A basic part of horse hoof care is simply picking out the mud, manure, stones and other debris from the sole of your horse's hooves. Keeping your horse's hooves clean goes a long way to help prevent common hoof ailments. At times, your horse may get small stones lodged in the grooves of the frog, which can cause bruising. Picking out your horse's hooves also removes packed mud or snow, which can make it uncomfortable for your horse to walk. Keeping your horse's feet clean and dry as much as possible helps prevent thrush. Most of the moisture your horse's hooves need come from within the hoof itself and is provided by a healthy diet. Constant contact with wet conditions promotes rapid drying of the hooves and will cause them to start cracking and chipping.
Applying a hoof dressing can improve the moisture content of hooves and help prevent them from cracking. Rubbing hoof dressing on all parts of the hoof including the hoof wall, frog, heel and coronet can stimulate healthy new hoof growth. However, you should not apply hoof dressing too often as it may prevent the hooves from absorbing moisture naturally.
In the wild, a horse's feet wear down about the same rate as they grow. A domestic horse's hooves typically do not wear down as quickly since their hooves may be shod preventing them from wearing naturally, or simply because they are not subjected to such severe living conditions and consequently their feet grow faster than can be worn down.
The services of a reliable and experienced farrier are vital to helping keep your horse's hooves healthy. Your farrier can help you decide whether or not your horse needs to be shod. Horses that are ridden a lot or work on hard terrain may need horseshoes or boots to protect their hooves. If your horse's hooves wear too much, the protective outer covering starts to be lost and the foot can become sensitive causing lameness. Regardless if your horse is shod or not, his hooves will need regular trimming to keep them shaped properly.
Without regular trimming, a horse's hooves will grow too long and can lead to hoof splitting, chipping, cracking and lameness. Long hooves can put your horse's leg limbs out of balance. Shod horses especially need a farrier's attention on a regular basis due to hoof growth loosening the shoes and growing over the edge of the shoes.
Here you are hoof diseases and treatment
Brittle hoof
Symptoms of a brittle hoof
The horn is hard, and when cut by the farrier's tools gives the impression of being baked hard and stony, the natural polish of the external layer is wanting, and there is present, usually, a tendency to contracted heels. As a consequence, the shoes are easily cast, leading to splits in the direction of the horn fibers. These run dangerously near the sensitive structures, giving rise in many cases to lameness.
Causes of a brittle hoof
To a very great extent the condition is hereditary, and is observed frequently in animals of the short, 'cobby' type. In ponies bred in the Welsh and New Forest droves the condition is not uncommon, especially in the smaller animals.
Animals who have had their feet much in water — as, for instance, those bred and reared on marshy soils — and afterwards transferred to the constant dryness of stable bedding, are also particularly liable to this condition.
It is noticed, too, following the excessive use of unsuitable hoof-dressings, more especially in cases where coat after coat of the dressing is applied without occasionally removing the previous applications
Club-foot
Symptoms of club-foot
Even in its least pronounced form the condition is apparent at a glance, the alteration in the angle formed by the hoof with the ground striking the eye at once, and the heels, as compared with the toe, appearing much too high. When congenital, but little interference with the action is noticed. Such animals, by reason of their 'stiltiness,' are unfit for the saddle, but at ordinary work will perform their duties equally well with the animal of normal-shaped feet. The body-weight is transferred from the heels to the anterior parts of the foot, and the shoe shows undue signs of wear at the toe.
Causes of club-foot
Upright hoof is undoubtedly hereditary, and is even seen as a natural conformation in the feet of asses and mules. When hereditary in the horse, however, it is certainly a defect, and is associated commonly with an upright limb, and a short, upright pastern (see the picture on the right).
Ringed or ribbed hoof
Anything tending to an alternate increase and decrease in the secretion of horn from the Causes
coronet will bring it about.
Thus, in an animal at grass, with, according to the weather conditions, an alternate moistness and dryness of the pasture, with its consequent influence on the horn secretion, these rings nearly always appear.
The effects of repeated blisters to the coronet make themselves apparent in the same way, and testify to the efficacy of blisters in this region in any case where an increased growth of horn is deemed necessary. From this it is clear that the condition depends primarily upon the amount and condition of the blood supplied to the coronary cushion.
Thus, fluctuations in temperature during a long-continued fever, or the effects of alternate heat and cold, or of healthy exercise alternated with comparative idleness, will each rib the foot in much the same manner.
Treatment
The condition is so simple that we may almost regard it as normal. Consequently, treatment of any kind is superfluous.
Spongy hoof
Symptoms of spongy hoof
Spongy hoof is quite common in animals that have large, flat, and spreading feet — in fact, the two appear to run very much together. It is a common defect in animals reared in marshy districts, and of a heavy, lymphatic type.
The Lincolnshire Shire, for instance, has often feet of this description, and, the causative factors being in this case long-continued, render the feet extremely predisposed to canker.
The horn is distinctly soft to the knife, and has an appearance more or less greasy. Animals with spongy feet are unfit for long journeys on hard roads. When compelled to travel thus, the feet become hot and tender, and lameness results
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