Transition to barefoot - is this right?

Ah to OP I forgot to mention magnesium ! just the Cal Mag stuff its £8 ish and will last a year great for their feet and for keeping them sane too :-)
 
Ladylina83 said:
Hmm is it normal to trim the frog for just a grass trim? my Barefoot trimmer never did and the farrier who now trims her feet doesn't either.

Just as a point from your earlier post a trim from a trimmer depends just as a trim from a farrier does (However you do get some people who are both of these things!) I have paid various amounts for trimmers but about £35 which is less than it was costing for her 2 front shoes - now though I have a farrier who is top :-) He does them for 15 quid leaves the sole and frog alone, just trims her bars back if they need doing, balances the foot, takes the flare off and rolls her toes - says she's got great feet and only does them every 3 months perhaps more over the summer.

http://www.easycareinc.com/Education/articles/mustang_roll.aspx

This is quite an informative link - brief snapshot of information :-)
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If the frog is shedding then of course the farrier would trim it off would he not? As my horses all have very good growth I have them done every six weeks, there is no way on this earth I could leave them 3 months, they would be way too long - apart from the fact that two of them compete BD and the other two are a baby and an arthritic veteran and foot balance is very important.

As an aside, my horses, including the 30yo all have fantastic feet.
 
mrdarcy said:
What's your definition of excess frog? Do you include a mustang roll in a normal trim? Do you balance the foot flat to the horizontal plane or make allowances for differing wear points?
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As I am not a farrier I do none of the above - I leave it to my very very good farrier, so what do you charge for a trim then?

Edited to add: By excess frog I am talking about the dead tissue that you tend to get in around say spring time.
 
SirenaXVI said:
As I am not a farrier I do none of the above - I leave it to my very very good farrier, so what do you charge for a trim then?

Edited to add: By excess frog I am talking about the dead tissue that you tend to get in around say spring time.
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If a horse is working on hard/rough/stoney surfaces - as is recommended for developing and maintaining the strongest, healthiest barefeet - then any excess frog is exfoliated naturally by the horse. If there is a lot of dead tissue then either the frog is not making contact with the ground or the horse is only being worked on soft or artifical surfaces.


As my horses all have very good growth I have them done every six weeks, there is no way on this earth I could leave them 3 months, they would be way too long - apart from the fact that two of them compete BD and the other two are a baby and an arthritic veteran and foot balance is very important.
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Again this suggests that perhaps your horses don't work very often either on roads or other hard surfaces. I very rarely have to trim any length off my two competition horses as they do many miles of work out training and competing. I do check for balance pretty much everytime I pick their feet up and adjust as and when necessary.

I charge £30 a trim or £25 per horse if there is more than one horse at the same location. If the horse is out of my normal area I would also charge fuel costs - though try to keep to a minimum.
 
SirenaXVI said:
I use the word mystical because a barefoot trimmer once advised me that the barefoot trim was very different to a normal trim

How much is a barefoot trim and in what way would it differ from a normal trim?
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Interesting question. I have heard/read that several times- that a barefoot trim is different to how a farrier trims an unshod horse. Can someone explain the difference as i would like to know too.

Also, how much do trimmers charge for their services?
 
This is a very interesting debate.
I too have a barefoot horse. But didnt have her go barefoot because of fashion. It was recomended that I try her barefoot.
I'm thrilled that her gaits have improved beyond belief.
She has only been barefoot since October last year, and still prefers smooth surfaces to small stoney surfaces, but read with interest how to toughen up soles.
I have recently moved her to a yard that will require hacking on roads, but am really worried about doing too much.
Her feet look better than they have ever looked. With shoes on, they always looked cracked (more like sand cracks) and hardly grew. Now, they look superb and grow like blazes!!
I feed her happy hoof (she leans towards laminitis if I'm not careful) and Lo Cal Balancer with carrots etc.
My farrier told me that I should expect her feet to start hardening after a year.
 
mrdarcy... just a random (but kind of related) question. You say you have 'competition horses that are doing miles of work during training. What sort of work are they doing? is it flat work for dressage, or fast work for endurance or eventing? How would they stand up to hunting?

Just I have an IDx who has traditionally struggled to keep shoes on because he's short backed and just takes the front ones off with hind feet, and I've been wondering about going barefoot. He's pretty tough sort all round, and when he does lose a shoe (or 2) he's never bothered by it, and will continue as if nothing's changed. He doesn't grow much hoof though, and has quite flat (as opposed to convcave) soles. The farrier rarely has to take any hoof (or frog) off his front feet, and only a little at the toe of his hinds. Hence my concern that barefoot wouldn't be the best idea. I have an excellent farrier, and he has similar concerns to me, and is the first to admit that he isn't used to dealing with horses that are barefoot, more to competition horses that are shod up to the nines in the fanciest shoes going. His diet is good, and he's on farriers formula already to help keep his shoes on!

