Opinions on this horses front feet.....

Halfpass

Halfpass

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Please can you give me your opinions on these feet. This horse has side bone and slightly rotated pedal bones (they are at 3% instead of 7%) and has been barefoot for probably the 6 months or so. We have just had shoes put back on as he is coming into more work and was beginning to get a little foot sore.

Both fronts
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Front right
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Front left
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These shoes have been on for 4 weeks when these photos were taken and are his first set after being barefoot. Opinions and any suggetsions much appreciated.
 
they are very interesting photo's, but shouldn't you be asking the opinion of experts, like your vet and farrier ? they surely have all the background information...
 
4th and 6th pics down look the worst, the first few don't look so bad. umm, they'd look better if toeclips were central, but presumably your farrier has his own reasons for doing them like that.
the 4th and 6th, where they look a bit twisted, aren't very good at all, obv. is he sound?
 
When you say barefoot do you mean literally chucked out without shoes, or has he been trimmed regularly?

Personally (and please remember that this is just my opinion!) I would have kept him barefoot and begged a remedial farrier (or EP, depending how you feel about them) to take him on to give specialist trims to try and at least deal with the flaring.
Also, IMHO his heels are too high, which in itself will predispose him to pedal bone rotation
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If work was desperate to continue then I would have bought him a pair of hoof boots to work in rather than further compromising the hoof with shoes.

Don't mean to sound negative, so please don't take offence
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As above, I know nothing about side bone, but they do look rather boxy and upright. Is he in over in front at all? My boy is trimmed slightly boxy by my farrier and is goes over in front when standing up - he didn't do that shod.

Edited to say again, as above. the boxiness and angle will be forcing the front of the pedal bone down rather than it being paralel to the ground.

The slight flair on the inside and the fact that the shoe on the right (my right) is on at an angle rather distorts the picture.

Also, if he is sound unshod, leave him him shod for the time being and use Keratex (it does work). Then when his feet have sorted them selves out a bit more put shoes on him again if need be.
 
I'm no farrier but I'm not impressed. I would be worried about the wall being rasped away at all if the pedal bones are rotated as it will reduce stability in the front half of the foot. It also looks like it’s been shod with the heels incredibly short and the second to last photo shows that there is significant distortion on the foot nearest the camera - you can see how the wall flares out from about a third of the way down. To me feet that need serious rebalancing to assist the horses performance and recovery. Sorry!!!!
 
Hmm. Echo Kerilli above re the fact that the toe clips aren't straight, and the shoes look twisted. I would say from the last photo that the foot balance loks well off, but then I don't know the history of the shape of the hoof etc. I must admit it looks a bit like our pony's foot did when we had a temp farrier for a while. She has had rotation in the past as well as laminitic problems, I explained this to him as told to by my original farrier (he didn't recommend the temp guy, a friend did!). Temp farrier proceeded to cut her toes mega short but not shorten her heel at all. She ended up looking like she was walking on high heels, and was noticably footsore. When my original farrier unexpectedly returned to the area (thank god) he took over an inch off her heels.....on a 13hh pony.
However, it could be that your farrier is battling the odds to get the feet to this shape, or that the photos make the shape look more strange than it really is?
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I'm no farrier but I'm not impressed. I would be worried about the wall being rasped away at all if the pedal bones are rotated as it will reduce stability in the front half of the foot. It also looks like it’s been shod with the heels incredibly short and the second to last photo shows that there is significant distortion on the foot nearest the camera - you can see how the wall flares out from about a third of the way down. To me feet that need serious rebalancing to assist the horses performance and recovery. Sorry!!!!

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I echo Sally.
 
Surely if that's how his feet grow naturally when left unshod if you then correct them it's going to put the whole of his leg out of balance?
I know this horse and he was very footsore indeed, we are lucky to have fab hacking on the south downs but it is very stoney and flinty until you get futher up and poor old Murph was really struggling.
 
If the feet were distorted when the shoes came off and it wasn't corrected with proper trimming then it would be unlikely to correct itself. IMHO it's more an issue of foot balance than whether or not he's shod or barefoot but a skilled farrier could do alot to help the horse.
 
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Crikey, what a weird growth-pattern the horse has.
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Exactly what I was thinking!

Is the farrier working alongside the vet, following any instructions at all?
 
My 'guess' would be that the pony has had laminitis and it has distorted the growth pattern of the foot. They are very uneven in growth as can be seen by the swirling of the rings around the hoof wall.

For whatever reason the toe clips are at a peculiar place and not lined up with the centre of the hoof and the heels are very high and upright.

I would think it would take a very long time if ever for these feet to look normal
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It looks as though the heels are too high, the clips are wonky (though probably becasue the farrier has decided to do this for a reason) and it looks as though there is some quite serious flaring on both feet though is different directions. I would definately change farriers and fast as he should have picked up on these things and resolved them by now. Hope this helps.
 
Massive medial rotation! I can see that the toeclips would look odd but if you look at the growth rings the farrier has lined the clips up to follow their shape.

Apart from that Im not very impressed with the way the foot has been trimmed and would hope your farrier is working alongside your vet and some xrays. One of mine had a very slight twist but with a years worth of good shoeing its now resolved with no problems caused to the underlying structures.

However in the long term if this method of shoeing keeps him sound and painfree then thats a good thing. Sadly we arent all supermodels!
 
