Today’s normal weekly trim has revealed the cause of Sonny’s
soreness. I think all feet are affected by some sort of ‘rot’. It doesn’t smell
& isn’t slimy or powdery. It’s just the horn collapsing much like the last 2
years when the problem was thought to be caused by pure bad mechanics of the
trim on my part applying incorrect pressures in many parts of the hooves.
Supposedly I have the trim mechanics under control now so
why is it happening again? Once the horn tubules begin to deteriorate, moisture
gets into the microscopic crevices & the ‘rot’ sets in.
I know the heels are still a bit high & forward but I am
taking them down each trim as much as his feet can tolerate since he gets so
sore after each trim. Often I will do the heels one day & a few days later I will do the toe & make sure it is all level right through. Today I counted the number of rasp swipes on each heel & repeated that number across the toe because there is a little concavity now & since the frogs were so thin I felt he shouldn't get sore from squished frogs from lowering the heels. There wasn't very much build up of height of the toe callous this time which was good. Soon there shouldn't be any toe callous building up by getting pushed forward of the coffin bone.
The next trim should involve rockering the toe again. I cycle around 3 versions of the trim as there is so much to fix. Rockering the toe removes the leverage applied by the long toe & brings the breakover back to where it should be. But by rasping away the retaining wall across the toe, it allows the sole to push forward from under the foot (cos the tubules are laying flat facing forward instead of standing up perpendicular to create a nice thick sole)& cover the bottom of the wall. That then means making the groove around the toe just behind the wall to stop the sole pushing the toe wall forward at ground level. So that is the next version of the trim & includes bevelling the toe wall to keep leverage to a minimum. The final part of the cycle is removing the excess toe wall that was revealed & grew during the week or so after cutting the sole back from the inner wall. Then each trim is divided into 2 parts, heel day & toe day a few days later to avoid soreness.
There has been a big improvement but of course much more to go yet, not to mention the recovery of internal parts which seems to be slower than I thought it might be.
The next trim should involve rockering the toe again. I cycle around 3 versions of the trim as there is so much to fix. Rockering the toe removes the leverage applied by the long toe & brings the breakover back to where it should be. But by rasping away the retaining wall across the toe, it allows the sole to push forward from under the foot (cos the tubules are laying flat facing forward instead of standing up perpendicular to create a nice thick sole)& cover the bottom of the wall. That then means making the groove around the toe just behind the wall to stop the sole pushing the toe wall forward at ground level. So that is the next version of the trim & includes bevelling the toe wall to keep leverage to a minimum. The final part of the cycle is removing the excess toe wall that was revealed & grew during the week or so after cutting the sole back from the inner wall. Then each trim is divided into 2 parts, heel day & toe day a few days later to avoid soreness.
There has been a big improvement but of course much more to go yet, not to mention the recovery of internal parts which seems to be slower than I thought it might be.
So here are some photos taken today after the trim. The LF
seemed to be the best of his feet this time. The RF has the bad rot in the heel
where I had to remove the whole heel as his weight was causing it to cave in
under the hoof. The bar is eaten away & there it is hollow under the seat
of corn. So I cut all of that heel away around to the quarter which had a crack
going right up to the coronet band that had only appeared in the last couple of
days.
The frog on this back foot just spurted blood when I tried to take a thin sliver of the side of the frog to remove a little tag of skin. The frog is really mushy although not hot. He is sore on that foot when walking. I can’t work out whether the frogs are eaten away from the continuous wet paddocks or what. There certainly isn’t any thrush in them cos there’s no smell or powdery stuff or moist slimy patches, etc. But it is normal for the frogs on all my horses to get like this all through the wet season & in a wet winter. Then in spring when the weather gets drier they fill out again. This winter is shaping up to be wet with a heap of rain coming tomorrow & staying for the next week. Just what the horse’s feet need. I do use Thrushbuster regularly on their feet but the problem is not always some sort of thrush.
After trimming Sonny I stood him on the board to take some of the photos, then told him he was finished & could get off & go about his grazing. But he wanted to stay there as can be seen by the look on his face in this shot. He stayed there for about 10mins til the other horses moved away!
I took medial & lateral profile shots of both fronts along with heel shots.
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