hooves--length and shape

[galadriel]

Well, it looks like Duchess won't be able to stay barefoot...even if her feet can eventually toughen up enough for light work barefoot, she's going to do damage to them frantically pacing when Kat leaves her to be worked. Shoes it is.

The barn owner took her out for me while the vet was there so she could take a look at her (she was stiff after fencewalking in the sticky, slippery, sludgy mud a few days ago); vet thinks she's fine, but barn owner was awfully concerned about the length of Duch's hooves. She's always had little hooves, and it drives me crazy--but since I started using a new farrier, at least she has a HEEL! and a 45 degree-ish angle to the ground. All the horses at this place are shod by one farrier, and he happened to be there when the vet was there, too. They're all telling me her hooves are too short.

All the horses at this place have feet that worry the heck out of me. They've got no heel, loooong toes. Now I understand why--their farrier and they all think a hoof *should* look like that. Yikes.

Had some trouble trying to explain that no, Duchess isn't tender because her hooves are too short, she's tender because she *was* wearing shoes, isn't used to being barefoot, and apparently hasn't yet developed a tough enough sole (sigh) to withstand running around like an idiot.

There is something they brought up that worries me though--my farrier has been telling me that Kat's hooves are shaped differently and he's shoing them thusly. One of them keeps getting longer; it's more upright, less spread out--and it is noticeably *taller* than the other front hoof. They were trying to tell me that this is making her knees uneven--I don't see it, but is it something that should worry me?

[virtuallyhorses]

Where to start? First - any statements here are done without seeing your horse so please take them that way :)

The length thing is probably the easiest - if you want to put your mind at rest - measure her feet. Measure from the coronet to the toe down the front of the hoof. If she's 3" or longer, she is not too short. Wild horses with barefeet are usually 2-7/8" TO 3-1/8" long. Most pleasure horses are way too long in the toes but if you're looking for an measurement anywhere in the 3 - 4" mark is 'good' (my term). But this is variable based on breed, height, weight. Farriers often use their fingers to measure - 4-5 'man sized' finger widths.

With regards to small feet - each horse will grow the hooves it needs and is genetically capable of. A big plough horse (or partbred) will have enormous great feet whereas an Arab may have tiny little upright hard hooves. For some reason we seem to love everything to be 'the same' - a std horse, a std hoof etc etc sorry its not going to happen, live with it :) Yes, there are 'ideal' shapes, sizes, angles etc etc but its all relative to the horse's conformation.

With regard to different shaped feet - again perfectly normal. Look at the different bits of your own body - they're prob not exactly the same. Its very common for one (esp front) hoof to be a little bigger or a little more upright. If your farrier is already onto this then I wouldn't be unduely worried - it sounds like he's taking a sensible approach to trimming and shoeing as a reflection of her conformation.

If you some other quick checks - look at the hairlines above her hooves (coronet). Are they straight and level with the ground or is there somewhere around the hoof when the hairline suddenly rises or dips? This is a sign that the hoof surface is not allowing the hoof to strike evenly. Look at the two front feet - even if one is a little more upright, after a trim are the heels the same height? (look at the bulbs rather than the hoof) is the hoof-pastern axis good? (could you draw a straight line up the middle of the hoof and through the middle of the paster when looking from the side)

sorry bit long - hope it helps tho'
http://www.lesspub.com/afj/AFJ_Only_Online/Only_Online-2/Adapt__Overcome/adapt__overcome.html this link is a farrier talking specifically about horses having different feet and how he trims to 'make them the same'

[Wally]

Rossi has front feet which will try to grow into completely different shapes and sizes left to their own devices. Nature gave him these feet, but it causes him to have a very uneven gait and to trip a great deal. With careful trimming and re structuring over time we have managed to get two matching feet (well, ones that work on the end of each leg and in harmony) and no more tripping and wallowing along. If we trimmed them to how they want to grow he'd be lame and eaten by lions (if we had any) in a matter of months. But we have to still respect the conformation of his legs and do nothing radical to put strain on his joints farther up his leg.

I would rather see a boxy upright foot with a good length of heel than a foot with a collapsed heel and an over long toe. The damage this will do to tendons and break over is untold.

I have always felt that it is far too common for horses' feet to be left with too much toe and the heels left to collapse.

Folk think too that by fitting a wedge that this will correct the hoof pastern axis. What it actually does is apply even more pressure to the already weak, collapsing heels causing them to collapse further.

There is nothing wrong with a good short hoof, it is better than trying to correct a long toed hoof with weak collaped heels.