(soory OP for butting in on your post!)
 
Dirtymare said:
This is a very interesting debate.
I too have a barefoot horse. But didnt have her go barefoot because of fashion. It was recomended that I try her barefoot.
I'm thrilled that her gaits have improved beyond belief.
She has only been barefoot since October last year, and still prefers smooth surfaces to small stoney surfaces, but read with interest how to toughen up soles.
I have recently moved her to a yard that will require hacking on roads, but am really worried about doing too much.
Her feet look better than they have ever looked. With shoes on, they always looked cracked (more like sand cracks) and hardly grew. Now, they look superb and grow like blazes!!
I feed her happy hoof (she leans towards laminitis if I'm not careful) and Lo Cal Balancer with carrots etc.
My farrier told me that I should expect her feet to start hardening after a year.
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Dirtymare

I wouldn't be at all concerned about roadwork - I do miles of it with my barefoot guys, and my driving pony does miles and miles - he is a barefoot laminitic! Great for conditioning the feet.

If she leans towards laminitis then I would rethink the Lo-cal and the carrots if I were you. :)
 
to sirenaXI - the 90 min hack was a lovely relaxed ambling walk on a loose rein with 2 trots, mostly on grass tracks, with small amount of road work and a very stony little passage ways and about 300 m of the poorly maintained bridleway that I mentioned. Whats the difference, other than my weight on her, than her ambling (or indeed having a damn good charge about) her field on 24/7 basis? Our hacks are between 1/2hr and 2 hrs and this has been the longest one so far after 10 weeks. I initially started out with 20 mins and have worked it up. I didnt think it was that excessive... :-( I have been chosing the route of my hacks very carefully and check her feet on return and she seems fine ... if only I had miles and miles of grass tracks that would be lovely :-) but then going by the good advice given on here that would never condition her feet up.
 
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teddyt said:
Interesting question. I have heard/read that several times- that a barefoot trim is different to how a farrier trims an unshod horse. Can someone explain the difference as i would like to know too.
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Anyone??

e.g.from another thread-
From recent experience, unless your farrier is also keen on barefoot then there is likely to be a difference in the trim from him and the one from a barefoot trimmer. I was nervous when I first decided to get a trimmer, so I asked if I could go out with her for a day and watch her work on other horses.
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So whats the difference?
 
mrdarcy said:
If a horse is working on hard/rough/stoney surfaces - as is recommended for developing and maintaining the strongest, healthiest barefeet - then any excess frog is exfoliated naturally by the horse. If there is a lot of dead tissue then either the frog is not making contact with the ground or the horse is only being worked on soft or artifical surfaces.




Again this suggests that perhaps your horses don't work very often either on roads or other hard surfaces. I very rarely have to trim any length off my two competition horses as they do many miles of work out training and competing. I do check for balance pretty much everytime I pick their feet up and adjust as and when necessary.

I charge £30 a trim or £25 per horse if there is more than one horse at the same location. If the horse is out of my normal area I would also charge fuel costs - though try to keep to a minimum.
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Ummmmm no my horses do normal roadwork, although I am careful to stay away from stony paths etc.

So a barefoot trim seems to be more expensive than a 'normal' trim, can you explain the difference please?
 
GreyBay said:
to sirenaXI - the 90 min hack was a lovely relaxed ambling walk on a loose rein with 2 trots, mostly on grass tracks, with small amount of road work and a very stony little passage ways and about 300 m of the poorly maintained bridleway that I mentioned. Whats the difference, other than my weight on her, than her ambling (or indeed having a damn good charge about) her field on 24/7 basis? Our hacks are between 1/2hr and 2 hrs and this has been the longest one so far after 10 weeks. I initially started out with 20 mins and have worked it up. I didnt think it was that excessive... :-( I have been chosing the route of my hacks very carefully and check her feet on return and she seems fine ... if only I had miles and miles of grass tracks that would be lovely :-) but then going by the good advice given on here that would never condition her feet up.
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You being on his back actually makes a world of difference, particularly as he was on a loose rein. A riders weight will put the horse even more on his forehand therefore placing more strain on the front feet so yes, it is very different to her trundling or even haring around the paddock.
 
jenhunt said:
mrdarcy... just a random (but kind of related) question. You say you have 'competition horses that are doing miles of work during training. What sort of work are they doing? is it flat work for dressage, or fast work for endurance or eventing? How would they stand up to hunting?

Just I have an IDx who has traditionally struggled to keep shoes on because he's short backed and just takes the front ones off with hind feet, and I've been wondering about going barefoot. He's pretty tough sort all round, and when he does lose a shoe (or 2) he's never bothered by it, and will continue as if nothing's changed. He doesn't grow much hoof though, and has quite flat (as opposed to convcave) soles. The farrier rarely has to take any hoof (or frog) off his front feet, and only a little at the toe of his hinds. Hence my concern that barefoot wouldn't be the best idea. I have an excellent farrier, and he has similar concerns to me, and is the first to admit that he isn't used to dealing with horses that are barefoot, more to competition horses that are shod up to the nines in the fanciest shoes going. His diet is good, and he's on farriers formula already to help keep his shoes on!

