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Hoof Care
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Do curso por University of Florida
Equinocultura: Gestão e Introdução aos Cuidados Básicos
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Basic Equine Physiology
This week will start out with covering some basic physiology. We will then advance into hoof anatomy and care. This will lead to spending a lecture discussing laminitis, a serious hoof condition in horses and other equids. The final two lectures will jump into the various coat colors and markings in horses.
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Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.Professor
Animal Sciences
Alright welcome back, and in this lecture we're going to talk about hoof care.
And again this is one that I decided to re-record from the first run.
Really when I initially did this I didn't intend to
teach people how to trim a horse's foot.
I just wanted to review it, because it's such a critical part of their health.
So I'm just gonna put this disclaimer up front,
that's not the intention of this lecture.
It's not to teach you how to properly trim a horse's foot, because really,
that should be done by a trained professional.
Or you yourself can go out and get trained on how to do this with your animal.
But if you do this improperly, you can injure them.
So, we don't want that, that's not the intention of this.
It's just to give you the information on maybe what a Ferrier, or
a trained professional is looking at, when they're trimming their feet.
So just keep that in mind as we go through this lecture.
Now, it's always good to review the anatomy because in
the previous lecture we're talking about the importance of that.
So here you can see the anatomy of the bottom of the hoof and
we're gonna can talk about some of this.
Now why do we need to trim a horse's hoof?
What's going on?
And really, we took these animals from the wild where they would be out naturally
wearing down their hoofs.
Their hoofs would be adjusting to the environment that they're in, and
they would get natural wear and tear.
But as soon as we put them in pastures, or stalls, or paddocks.
We've taken away that opportunity for them to wear down their hooves.
So, that's why we have to take care of their feet.
Now, this image on the right, you can see that is a severely neglected animal.
I only put this in here to show you how the hoof grows and
what happens if we don't take care of them.
So, a little shock value, I apologize.
But again, that's why it's so important and we really,
really need to take care of these animals.
Now in nature, if let's say, a zebra being chased here
by a lion has hoof problems, well they're gonna get picked off.
And, if you look at how nature works, if an animal has an injury or
an illness they're gonna get picked off by a predator.
Those genetics generally won't be passed on to the future.
So, horses that are in the wild, or are wild equids, tend to have strong feet.
They've kind of evolved that way.
Whereas, in domestication, we really haven't selected these animals too much,
especially in recent years to have strong feet.
That we really have selected them for performance or how they look,
stuff like that.
Now, again, just to reiterate why we need to take care of those feet.
If not, it can develop foot diseases things that we call lameness or
laminitis, which we're going to get in the next lecture.
So again, that's why we want to take care of them.
Now this is something everybody should do,
whether you know how to trim a hoof or not, or you're a farrier or not.
Everybody should inspect their animal's feet daily.
Especially when we get to the health lectures,
we'll talk about inspecting your animal daily to make they're healthy, and
everything's okay, and they don't have any wounds.
This is something you wanna do, you wanna pick up their feet daily, and
clean their feet daily, which in the next slide we talk about with the hoof pick.
So, anybody, and if you need someone to show you how to do this,
it's relatively simple.
To get a hoof pick.
You probably do need to know how to properly restrain a horse.
And then also how to pick their feet up safely,
so you definitely want somebody to show you how to do that.
But once you do and you know how to hold their feet, when you're picking their
feet you're always wanna start to heal and work towards the toe.
And the reason we do that is you don't want this hoof pick driving
into the soft tissue of the frog, which you've gotten in the previous lectures.
The frog has high moisture content, so you actually can injure them or
injure the frog.
So you always wanna start at the heel and work towards the toe.
And you just wanna clean that debris out to keep the hoof healthy.
Now, getting into hoof trimming.
Again, that disclaimer that you really only wanna do this If you're a trained
professional.
But you want your horse to get their feet trimmed about every six to eight weeks.
If you remember the previous lecture,
you know that the hoof's growing about half an inch a month.
So it grows relatively quickly, kind of like our fingernails or toenails.
So you want someone to come out and take care of their feet.
Now that's going to vary, obviously, on all those things we talked about,
environment and
how they're being used, but you definitely want them to come out and look.
Now I put this image in here.
This is again a neglected animal, but
just to show you that the toe does grow faster than the heel.
I mean, that's a really, really overgrown toe on that poor animal.
But just to kind of get that image burned in your mind that the toe
does grow faster with that.
And also on another note.
Again, with that frog, we want to be really careful around the frog.
Because it's that softer tissue so if you cut too much of the frog or
trim too much of the frog, it can injure them and lead to further problems.
So, anytime you're working with the frog you just want to be careful.
Now, when a professional is looking at your animal,
what they're gonna be looking at is hoof balance.
Okay, and we're gonna show you different angles of this and
how they may be looking at that animal's hoof.
So they wanna make sure that hoof is carrying that animal and
is distributing the weight evenly.
Okay, if not, then that can actually lead to not only foot lameness, but
other issues, too, with muscles and joints and stuff like that.
So you want to make sure their health really kinda starts to begins at the feet.
And we wanna make sure that it's properly balanced.
Okay, so to continue this hoof balance.
I found this from this wonderful website talking about
heel toe issues with confirmation.
So just to show you, this image on the left says it has a heel issue.
So what that means is we really got to kind of trim some of the heel
that would carry this foot a little bit forward.
Now this second image right here.
