Loathed to shoe but my boy has become footy - spring grass?

muckypony

muckypony

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I've never had a barefoot pony before, but my boy is 5 and he has never been shod. I haven't had him that long but when I first got hin his feet were great, even the stoniest path wouldn't make him footy. However, he hadn't been worked consistently at all before me.

His feet are great, I trust my farrier implicitly and he always says how good his feet are.

Now he is doing much more work and I love hacking him for hours at the weekends, but he seems to really struggle on stony and uneven ground lately.

How likely is it that this is due to the spring grass being sugary and affecting his feet? He has been in work now for a good 6 months and his diet hasn't changed at all for about 4-5 months. I would prefer to keep him barefoot but obviously don't want him having sore feet.

Thanks :)
 
Hmm, well one thing to say is that the grass is definitely coming through as my boy is pretty much refusing his food now and as such he is just grazing on a pretty bare paddock and eating ad lib hay, and maintaining a good weight.

Personally, I'd consider taking him off the pony nuts as the grass is coming through and often they have a higher than recommended sugar and starch content for bf horses.

You also need to be aware that a some of his foottiness may well be down to the awfully wet weather we have had, and that his soles may just need to harden up a bit, I'm sure you've probably upped your workload this week due to the good weather and it may be that you just have to be a bit conservative and build him up a bit more gradually. For instance, my boy has just come into work. He has been ridden every day this week, but I've been careful for now to avoid stony bridleways, to do mainly road work and schooling and use a bridleway that isn't stony. He seems to have coped well with this, but it will be a few weeks before I consider trying one of the more stony ones.

Personally, I would persevere and not shoe him, I'd be careful for the time being about just how far you ride and where you ride and just focus on taking out the unnecessary sugar and starch from his diet and working on surfaces that will stimulate and harden him up again.

Depending on how much weight he is carrying you may even want to cut his feed down further, the amount of top chop you are giving him is negligible so even though it will have a slightly higher sugar content than other chaffs you should be lol however, I'd probably only feed a small handful of that, your linseed (perhaps half a cup) and a small handful of watery speedie beet. You would be surprised at how much goodness will be coming through in the grass.

Also, if he is on haylage, I'd change him to hay.
 
Thank you!

I will cut out the pony nuts and was thinking of swapping him onto the topchop lite once this bag is done. Weight wise he keeps himself surprisingly well, he is looking really fit at the moment and ad hes a welshie I was expecting him to be quite a good doer! He's always been on just hay as well.

I do think its probably a lot to do with the wet weather. Would you recommend using anything to help harden them up? I've heard that Keratex is supposed to be quite good?
 
The camps are divided on keratex, I personally like it and know a lot of farriers recommend it. I certainly wouldn't use it as a long term solution, nor would I use it as often as the instructions indicate but it certainly does what it claims to do and has been very useful to me in the past although I've never had to use it on Ben.

If you are going to use it, I would paint it all the way around the bottom half of the hoof wall, from where the hoof meets the ground and then half way up. I simply do not see any need in painting the entire outer wall. Lift the foot up and paint it on the sole of the hoof, don't paint the frog or the hoof bulb.

Pay careful attention when painting, not to get any on the coronet hand, the heel bulb or the frog. Only paint it on the hoof wall and the sole.

Finally, if I were going to use keratex I would paint it on for three days straight, then I would probably only use it two to three times a week for a few weeks, as I said, there really is no need to use it daily.
 
Maybe wear is outstripping growth? My cob (barefoot for 8 years) sometimes wears his feet a bit short in the winter as they grow a lot slower. They also wear faster when they are water-logged. He has boots to protect his feet during these times, and they usually grow enough to cure the footiness in a couple of weeks.

Come springtime, growth speeds up a bit, feet dry out and harden, and the problem disappears. :)
 
i wouldnt shoe a footy horses unless i knew exactly why they were footy, some dont manage barefoot, but lots do, so cut down turnout time, turnout at night, cut out nuts, iodine solution is just as good for hardening feet over keratex and hydrogen peroxide, or you can buy a hoof hardener from equine podiatry supplies, but keeping on a hard surface so feet can harden and riding on the verges or putting front boots on will work, just give it time.
 
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