Negative Palmer angles (front feet)

[ester]

Do you mean the feed I've cited is a short list? If so, it's really not. Alfalfa rarely suits anything, so that cuts out a huge amount of feed. Everything from baileys, spillers, topspec, d&h contains either alfalfa or molasses or treated straw. If you want to give your horse the very best chance of doing well barefoot, then diet is critical. A small number can cope with anything but most need an optimum diet to do well, so it's worth starting out in that way.

Yes, plenty of others are appropriate.
I did give my horse the best chance barefoot, diet is critical and initially it didn't involve anything on your list apart from linseed. He has never been expected to cope with 'just anything'.
Funny I've found lots of other feeds available that just contain grass outside of your list, including some of the brands that you list.

 

[ester]

I've noticed that a lot of hooves down as bullnosed are actually just hooves with long toes which have been over rasped back to fit to the shoe.

I definitely think an xray helps, as to whether it is neg HPA or toe dumping.

 

[Gloi]

I definitely think an xray helps, as to whether it is neg HPA or toe dumping.

Though stopping the farrier from filing away large amounts of hoof wall in the first place would be a start .

 

[Feral]

With negative palmar angles, or any imbalance of the hoof, there can be a ripple effect in that other areas of the horse's body may be sore. Often, soreness in the body, can come from the feet. A lot can come from the feet. So when there is a dramatic change in shoeing, I might be inclined to ease the horse back into work and be very observant.

As for barefoot, it is not the answer for all horses. But also, shoes don't have to be permanent either. They can be another tool to use along the way in getting a horse sound/in proper alignment/healing whatever ailment with the hoof. I've seen atrocious hooves on shod and barefoot horses, to be fair. Do what works for the horse in front of you.

As for alfalfa...um, mine eats a feed with alfalfa and no molasses. I think the total NSC of the feed is 7%. His hooves haven't fallen off, he doesn't look like a hobo, and he doesn't fly like a kite (most days). Alfalfa is very useful as a source of protein, and sometimes calcium, especially for horses in hard work or those that are harder to keep/not a good doer. Alfalfa is not offensive to me, but a high amount of sugars and starches, however, is more damaging, IMO.

It would be neat for us, and useful for you, OP, to photograph and record this journey in correcting your horse's hoof angles. I've been doing this with a horse that has a quarter crack, and it has helped me see and keep track of improvement and changes in the hoof.

Thanks for this. Just catching up on all of these replies and I think I may start a running thread of the recovery of my mare.
Ive owned her for 9 months and she was just backed when I purchased her.
Her issue has been that she is reluctant to go forward, like the hand break is on and it has taken me so long to get to this point as it could very well have been put down to been green/lazy/not understanding.

Alarm bells started going off when she went footy in spring (she was barefoot and managed fine through winter) - I got shoes put on her in April and problems got even worse from then.
She has good feet and my farrier has advised looking at them, you would not really notice a problem, he had said she is slightly flat footed and it was only me describing her 'symptoms' which made him mention NPA and that it would be a good idea to get X-rays which showed both fronts to have negative rotations.

We are three weeks in now and were long reining and walking out ridden for 20 minutes at a time quite fine last week.
She then went short and stiff on her back left on Friday and we are back to box rest again. (She tends to run about in the wood chip pen she is in and I think she has slipped and injured herself - she is not going back out there again now)

Farrier due back out two weeks time to assess and see if he can lower the height of the heels she has on which I am hoping he can as they do seem quite high (spider plate type shoe)

I am at a loss with this mare and impatient waiting for her to come right :-(

 

[Reacher]

by way of demonstrating the changes albeit some are better photos that others:
before bar shoes
under run

after 12 weeks of bar shoes - note still bullnosed

new not bullnosed angle growing down

sometime later, after which I mostly stopped bothering to take photos

Just seen this - fab photos Ester, can I ask what your rehab involved? Was it just walking in hand / ridden - how many hours per day/week roughly?
(I ask as my retired mare (bf ex racer 19 year old , not exercised) is still under run though veeeerry slooowly the digital cushion is getting thicker. A couple of years ago I did try walking her in hand for a couple of months but did not notice any improvement ).

OP I’m sorry you are still having problems - what does you vet say?

 

[Feral]

its obviously still early days as she has only had shoes fitted for 3 weeks so I have not even trotted her ridden yet (trot was the pace she showed the most problems, her walk always seemed ok)

She is on box rest until Friday and then will go in field during day for another week but don't think I am going to do any ridden work with her until farrier comes at week 5 to look at her hoof growth and decide if he is going to put a lower heel on shoe.
Vet said she should show masses of improvement by week 5 which she is already in the fact she is sound on her fronts and moving much more normally.

Wont know properly if things are working until next X-rays in a couple of months time.

 

[ester]

Reacher, lameness became apparent in the November 2011 (it had been grumbling before that) The first photo is then, when they were off for xrays.
About march 2012 (working on only doing 2 cycles of bar shoes) he had another coffin joint injection, as it had helped a bit and I thought it might give us a bit of a head start, it felt like it made sense at the time.
late march shoes came off, not trimmed, we put a grass track up in the field with one area of pea gravel (wouldn't bother again) and I walked him out in hand for 5 minutes a day the first week, then 10 mins etc.
About week 6 he went footy and was booted for all road work after that point, I used to walk him in boots half a mile up the road to where we have a long grass stretch of land we can access then walk back again, boots back on for the way home.

I think I was back on him by June maybe? I wasn't a skinny minny on him at that point so it wasn't something I rushed into doing.