Some radical remedial farriery requires that the hoof be trimmed bak REALLY short so the horse is walking not on the walls but on the sole and frog alone. It is thought to promote circulation and hoof quality.

[galadriel]

Thanks :)

I hate that their feet are small mostly because they are such large horses, but I've managed to resign myself to it :)

And yea, I don't worry that Duchess's feet are short (according to them); I've come to the conclusion, looking at the other 20ish horses out there, that none of them have any idea what short/long is. Or have any concept of heels (shudder) --but it's the ONLY thing I've seen there that I don't agree with at all, so I'm not complaining!

But I am not as dead certain about Kat's front feet, sadly. Mostly because they have always bothered *me*. One *is* much shorter than the other--coronet to toe as well as coronet straight down to the ground. I haven't been out to see them since this post :) but I'll check tomorrow--I think the heel on the smaller hoof is also smaller. *Could* that be a potential problem? I've been mostly pleased with this farrier; neither of the girls lose their shoes, almost at all (and if they do, it's not because of over-reaching; they each pulled off a shoe on the fence, on the same day!) This farrier is willing to talk to me about any concerns, to advise me on things that worry me about their hooves & even their legs, when I'm asking him something with which he's had experience. I like him and as far as I can tell he knows what he's doing...

I'm just suffering from the same thing everybody else does occasionally, I guess--somebody else's farrier does things differently, and someone criticized my horse, and I want to be reassured ;)

[Wally]

If the heels are contracting this will be a problem, they need to be encouraged to expand.

Rossi's heels on his left foot (I think) tend to want to contract, so we shoe him very proud and then bevel off to give his heels plenty of room to flex. His other foot is shod tighter.

[galadriel]

Originally posted by Wally
If the heels are contracting this will be a problem, they need to be encouraged to expand.

Since I really don't know what you mean here (sorry, you lost me), I took some pics of Katie's feet to see if it helps explain my worry, and helps advise me:
http://www.galadriel.shaftnet.org/hoof/

Please take a look :)

[virtuallyhorses]

you need a photo of the foot from underneath to tell if the heels are contracted although my first impression from these is that they aren't.

I've edited a few of them for you to see the angles that we normally look at when trimming and assessing hooves

The impression I get from both photos is that the pastern is very upright - I'd be interested to see her shoulder as, in theory, the angle of the pastern should match the angle of the shoulder.

I've marked this first photo to show you two sets of angles - in red is the HPA hoof pastern angle which is a little broken - the red lines should be on the same angle. It could be the angle of the photo that is making the HPA look broken but if you look directly from the side with her standing square you will be able to assess this yourself (and its something the farrier will always look for).

the blue lines are looking at whether the heels are underrun - the angles are almost identical (again check this as the photo angle could be deceptive) and this shows that the heels are 'good' with the hoof not being 'squashed' under at the heel

[virtuallyhorses]

gosh again this looks so upright - but I think this is an effect of the photography - I've just taken a look at one of my own photos and it also looks incredibly upright and I know that he has 'normal' TB pasterns.

The pastern is almost vertical again but even with this foot the HPA is still broken (although I think that the angle of the photo is definitely affecting this one a little)

[galadriel]

The 2nd on has a (scarily) huge amount of heel, and the 1st one has ...perhaps not a huge amount, but an acceptable amount considering where she came from. It's the difference that worries me. I take awful pics :) so the angle on the two is not quite the same--I apologize.

[galadriel]

Since you mentioned the shoulder...here's a decent recent pic which shows it. You are indeed correct. :)
http://www.galadriel.shaftnet.org/horses/kat-jan-2003/kat-right2.jpg

You wouldn't believe the choppiness of her gaits--unless she's REALLY carrying herself, which she's not very good at yet. Or unless she's galloping all out, which is almost flat. I'm not sure that she actually touches ground when she gallops. Still, despite the choppy, I do love her :)

[virtuallyhorses]

This is a closeup of one of my boy's feet - I was actually taking the photo for a mudfever article not hooves but anyway.... the photo makes him look very upright in the pasterns and I know he's not particularly so it must be something to do with the closeup photography ..? but you can see that the angle of the pastern and the angle of the hoof tubules are pretty close - although I've had to compensate a little with my line due to the angle I took this photo on

[galadriel]

So, for the sake of my academic curiosity, how does one go about correcting angles like the ones above? I would venture to guess that we're progressing along that direction, since they used to have no heels and their toes were at that awful 30 degree angle from the ground (you know the trim I'm talking about?) But what do you do? Sounds like the whole hoof itself needs to sort of point more down? (oh that's a terrible description)

[virtuallyhorses]

I've just taken a look at the photo of the two hooves - yes there is a difference but its not startling and if you take a look further up the leg, the conformation through the pasterns is also a little different. I don't think I'd be too concerned about this - I'd look at the difference in the length of the two hooves - but your farrier could be doing this quite deliberately to compensate for a conformational issue further up the leg.