Has a toe issue so to bring that back in line you want to trim some of the toe and
that would bring it back there.
Because really what we want is them standing square on top of that hoof.
So again it would take a trained professional looking at your animal to
see that.
Now, also when they're trimming their feet they want to look at it from the side so
you can see here with these three images.
The first one on the left is called broken back so
we always like to look at the pastern, the angle of the pastern and the hoof.
So here's ideal.
It's almost a straight line.
And then here you can see the angle with the pastern and
that's called broken forward.
So what we need to do is trim either some of the toe or
the heel to bring that back in line.
Now, starting with the front one, we would want to trim off some of that toe and
that would actually rotate this back a little bit.
To bring it into the ideal position.
In the broken forward, we would trim off a little bit of the heel, and
that would drop the foot to bring it in line with the pastern angle.
But again, a trained professional, that's what they're looking for, and
that's probably what they're doing with it.
Now in this image, you can see a hoof that is improper or this is a neglected animal.
And then this is the proper shape of the hoof that we're looking for.
So I think this image kind of shows you what we're trying to get.
Now, if you came across an animal that was this overgrown,
you would not want to trim it to this.
Again, you want a farrier or professional to do this.
Because, especially an animal that has an overgrown hoof,
if you just all the sudden get it back into what it should like,
perfect, it could cause issues and some soreness, and some stuff like that.
So, again, a trained professional is somebody that could do that.
Now, just to give you a couple examples, again, I wanted to show you this one.
So, if you look at the pastern angle and then the hoof angle.
So if you ask yourself, would I need to remove some of the toe,
or would I need to remove some of the heel to bring that back in line?
So let's say we remove some of the heel.
What would that do?
Okay, so if we trimmed it down here,
what that would do is drop the hoof And we'll bring this angle up.
So that's not what we want to do,
what we'd actually want to do with this one is trim some of the toe, okay.
And that would drop the hoof a little bit and
that would get more in angle with the pastern, okay.
Now with this one, I also included a couple of images.
So here is your file, which generally, is like a nail file, so it's generally
safer to use, especially if you're learning how to do this in the beginning.
You do have to be careful.
First, it will cut you, they are sharp.
I've cut my hands on them by grabbing them wrong before.
And also you can take a lot of hoof off rather quickly,
so you want to use the finer side and work slowly.
Especially if you're a novice and
you're trying to learn how to do this under trained eyes.
The next is the nippers which, again, you have to be extremely cautious using.
This can take off a lot of hoof fast, so again,
you don't want to use this unless you're really trained.
And then, this hoof knife.
And they actually have for righties and lefties, they make different hoof knives.
And that's actually to help with the sole and some other things.
So if you look at this image of this hoof,
here, obviously we've got some overgrown parts.
The frog's pretty overgrown a little bit here.
And you can see the, just the overall shape of the hoof isn't too bad,
but that hoof definitely has some areas where it needs to be trimmed.
And this is probably something if you waited eight weeks you would see, and
say okay, I need to look at that.
There's some areas that sticking out.
I need to trim here or there.
But again, it can be a whole course on hoof trimming just to get you almost
ready to be able to pick up a hoof and start to trim it properly so there's that.
Now the last part of this is shoeing and we had some interesting discussions when
I've talked about this in the previous version of the course here.
And different attitudes and
I've looked at some research, there's some interesting research coming out.
I think it was out of Michigan State talking about how hooves are stronger
if their barefoot and left alone over time.
There is some research starting to emerge that leaving horses barefoot can actually
be better for them.
But again since we use these animals in all different types of situations,
that doesn't necessarily mean we would never want to shoe them.
And shoeing is really often necessary to protect the animal.
So you know what are some of the things that shoeing does?
It helps reduce wear on the feet.
And from my own experience on a research project I had some mares exercising
in kind of a sandy free flow exerciser and
their hooves were really getting worn down.
And we had to put shoes on them to protect their feet.
Because I didn't want to harm them obviously.
So that was one area where if you notice the use of the animal and they're really
starting to get thin hooves and low, you definitely want to put shoes on them.
Now for some of these animals that are actually ridden on asphalt or concrete for
their work, like police horses, often times they're gonna need shoes.
It's gonna help traction,
there's also rubber shoes that help cushion these animals a little bit.
And then obviously, anytime a trained professional or a farrier says,
hey we need some corrective shoeing to help your animal or
a veterinarian recommends that.obviously you're gonna need to put shoes on them.
So sometimes we do need it and it's really just up to your individual situation.
So, again, based on your chosen activity and
I would say if your animal's kept in pasture and that's their life.
They're not really being ridden all that much or they're not out on hard surfaces,
stuff like that, will you need shoes, probably not.
You're not gonna need them out there.
But you still need to check your animal's feet.
They still need to be cleaned daily.
And they still need their hooves trimmed, so don't forget that.
Just because they're out on pasture doesn't mean you forget about them,
you have to really take care of them.
Now if you're out competing, out riding a lot, yeah, most likely yes.
Cuz again, like I said in my own personal experience, these animals constant wear on
their feet going over hard surfaces, they're getting that wear and tear.
So shoes will help protect them, but
best advice, like always, is talk to a professional.
Talk to your farrier.
Have them look at your animal.
Talk to them about what you're doing and they'll give you the best advice.
All right, so that's it.
So what's next?
Next is obviously not a very fun topic but very, very important.
And that's laminitis.
So see you then.
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