Thrush...Central Sulcus...Talk me through this

Queenbee

Queenbee

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Right, bottom line, I went to pick out bens hooves today, im not happy with his central sulcus, its quite contracted. He is barefoot and has been so all his life, he used to be pretty self trimming and i suspect this is where we have fallen foul as now his hooves grow faster and as such his trims need to come more often... So yes, they have contracted. I went to pick his hooves out today and im ashamed to say it but i dont always touch the CS as generally it doesnt look like anything needs clearing from here, however, today i did... on the last one my hoof pick just disappeared into a cavity... :( It actually doesnt smell bad but its clearly eating away in there. the farrier is out anyway on Thursday so will be checking this over.

For tonight i scrubbed all four hooves, sprayed everyone of them with purple spray and then coated in stockholm tar. I would have sluiced it with hydrogen peroxide but mine was at home and claire_r was very unhelpful and had locked hers away :p

Anyhow, am i on the right track with treatment? I have no photos, but basically all four hooves are black around the collateral groove, all four hooves have contracted heels and one hind hoof has a cavity in the central sulcus which is white (no black in there).

I suspect it has not helped that he has been on his summer bed which is smaller than his deep winter bed, although this is fully mucked out daily he eats some of it and this often exposes the wet, despite him having hardstanding in his stable he must stand on the wet quite a bit i think :(

Tomorrow his bed is going super deluxe to keep him as dry as possible, obviously the farrier is seeing him on thursday... anyway... any tips or pointers with either decontracting these sodding heels or dealing with this cavity, stopping it from getting worse and helping it get better?
 
My lady had thrush only a little while ago. Hydrogen peroxide and Stockholm tar sorted it right out. Pop it in tomorrow but sounds like you're doing everything on the button to me! Also leaving him out as much as you can is good to help dry out the feet. Afterwards I found her feet were quite dry from the hydrogen peroxide so keep putting the conditioner on for a few more days. :-)
 
Don't be too aggressive with the treatment or you will kill the healthy tissues and give the fungus something extra to feed on.
By all means hit it for a day or two, but don't keep on.

I put Sudocream (baby cream) on, not every day, but when I ride.
 
As above once with HP and ST is enough as you will kill good tissues. Id suggest cleantrax myself but you need him to stand in a hoof boot for at least 30-45 mins.

I dont understand your logic of the hoof growing faster meaning the heels have contracted. My guess is there has been grumbling thrush there for a while and has steadily caused the contraction as the horse will stop landing heel first if the caudal hoof is weak.
Boots and pads will help that along with field paste/cleantrax etc
 
thank you! Milly, sadly I cant turn him out 24/7 I don't think anyone could cope with it! :/ If he is out and the others get bought in before him in the morning, he kicks off careering around like the field hooligan he is. If he is left out too long he trashes the fencing, irrespective of having company. He is very much a creature of habit and simply loves coming in for his haynet and a snooze. To the point where even consistently turning him out at about 2-3pm, can rile him and prompt him to cause carnage in his field.

Orange horse, a very good point. Out of interest, obviously stockholm tar is very sticky and a full on barrier, I will want to remove it tomorrow so i can treat the area with HP... before reapplying the tar... whats the best thing to use to remove the tar? obviously water alone is not going to cut it! ;)
 
TigerTail said:
As above once with HP and ST is enough as you will kill good tissues. Id suggest cleantrax myself but you need him to stand in a hoof boot for at least 30-45 mins.

I dont understand your logic of the hoof growing faster meaning the heels have contracted. My guess is there has been grumbling thrush there for a while and has steadily caused the contraction as the horse will stop landing heel first if the caudal hoof is weak.
Boots and pads will help that along with field paste/cleantrax etc
Click to expand...


What I was getting at with regards to the contraction, is that, he was essentially self trimming and so occasionally would have his hooves looked at and trimmed if necessary, but as the growth sped up, there was a crossover period where i suppose i was caught unaware by the change in growth rate and his toes were longer than they should have been, not hugely, but i was wondering if this could have contributed to the contraction?
 
And is treating the thrush alone good enough to reverse the contraction, obviously along with regular trims. Or should i be asking the farrier to do any additional work to support this. Obiously, I get that the thrush itself could have caused the contraction, but what im conscious of is that I need to sort out the contraction itself, because even if there is no thrush there, it makes for a perfect breeding ground for thrush.

Also, TT he isnt foot sore, it bloody looks like he should be, but he isnt. So, I dont see the need for boots and pads (unless for another reason) I plan to keep him just doing roadwork for a while, and not doing any bridleways or sandschool, simply to stop too much gunk getting caught up in that cavity.
 
Have you tried red horse products? I know a lot of people reccomend them. I've been using sole cleanse, although probably not as often as I should.