Ok so here goes I will try to answer all your questions but first a bit of history.
March last year Murphy was lame and had xrays of all 4 feet which showed quite bad side done in the fronts and the rotated pedal bone - 3% in fronts and 5 % in backs. Farrier and vet worked along side each other and we tried wedges in his front shoes. Murphy didn't come sound as he couldn't keep the wedge shoes on long enough to make a difference. After a long discusssion with vet and farrier we decided to take his shoes off. Farrier cam every 6 week and trimmed his feet as much as he could but as Murphy grew very little foot this prooved difficult. My farrier felt that for Murphy the best thing would be to continue his visits but see how his feet decided to balance out. This is the result and this pony is now the soundest he has ever been. We had planned to keep him barfoot and tried keratex cornucrescine and various supplements but none helped enough and he became very foot sore. We had fronts put on as he seemed worse on his fronts but this then just exagerated the soreness behind hence all 4 now being shod.

traceyo1 - vets and farriers both working together on this

kerilli - toes clips are centred as much as poss he is very toed out anyway its difficult to see on these piccies

eventerus - shoes had been on about 3/4 weeks

Bounty - he was trimmed regularly by my farrier that I trust and due to odd shape of hoof couldn't get boots to fit and stay on.

merlinsQuest - Murphy has never had laminitus and we have owned him for 6 years.

spaniel - your last sentence are mine my OH's and my farriers thoughts exactly.

I rode Murphy in the school for the first time in a very long time the other night and was amazed at how differently he moved (in a good way).

I did think that these pictures would spark up some comments. None have offended too much but I am a little upset that some people thought that I hadn't taken the appropriate advice and done the best I can for this lad.
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I have been posting on this forum for long enough now that some should know me better!!
 
I hope I didn't upset you. I didn't mean to. I was just mentioning that he does have quite an extreme flare from high up and that it might not be helping. It may be that your farrier hasn't noticed as it is so high up. Sorry again if I upset you.
 
Thanks for telling us the story. Makes interesting reading and I thought you would have a response which would cover all questions.

I've seen a horse with feet similar to this before (a bit worse actually) - remedial farrier work alongside vet advice (x-rays etc) and the horse's leg became very twisted and nothing any of them tried to do could mend the mare's bizarre growth, which in turn ended up by her leg twisting so much that the mare was put to sleep sadly.

Sounds like your boy is doing just fine though.
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If you interested in homeopathic remedies please contact Ainsworths on 0207 9355330 and ask to speak to Dorothy ( the horse lady ) explain what is happening and she will make a remedy. My horse had a lot of work on his feet after x rays. When he first started treatment he was foot sore after being shod, I would always give a remedy. Aswell as being on sorts of supplements and at the moment on 3 degress natural balance shoes. I also give a remedy every day which my farrier swears has worked and is always telling his clients to contact Ainsworths.

At first we told he had rotated pedal bone but sought a second opinion and it has now been diagnosed with negative sole planes. 6 months into treatment we are slowly getting there. And this was picked up through him having a sore back!!!
 
I'm going to try and take pictures every time he is shod now to see if I can see any changes. Will keep you all posted but for now I have a happy sound horse
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I hope I didnt offend either......
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The suggestion of laminitis was because of the wavy growth lines, typical of some laminitics feet. Do you know what has caused them to become swirly???

Again, hope not to have offended you.
 
No offence taken. I probably should have told the story alongside the pictures
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I have taken on board everyones comments though and will keep you all updated. Think probably the sidebone forming is what has caused the wavy lines on his hoof wall but not 100% sure.
 
We've got one with extremely poor foreleg conformation, and if you looked at his feet in isolation they'd look very flared and off balance. However, if you view his whole foreleg and dropped a plumb line down, you can see that he has grown the foot he needs. If you trimmed away the flare so that he had a 'perfect foot', he'd be lame because his legs would be put under too much strain. It's a matter of keeping the foot under control so that the flare doesn't run away with him and yet allowing his foot to remain as support where it needs to be for the rest of his leg.

Your guy's feet are a bit eek but sometimes handsome is as handsome does. If they are functional feet (and you do appear to have some tighter growth coming down, even if the growth lines are well weird), and you're having regular vet/farrier input and getting the foot seen to regularly - no more than every 4 weeks in my opinion - then you should be fine.

The only thing I would say is that with our weird footed badly conformed horse, we don't do a lot of work with him. He broke down several times racing because of his bad conformation, and he's really not up to doing a lot. Yes allowing him to grow the foot he needs keeps him pasture/light work sound, but we remain aware that it's not ideal and if he was to do a lot of work like that it would unduly stress the internal structures of the foot and cause secondary problems. So you may need to bear similar in mind with your guy and you may not be able to work him much until his feet and legs have improved.

Nb if his pedal bones have rotated/dropped then he will have had some form of laminitis. Maybe not the typical acute fat pony can't move laminitis, but there will have been a chronic deterioration in the laminiae meaning that they are no longer strong enough to hold the hoof wall where it needs to be in relationship with the pedal bone. I'd hazard a guess that there is some stretching in the white line?
 
Thanks for your reply and you are pretty much spot on with everything you say. Poor lad has terrible conformation but by having his feet like this he seems sound which he rarely was before and far happier.
The pedal bones are rotated but in the opposite way to laminitus rotation ie not dropped. This the vet believes is more of a conformation fault than one that has happened due to another cause. This horse has not had laminitus in the time we have owend him.
 
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