I 'prefer' the left one as this is much closer to the HPA and a number of other 'ideals' but I'd be very reticent to second guess your farrier on what's going on with the other hoof.

[galadriel]

Okay. That's the sort of statement I was looking for: either "your farrier probably knows what he's doing" or "OH MY GOD fire that man NOW" ;)

Thanks very much :)

[virtuallyhorses]

Hooves are a work in progress :)

Gosh where to start - hmmn lets say the the 'ideal' hoof would suit your horse's conformation and that therefore we want to 'fix' that HPA, you'd want to take a look at how much of the hoof currently is in the toe and whether you can move the balance back toward the heel. - take a look at the underside and see how much of the hoof lies in front of the apex of the frog (there's a point called duckets dot but we wont go there just yet) and whether the frog sits nicely in the middle of the hoof or points off to one side or the other.

You can 'move' the balance of the hoof by progressively trimming the toes shorter. However you have to beware of putting too much pressure on the heels and causing them to start growing under the foot (underrun heels) so making these sorts of corrections are usually quite long processes and pragmatic 'balancing' acts of what the horse needs vs what the current hoof structure can stand etc

does that help? or am I rambling too fast now? :)

[virtuallyhorses]

Originally posted by galadriel
Okay. That's the sort of statement I was looking for: either "your farrier probably knows what he's doing" or "OH MY GOD fire that man NOW" ;)

Thanks very much :)

Oh sorry - getting carried away - a) "your farrier probably knows what he's doing" ;)

He looks like he's doing a pretty good job and if her hoof shape is changing then he sounds like he's got a plan in place and is progressively working toward giving her lovely feet that do what she needs them to do.

Wally might be able to comment on whether it looks like she's being shod a little short - I can't see the cannon but the heel of the shoe looks a little short of where it should be to support the heel correctly - but I could be out of line here as my main interest is barefoot trims.

[galadriel]

Carried away is no problem! I always like to learn more, and it helps if I have a direct "real-life" correlation to something I'm learning. It makes it so much more clear than just reading a book and viewing illustrations...

Thanks so much for all the time you spent looking at my horses' feet. I'd welcome any further comments too.

[Jane Williams]

If you don't want to put shoes on your horse, have a look at this site.

http://www.thehorseshoof.com/

I found it very informative.

[virtuallyhorses]

that's the Strasser site - I hope that you'll also read a wider variety of opinions rather than just taking this as the 'one and only truth' :)

[Dressage_Luvr]

um, i dont have anythign to say on this, i just found this pic--- and its really clear with how the angles should be, just thought you might like to see it!

[galadriel]

Just wanted to thank everyone again for their input. After their last shoeing, my girls' toes look even better (still coming under, slowly but surely) and this time Kat's right & left fores look a lot closer together. Farrier says after a few flawed parts grow out, they should be almost matching (he hopes). There are definitely several horizontal stretches on each hoof where the hoof has had issues and needs to grow out...looks like it may be only 1 or 2 more trimmings though :)

[Wally]

Went to shoe Hákon after his winter holls and on cleaning up his feet properly from the mud, came to the decision shoes can wait.

He brushed badly last year and cut his coronet, the resulting damaged horn is almost grown out, but as it was in a place where the hoof flexes the most it has opened up into quite a horrid looking hole in his hoof. He's sound and it will grow out soon, I just don't want to undermine the rest of his hoof by putting nails in yet.

But it just goes to show what a tiny cut in the wrong place can do to a hoof wall!

[virtuallyhorses]

Originally posted by Dressage_Luvr
um, i dont have anythign to say on this, i just found this pic--- and its really clear with how the angles should be, just thought you might like to see it!

.http://www.newrider.com/forum/attachment.php?s=&postid=153396

Umm don't want to be a spoilsport but the picture shows the classic mistake of using the angle of the 'skin' rather than the bone. In this case its pretty close but the line for the pastern angle should run through the centre of the pastern - if you run it down the front of the pastern the muscle and hair can mislead you and likewise with the back of the pastern... if you look at this photo see how the front line only touches at the toe and near the fetlock...