(soory OP for butting in on your post!)
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I do endurance with my horses - a mixture of long slow distance work (usually on roads) and faster work which is mostly on the moorland tracks we have round here - mixture of stone, mud, ruts, cobbles and bricks. I wouldn't hesitate to go hunting with any of them - well if I wasn't such a wussy rider that is! There are quite a few people who hunt barefoot - Nic Barker at Rockley Farm who is often mentioned on here hunts every week on Exmoor on her barefoot brood and Cptrayes who posts on here hunts and events her barefoot lot.

Your horse's lack of hoof growth whilst shod or his flat soles shouldn't put you off. Being barefoot will kick start his body into growing more horn (the action of the hoof wearing on the ground sends signals to the nerve endings that activate horn growth but there may be a time lag when you first take the shoes off) and concavity will come as the hoof strengthens up - particularly the back of the foot. If he's managed fine when he has lost a shoe then that's a very good indication that he'll find transitioning very easy. For diet just make sure that everything you feed is as low in sugar as possible - many feeds purport to be low in sugar or non-heating but actually aren't - for example bog standard Spillers Horse and Pony Cubes have a combined sugar/starch percentage content of 22% and some cool mixes can be up to 33% combined. We recommend no more than 10% combined sugar/starch feeds and try to avoid feeds with molasses. I'd also say that if you do try barefoot get him a set of hoof boots so that you can keep riding him whilst building up the work slowly - this'll give his hoof wall growth chance to catch up.
 
SirenaXVI said:
Ummmmm no my horses do normal roadwork, although I am careful to stay away from stony paths etc.

So a barefoot trim seems to be more expensive than a 'normal' trim, can you explain the difference please?
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Why would you stay away from stony paths? How much road work - hours/miles per day/week?

I thought I had explained about the trim i.e that there may or may not be a difference, it depends on the farrier.
 
mrdarcy said:
Why would you stay away from stony paths? How much road work - hours/miles per day/week?

I thought I had explained about the trim i.e that there may or may not be a difference, it depends on the farrier.
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Three one/two hour hacks a week, mainly roadwork with some bridle paths. I stay away from one really stony path, it is actually all stones of various sizes, would not be happy taking even a shod horse down there!

No you had not explained that there was not a difference in the trims. I wonder why I was told it was very different :confused:

Another couple of questions:

Are there different types of barefoot trimmers?

How long do you have to train to be a barefoot trimmer?
 
UKNHCP training takes about 2 years. There are different trimming organisations with slightly different ways but overall I think they are heading in the same direction.

I am not able to go into the mechanics of what the trimmers do as I am not a trimmer but an owner of barefoot horses.

The basics are ensuring balance with the understanding of allowing the foot to balance itself sometimes. Alot of the time, intefering with what the hoof tries to do can cause more problems.
They put on a mustang roll. They look at the horse holistically in order to ensure the best health.

If you look at any trimmer's websites, they have case studies in which you can see the difference before and after.

I know there was a huge difference between farrier trim and barefoot trim. When an apprentice farrier (under close supervision) had gouged holes in my healthy horse's sole and left him staning in pool of blood (we still don't know why) - that's when I decided on a barefoot trimmer
 
Sorry - mean to put there was a huge difference between farrier trim and barefoot trim with MY OWN horses.

A livery has seen her mare transform her temperament, body shape and muscles since going barefoot. She was up for sale at one point but now she would never part with her.

Another livery had a navicular write-off with behavioural problems - he is now a future dressage star who is due to compete soon.

Another livery kept the shoes (on the trimmer's advice) but after talking to the trimmers, she changed the diet and the horse is no longer lame and out competeing.

YO has show horse that had never left the yard as he was constantly lame with one thing after another (and he was nuts too) - he will be showing finally this season.

The service and support I have received from my trimmers has been second to none.
 
The trimmer my OH uses has a number of useful skills - she has rehabbed laminitics, she is a qualified saddle fitter, she has natural horsemanship skills - and even been to Aus to train. She's an owner and an endurance rider.

It's just a wide spectrum of skills and exposure compared to a narrow specialist.

I got part way through the training and had to pack it in due to self employed OH, children, unpredicatable work with lots of foreign travel....but I trim my own, and trim for a few friends.

It's a great syllabus in the UKNHCP, highly recommend it. As well as the trimming, lower leg anatomy, there is training in biomechanics, horse handling and behavior, saddle assessment, nutrition etc.

And - some of it is taught by farriers! Shock! :eek:
 
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