My boy is a bit uncomfortable on his feet at the moment and I think it's probably thrush. I've scrubbed them with salt water and upped the sole cleanse to daily. I've just ordered more sole cleanse and their sole paint (for use on stabled horses). They also have a product for field kept horses which I'll be ordering for the winter.
 
another vote for red horse products.
sole cleanse to clean them rather then hydro peroxide and then hoofstuff to pack in the central sulcus!
We swear by it our big boy was lame with thrush in the central sulcus a couple of winters ago and it was amazing how quickly the tissue grew back!! the hoofstuff has fibres in that allows it to stay and work deep in the sulcus and even when it was wet wet wet and knee deep bud (he lives out) it would stay in for 5 days!
can't speak highly enough about these products!
 
I have the hoof stuff as well which lasts forever.

They also have next day delivery if you order before 12noon. I ordered late last night and had a text today to say it will be delivered tomorrow.

**i have no connection with red horse products!**
 
Take a vid of him walking on a hard surface, with you at his side and someone else leading him - is he landing heel first? If yes don't worry about the boots, if no you need boots and pads. If he continues to avoid landing heel first (they aren't necessarily footy when landing toe first) the contraction will stay as it is or get worse. The boots and pads will squish up into the frog and stimulate it as well as encouraging a heel first landing which will get the decontraction going.

Mine is in old mac g2s, they may look bulky but she far preferred them to cavallos but has to wear them on the road due to pedal osteitis. I also turn her out in them when the ground is baked hard - though you couldn't do that if you have a v muddy field.
 
If you brush the central sulchus with iodine daily for a few days it will solve the problem. If it is very deep you could also stuff an iodine soaked cotton wool ball in and leave it. Lot cheaper and more effective that all these expensive products and very effective.
Having done that if you start walking/riding on the roads regularly you may well find that the contraction starts to resolve on it's own.
 
Hi all,

Just thought I would post a little update on Ben and his sore tootsies.

Day 1... Obviously found thrush, and a significant crevice in one of his hinds... so I scrubbed all 4 with plain water, left them to dry, sprayed with Purple Spray (as no hydrogen peroxide) then brushed his soles with stockholm tar.

Day 2... Scrubbed all 4 with plain water, (getting ST off with plain water is not easy!) sluiced with HP and left to dry, then painted with ST and stuffed a cotton ball covered in ST in the crevice in his hind.

Day 3(today)... Scrubbed with water with a small dollop of dermoline shampoo, got the ST off a treat! You know how when you pour water on sand you get little rivulets? well after the HP and ST from yesterday, thats what his hind frog looked like where it had eaten away at some of the nasty. After washing, I moved him to a dry area with a haynet and set to his stable... I finally have a huge fresh bale of straw, so I disinfected his stable and put a huuuuuge winter bed down for him. The farrier arrived, he was surprised at how bad it was but not too bad that its not easily reversible with the correct regime. He cut away the crap, as much as possible to enable me to treat it easily, so ben got sprayed with PS and turned out. Farrier reccomends alternate treatments for now of Purple spray and Stockholm tar, with sessions of rock salt water to help dry things out.

Ben is ecstatic, no schoolwork for a while! Not so ecstatic at the fact that he is also not going on bridleways... trying to keep his tootsies as dirt free as possible. Reccomended a coat of vaseline or ST before roadwork hacks to keep grit out of the area... but feeling much better about things today. And the icing... The farrier didnt charge! He is a star!

So tomorrow ben is walking into a palacial bed... the first feed of the season (because Ive gone soft!) and I have to say Im so proud of him, he can be a cantankerous beast if he wants to be, but he has been so good with the soaking, prodding, scrubbing and gouging, when it clearly must be uncomfortable!
 
Another update today, and the news is amazeballs! Today I went to do ben (a friend did him for me yesterday) and I am blown away by his progress, now obviously I put a lot of that progress down to treatment of the hooves, but the change since I disinfected his stable and put down a huge bed is truly staggering, I believe this has contributed significantly to his rapid improvement. Today, I picked his hooves out and they didnt smell at all, regardless of this they still got a liberal spray of purple spray, but the wonderful thing, his hind frog is looking fantastic and starting to look frogish again, and amazingly his other hooves have a proper gap and are looking significantly less contracted! I will try and get some photos tomorrow for everyone to see :)
 
Not read the replies so apologies if repeating.

Red Horse Field Paste packed into the central sulcus. If it's really tight use cotton wool (covered in FP) packed right in.

A really deep CS appeared practically overnight on my mums horse but just the near hind. I've been applying FP for just over a week now and it's dry and opening up.

