Southern Hoof Care

16/01/2025

Support crew on hand today for trims. So lovely to catch up again with these little cuties

04/12/2024

02/12/2024

Up close and personal with laminitic damage. You can see clearly the dermal or internal lamina finger like structures are a disorganised mess.
When a laminitic event occurs, the dermal and epidermal or internal and external lamina fingers pull away from each causing the damage you see here. It would be like you finger nail being pulled from the skin but worse. OUCH!

*note the damage you see in the photo is historical, this laminitic evened happened several months ago and has grown down since it occurred.

29/11/2024

24/11/2024

Barefoot tough

21/11/2024

https://www.facebook.com/share/15DTwhtyBM/?mibextid=WC7FNe

04/11/2024

Plenty around this year… food for thought
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/SsZKxy2ivELdhPmJ/?mibextid=WC7FNe

09/09/2024

Great advice from The Equid Apothecary

🌻 🌱 Spring is probably the trickiest season for maintaining sound healthy hooves! The fickle weather, the luscious green grass..

Here’s our checklist to help keep those hooves on the straight and narrow. Catch changes early by knowing what is normal for your horse. 🐴

15/06/2024

I’m back baby!

Hi all, just wanted to let you know that after much rest, sourdough making and Netflix’s, I’m coming back into trimming. My leg/ankle is healing well and I’m eager to get back to it! I’ve missed my clients and horses too much!
Send me a message or call to book.

24/04/2024

Please please please guys, message Jess for tickets

🌟 🌟 RAFFLE FOR SARAH 🌟 🌟
ticket sales now closed

Many of you may have already heard that one of our Tassie hoof trimmers was seriously injured recently when she was kicked in the face whilst working.

That person was our truly beautiful, Sarah Adrych. If you’ve ever met or worked with Sarah you will know how deeply passionate she is about helping horses and how much effort she goes to for her clients.

Sarah has sustained serious facial injuries including multiple fractures. Last week she underwent urgent reconstructive surgery where titanium mesh, plates and screws were used to reconstruct the fractured bones. So far Sarah’s journey has not been without complications with multiple return visits to emergency.

Her injuries are disfiguring and are effecting her vision. Sarah will require further reconstructive surgeries in the future.

As a fellow equine professional, my heart goes out to Sarah so deeply. We give this work our all and every day we take risks working with horses. But we do it anyway because we want to help.

I know Sarah has already been humbled to see the community rally in donating some AMAZING prizes (there are more coming too!). Please show her your support and go nuts with tickets!!

We can't take away the accident but we can assist in a small way by taking some financial pressure off for a little while.

And a little word from Sarah: "I hope my story can act as a reminder to please be safe around horses". ❤

Tickets $5 each or 3 for $10, please message me to purchase 🙂
Will be drawn Wednesday 15/5/2024

17/04/2024

DROUGHT FEEDING...IN WINTER.

Extra grain and extra rugging are not the answer.

Tasmania is in the grips of a drought induced hay shortage and I’m starting to see a bit of panic set in. Fear not, we will get through this but there are some very important considerations for SAFELY feeding horses if the usual hay supply is not available.

ROUGHAGE: Your horse needs to receive the majority of its energy requirements from roughage. A minimum of 1% of their bodyweight is required, this is a bare minimum and 2% is much more realistic for most horses. For a 500kg horse 1% is 5kg. If hay intake must be rationed and ad lib is not possible, then a slow feed hay system should be used to slow consumption so that the horse has a constant fibre trickle to keep the gastrointestinal tract comfortable and functioning. A horse gorging 5kg of hay in 2 hours then standing around for the remaining 22 hours, is not a happy camper emotionally nor physically.

FIBRE: If you are unable to make up all of your horses roughage and/or energy requirements with hay this can be achieved with high fibre hard feeds. These include beet pulp, soy hulls, lupin hulls and chaffs. Diversity is good, so you may opt to include more than one fibre source. There are many commercial ‘fibre’ feeds on the market that are likely to include a combination of the above ingredients. Most horses do not require grain or grain by-products for body score maintenance, always reach for the fibre first. Particularly where roughage may fall short.

FEED SIZES: When hay is precious it can be tempting to fill bellies with big hard feed rations. But, whooaaa back Sally….Feed sizes must be appropriate. Horses are not designed to devour a large meal, 20L buckets filled to the brim are NOT safe nor suitable for horses stomach capacities. Within the ballpark of 5 litre volume is much more appropriate. Both for comfort and gastrointestinal function. 2-3 feeds daily may be required. If your horse is receiving one gigantic feed daily, they are not able to function optimally and therefore not able to absorb the optimal nutritional content of the ration. One more time for the people at the back, large hard feeds are not safe nor effective.

Consideration 5: If your horse is grazing on dirt, scarce pasture or sand, it is a good idea to consider a routine cleanse to assist any undesirable sand debris in being excreted. Psyllium husk is very useful, however, do check in with your vet or nutritionist prior to supplementation.

Tip: If you are only able to source poor quality hays and palatability is an issue spraying the hay with dilute molasses in water can be very useful for fussy ponies.

Droughts are hard, and hay shortages can feel scary, but we have been through it before and we’ll get through it again. Your horse is much more likely to breeze through if their requirements are met. If you are concerned about your plan for feeding this winter or worried about your horses health and wellbeing then I highly recommend reaching out to an equine nutritionist in your area to have the diet balanced and analysed.

image: stock image

17/04/2024

Hello all!

Just wanted to put it out there that I will be out of action for the next 12 weeks.
Silly me broke my ankle Monday morning, requiring surgery. And it wasn’t even horsey related!
I’ve started to make contact with clients and their appointments. Luckily for me I’ve got some awesome trimmers that are going to help me out while I recover.
Bear with me though while I slowly make my way through my list of clients contacting you all individually with details.
I’m still managing pain and post surgery life but will endeavour to contact you all.

Thanks
Brydie

02/04/2024

22/10/2023

Kissing spine (overriding dorsal spinous processes).

I really wanted to share this case with you from this week.
The horse presented with a reluctance to canter under saddle and was continuously going disunited behind on the lunge and when ridden.

Back x-rays had been carried out two years previous to this and the previous vets weren’t too concerned - they were close, but many horses processes are.

However, fast forward to today, and the radiographs show a much more advanced picture. There is sclerosis (whitening) and lucency (black areas), where the bones have been rubbing away on each other. Although I often say that there are many horses working just fine with some evidence of kissing spine, this horse was clearly unhappy and most likely
has sacroiliac pain as a consequence of this degeneration. We injected local anaesthetic around these processes to see how relevant the back was to his comfort levels. Although he still had a tendency to go disunited, he seemed much happier to move forward in the canter, with more movement in his back and no more pain grunting.

I have imaged hundreds of backs, with many close processes, but how often do we re-x-ray further down the line to see if and how quickly the disease process has progressed?

From this case, I strongly recommend that if any horses have been diagnosed with ‘close’, but not necessarily ‘active’ kissing spine, then we should always keep a very close eye on it in the future.

Thank you so much to this owner for allowing us to share and I will keep you updated on how this sweet boy gets on ❤️💕❤️