trot and we have canters on grass verges, but I no longer do the "mammoth" hacks as a regular thing any more over summer. Occasionally we go for a "long one" and I might be out for three hours or more, but that's not happened for a while. I do hack more over winter, when the land is too muddy to school on though. I'm now trying to incorporate a basic form of interval training around some of our larger fields which has really helped to lighten her canter work in my weekly lesson.

I can't decide if I should be calling the vet as this amount of wear isn't normal surely for the level of work I have her in? Her right hind is nowhere near as worn. As far as I am aware she has the more heavy duty metal shoes that the farrier has. Surely they should last longer than three weeks before they are too dangerous to ride out on? My hacking isn't excessive now, is it?

Maybe I'll see how she gets through the next set of shoes before I call the vet. She does seem to be fine in all other ways. I am just frustrated as it looks like she's going to have to have a week off now, which is a bit counter-productive on the fitness front.
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Aren't natural balance set further back? I would be concerned about her being able to wear her toe even more if her hoof was to extend over the shoe too much at the toe. Are they set behind the white line?
 
I thought we were the only ones with this problem, thank god we're not. My cob wears the outside right rear shoe right down, and kicks the toes out of the front. Generally get them to last 6 wks and we do 2-3 hrs 5-6 days aweek on the roads. Cannot get the farrier to do any thing about the outside wear though, he just suggests a bullet if I ask him anything. Dont think he likes my cob much!
 
If I do one hour of roadwork a day for 5/6 days a week then my mare is shod every 2 or 3 weeks behind because they wear out to nothing. She also has 2 tungsten tips in each shoe. In the hunting season it's every 10 days
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