My 2yr old arrived in June with neglected hooves and was so poor/malnourished that his whole development was stunted. His hooves were like foals and it was about a month after he arrived (& was getting fed and properly looked after) that his hooves started to shed and develop. His frogs have gone through massive changes and recently that included tight, deep central sulcus' creating an ideal environment for thrush. Again I've been using field paste and in a week they've decontracted so that I can see the bottom of the CS and they are dry.

I've had FP for yonks and intermittently used it on my other horse for other hoof issues but had forgotten about it. I'm actually amazed at what a fantastic job it's done on these two horses.
 
Mine ended up with a stay at horsepital due to a really bad thrush inection that was there before I bought him. He had terrible feet, which are now much better following taking the shoes off and a change in diet and management.

If the toes seemed longer, its more likely this was caused by the heels contracting rather than the heels contracting because of the toes if that makes sense? I cleantraxed which cleared the infection and this then allowed the heels to come into use and then they started to open back out. I occasionally spray with diluted Milton as well just in case.
 
I thought I would post an update to this thread... I will try and take some photos later on. Things were not looking so good when I started this thread, apart from the smelly black stuff in the collateral groove I had never experienced thrush... this was another thing entirely. I started making ben mammoth straw beds, if I couldnt keep him dry in the field I could at least give his hooves some respite when he was in. In the initial stage I used hydrogen peroxide to treat, I would scrub his hooves clean with water, then HP them, then add septaclense purple spray and every other day some stockholm tar... I also started bringing him in at night earlier than planned so that once everything had been done to his hooves he was in a nice clean bed as opposed to being turned out. I had been battling with this method and had seen some progress but it was rife with problems...

Whilst ST came highly reccomended from a number of well respected sources, my concern was that it was not able to allow the free flow of air around the hoof. Ben's appetite is not small, on a straw bed he would polish off his hay and then start on the bed... now whilst Im not overly aversed to him eating his bed since the lions share of his forage is hay, it became clear that this in itself was not helping matters. The sheer volume of hay combined with bedding that he was eating resulted in him drinking a full to the top large tub trug and a medium tub trug every time he was in, this meant he was weeing - a lot, and obviously this meant his bed was both a nightmare to muck out but also wetter for him to stand on.

Then the other day, I bought him in and it was clear that the state of his hooves had gone backwards and were pretty much as bad as they were to begin with... you wouldnt tell this to ride him, he is full of beans and jogging, but he has not been allowed in the school since this issue started for fear of him getting sand and grit in all the crevices. Ive had to be very careful out hacking, roads are fine but there is only one bridleway I am happy to take him on.

So, I decided to go back to the drawing board and look into other treatment approaches and anything I could do to help matters. I investigated different treatments further and decided on a multipronged attack, I planned to get some blue foot rot spray, but my local merchants were out of stock and they have not been able to get any for three weeks (this to me screams volumes about the impact of the weather conditions on such issues this year). I also ordered some NT dry as Ive heard some really positive things about it. In addition to this I purchased a bottle of iodine. With regards to his bedding, I had had enough, straw just isnt working for us now, so I went out and got some wood pellets...

Armed with Wood Pellets and Iodine and having NT dry on order, I changed everything on saturday. old bedding out, new bedding down, all hooves scrubbed and completely sluiced in iodine... I didnt see him on sunday but the girl doing him did exactly the same, yesterday I went up and walked into a bone dry stable (hurrah) - everywhere he could stand is moisture free :D. When I bought him in I was seriously shocked! Picking out his hooves they felt so much harder (remember this is after two days) there is no black down the collateral grove on any of the hooves, his heels are not so squidgy and the heel bulb and central sulcus that is struggling was certainly looking healthier, and all this was after a day standing out in the field...

Ive never used iodine before, but I have seen others recommend it on here before, but I am seriously impressed with it. Its made a huge difference in a couple of days. The bedding obviously helps, I believe it provides a better environment for both battling and preventing thrush, but as a treatment, iodine has my vote. :D I will keep you posted with updates and also as I said, try and get some snaps of his hooves
 
Another supporter of Red Horse Products for thrush issues!

I help look after a gelding that has been badly shod and subsequently 3 of his frogs have been affected by SEVERE thrush, his feet and frogs basically fell apart, after much time at the vets and a remedial farrier he is coming on great, 3 weeks on box rest, being kept clean and dry.....!!! There is a powder the farrier gave us...NT Dry (you can get it via smithshealth.co.uk) and I have also used the products I use on my own horse, sole cleanser (RH Products) and the Hoofstuff, which is useful for a myriad of issues!!

Avoid peroxide and other nasty things that kill off good tissue....I highly recommend the NT Powder, first time I have heard of it!!! It is amazing and seems to last forever!!

Oh yes and iodine great for hardening those frogs!
 
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