The growing down line is from September, once it had rained so the ground was better with did our first straight line canters in the September.
We finally did a circle (beyond just looking at him on the lunge) in November- at which point interestingly he went better than he had ever done.
He wore boots for roadwork for quite a long time but I do have a photo of him coping with some of the stony tracks on the quantocks 12 months later (march 2013)- although I know he struggled a bit later on in the ride and I did use the boots.
This is from a set of July photos where it does look like I'd had a saddle on!

He started out landing toe first and laterally on the lame hoof, he finished up heel first and fine on the lame one, slightly lateral on the sound side.

He was never totally rock crunchy as his soles were on the flat side but if I conditioned him to worst tracks (this happened when we moved to wilts) they did improve again. The more I did with him the more they improved and definitely the faster they grew!

This was a september pic too, he never did roll off his hooves straight.

The one thing I would have done differently is to get him more frequent bodywork while he was transitioning. For the time when he wasn't 100% he was holding muscle tension and his shoulders were not even when we started.

Hope that helps.

 

[tallyho!]

I wouldn’t recommend the barefoot trimmer route either.

My now sacked Equine Podiatry association trained and qualified trimmer opined that HPA X rays are ‘meaningless‘ and he doesn’t take any notice them. He reckons that it all depends on how the horse is standing when the X Ray is taken. This is true, of course, but a decent vet will ensure that the horse will have been stood up correctly.

This is how he left my senior mare after a year of his handiwork at 6 weekly intervals. When I passed on my vets request to improve the angles, he said that he couldn’t without dumping the toe and laming the horse. He hadn’t a clue about the effect of this long toe/low heel angle on the rest of the horse.

View attachment 50451

Funnily enough, the farrier who then took the mare on managed to improve her HPAs dramatically without her ever being lame.

No EP would ever say that.... are you sure he is an EP? NAme?

 

[Tiddlypom]

No EP would ever say that.... are you sure he is an EP? NAme?

He is on the current list of full members of the Equine Podiatry Association. I decline to share his name on an open forum.

He is a very pleasant chap, and is very good at handling the horses.

You can add ‘nerve blocks’ to the list of veterinary procedures that he thinks are crap, as apparently the block diffuses so quickly that you can’t tell where the painful area is.

 

[tallyho!]

He is on the current list of full members of the Equine Podiatry Association. I decline to share his name on an open forum.

He is a very pleasant chap, and is very good at handling the horses.

You can add ‘nerve blocks’ to the list of veterinary procedures that he thinks are crap, as apparently the block diffuses so quickly that you can’t tell where the painful area is.

PM me if you'd prefer

 

[Tiddlypom]

PM me if you'd prefer

If you look a fair way back though your PMs, you’ll find his name .

 

[Reacher]

Reacher, lameness became apparent in the November 2011 (it had been grumbling before that) The first photo is then, when they were off for xrays.
About march 2012 (working on only doing 2 cycles of bar shoes) he had another coffin joint injection, as it had helped a bit and I thought it might give us a bit of a head start, it felt like it made sense at the time.
late march shoes came off, not trimmed, we put a grass track up in the field with one area of pea gravel (wouldn't bother again) and I walked him out in hand for 5 minutes a day the first week, then 10 mins etc.
About week 6 he went footy and was booted for all road work after that point, I used to walk him in boots half a mile up the road to where we have a long grass stretch of land we can access then walk back again, boots back on for the way home.

I think I was back on him by June maybe? I wasn't a skinny minny on him at that point so it wasn't something I rushed into doing.

The growing down line is from September, once it had rained so the ground was better with did our first straight line canters in the September.
We finally did a circle (beyond just looking at him on the lunge) in November- at which point interestingly he went better than he had ever done.
He wore boots for roadwork for quite a long time but I do have a photo of him coping with some of the stony tracks on the quantocks 12 months later (march 2013)- although I know he struggled a bit later on in the ride and I did use the boots.
This is from a set of July photos where it does look like I'd had a saddle on!

He started out landing toe first and laterally on the lame hoof, he finished up heel first and fine on the lame one, slightly lateral on the sound side.

He was never totally rock crunchy as his soles were on the flat side but if I conditioned him to worst tracks (this happened when we moved to wilts) they did improve again. The more I did with him the more they improved and definitely the faster they grew!

This was a september pic too, he never did roll off his hooves straight.

The one thing I would have done differently is to get him more frequent bodywork while he was transitioning. For the time when he wasn't 100% he was holding muscle tension and his shoulders were not even when we started.

Hope that helps.

Thanks, that is very interesting and appreciate you taking the time to give more detail. Mare is paddock sound, I don't have any aspirations to ride her again, ( it's been a long time and even when in work she still thought she was a racehorse and wasn't exactly a relaxing ride!). I would just like her feet to be as good as they can so seeing such an improvement with Frank's feet makes me wonder if her feet can improve any further, if I can spend some time exercising her in hand

 

[flying_high]

Do you mean the feed I've cited is a short list? If so, it's really not. Alfalfa rarely suits anything, so that cuts out a huge amount of feed. Everything from baileys, spillers, topspec, d&h contains either alfalfa or molasses or treated straw. If you want to give your horse the very best chance of doing well barefoot, then diet is critical. A small number can cope with anything but most need an optimum diet to do well, so it's worth starting out in that way.

I'd agree with not feeding any sensitive footed barefoot horse processed feed with added molasses / high sugar / waste or by products. AFAIK Alfa is fine for some and not others.

I'd say there are a fair number of other straights you can feed - e.g. cool stance copra, grass chaff and grass nuts (as long as fairly low sugar), kwikbeet / speedibeet etc. Looking anything to be for low starch, low sugar, and nothing artificial.