10/31/2020
Foals should be out and moving, right from the start.
What we are going to post about here is Revolutionary.
Maybe some of you have already heard this...but we just had this knowledge imparted to us recently.
When we learn better, then we do better...at least that is the hope. We certainly will change what we do from here on out.
Some of us have taken it upon themselves to learn more about hooves and the healthy keeping of them.
It is just so hard to find a knowledgeable farrier who improves the hooves on a horse.
Sometimes the best we can do is to find one who doesn't make things worse.
(and we aren't interested in debating shoes versus no shoes-just plain old information sharing here)
Some breeds in our rescue are especially hard to keep comfortable, and we always wonder why is that?
There are people out there who study horse hooves and how our husbandry practices affect them. . . How to help laminitis and navicular, and keep abcesses from forming.
In reading publications by one fella well known for this, we stumbled upon the following information, and we felt it was possibly an AH HA! moment that we have been searching for.
It is commonly thought that we are genetically breeding our horses into worse and worse feet, but what we are about to share may totally blow this theory out of the water.
Foals born in the wild must be ready and able to keep up with a herd moving 20 miles or so per day. Their hooves are hard wired to do this, and the foal hoof grows rapidly to keep up with the wear and tear of the nomadic lifestyle.
Foals born into domesticity have the same rapidly growing hooves, but not the ability to roam 20 miles per day. In fact, people (believing foals are delicate creatures) often keep them stalled until they are a bit older.
We are coming to find out that our foal keeping practices are setting the horse up to have crappy feet for the rest of its life.
Foals Need movement.
A lot of people know this already. But the following is where we at HOP have failed. They Also need to have their hooves competently maintained from the very beginning. In other words, a farrier must keep up with the rapid growth of the baby hoof, and keep it in shape.
This is the key thing to remember and it is truly revolutionary....
"While in a horse's later years, the coffin bone shapes the hoof, in a horse's earlier years the hoof shapes the coffin bone."
Oh my gosh!
So if a baby horse's hoof is not kept in shape, the coffin bone will actually begin to distort. And after about the age of 3.5, the distortion is permanent. A horse's hooves continue to widen until about the age of 5 by the way. So the sturdiest hooves are the ones that are allowed to grow, and have good trims and no shoes until the age of 5. (And are exposed to a very diverse terrain)
Therefore in racehorses, who stay out in the field at some farms not being trimmed until they are yearlings, and then many times having shoes put on at 18 months or sometimes earlier... you can see how this may lead to hooves being difficult later! Whatever shape that coffin bone has come to be as the foal grew, a shoe is slapped on it that holds it in that shape, and by 3.5 it is permanently set to an unnatural state of being.
So here is what Pete Ramey along with 2 other hoof experts have to say...
"Foals are born with perfect, tiny hooves. If they are given living conditions similar to what a wild horse has, their feet and legs will develop with no problems. But most foals in captivity live in conditions quite different from what their feet actually need.
It appears that the first hour of a foal's life is critical to hoof health. In the wild, the mare moves the foal quickly away from the place of birth, because predators are attracted to the afterbirth and of course to the foal as well. So the soft foal feet, consisting mostly of raggedy frog tissue with a lot of proprioceptive (tells the brain about limb position) nerve endings, get about an hour of movement on hard ground before the foal ever nurses. Gene Ovnicek believes that this hour of movement is a "window of opportunity" which gets the hoof started towards a lifetime of correct shape and function.
In order to develop healthy hooves, foals should not be on soft bedding at all. Instead, from "day one" they should get 10+ miles (15+ km.) of daily movement on hard, uneven ground (not pavement). They should follow along with their mother, who should also be going 10+ miles per day for her own health and hoof care. You can arrange that they move a lot in their 24-hour turnout -- see Jaime Jackson's book Paddock Paradise. If a "track layout" is not possible, riding the mare and ponying the foal is another possibility.
Foal hooves are nearly cylindrical at birth. It takes a lot of concussion on hard ground (which horses are designed for) to spread the hooves out into the shock-absorbing cone shape of the adult horse. In soft footing, and especially in bedding, the feet just sink in without flexing. Some foals soon develop a very contracted foot where the base is actually smaller than the coronet -- the walls are "inside the vertical." This is extremely difficult to rehabilitate.
Wild foals run with the herd on hard and often rocky ground. Wild horses move 20 miles (30 km.) or more every day, just getting food and water. Foals are "precocious" young, which means they are born able to keep up with the herd (different from other animals' young which must be carried by adults or hidden from predators).
Bone alignment in the leg depends on having sufficient movement on firm terrain. The pasterns are nearly upright at birth. They need lots of movement so that the pastern bones align into the harmonic curve which gives shock absorption in the leg.
The ligaments and tendons in the legs, as well as in the upper body, can only become as strong as the work they do every day. The toughest ligaments and tendons come from plenty of daily movement on hard or rocky ground. A horse raised this way will be able to handle the athletic demands of an equine sport without breaking down.
Dr. Strasser and Gene Ovnicek both note that the "problem" legs that some foals are born with, generally align themselves correctly within 2 weeks, without veterinary intervention, if the foal gets sufficient movement and is not kept on soft footing. A foal at my friend's farm gained good alignment and leg strength in this way within about a week.
A horse's feet continue to get wider until the horse has reached its full adult weight, at about age 5. The hoof gets broader as the horse gets heavier. The coffin bone reaches its adult size and shape at age 5.
When a young horse is shod, generally at age 3 (or earlier in some cases) when training begins, it restricts the growth of the feet. The coffin bone is no longer able to grow into its correct shape, because the "wall of nails" around the edge of the shoe interferes with further widening. Shoes also begin to contract the heels. The coffin bone grows in a narrowed shape, and the heels curve in towards the frog.
I hope that people raising young horses will decide not to shoe them. The horse that stays barefoot will be more confident because, as it learns to do its job, it is able to feel the ground and know where its legs are. A horse raised barefoot is graceful. Its movement is glorious to behold. I believe that once we begin to see some adult horses, raised barefoot, we will realize what we've been missing in our athlete friends."
http://www.barefoothorse.com/barefoot_MoreTopics.html
So while we believe that genetics may play some role in the modern day hoof woes, truly, like so many other things about horse issues that are directly our husbandry practices, allowing and helping the hoof to shape itself early on will likely result in a much better foundation for the horse to function on.
For more in depth reading about the very fascinating information that these 3 have put together, please click on the link above.
(Of course we recognize that inappropriate feed, poor farrier care, lack of adequate minerals and some genetics factor in also but we can avoid majorly contributing to the other issues with this knowledge)
