Chris Hughes- Equine Podiatrist

29/03/2024

Not the best video as the horse was eating however a great technique I use to help see early signs before laminitis occurs. Keep an eye for those signs it’s saved hundreds of horses on my round from getting full blown laminitis. Remember prevention is better than cure and there is so many other symptoms however this is one of them which can come and go throughout the day. You will see symptoms like this before you see it in the hooves or crest ect. If you see this please put horse on soaked hay and reduce the amount you feed and control the turn out times. Message me if you are concerned and I’ll help you 🙂

28/03/2024

19/03/2024

Love my job ☺️💪😎 Nothing better than improving the balance and health so satisfying 🙂

22/02/2024

My lovely office for the day trimming. Staying nice and dry with dry feet and coffee all day. Lovely and chilled day.

09/02/2024

Beautiful barefoot hoof. Horse recently went barefoot with me 8 months ago. 17 years old warmblood shod all his life eventing I’m so chuffed how quickly he came on his barefoot journey already. He doesn’t have the easiest feet due to confirmation however he is getting there with self balancing due to corrective trimming. As you can see before and after trim not very much needed just little tweaks taking the toe back to correct HPA and slight lateral correction to level to same height and the medial and taking the lateral back in to reduce the hoof pushing over to the medial to prevent crushing the medial aspect. Great healthy frog deep soles just great and not long in. I love to see feet improve and do well barefoot. This horse is still in constant work.

Customers words “ It’s 18 months since I took him in as a complete right off and sever behaviour issues in previous home
I went barefoot to help with his physical and mental problems and he is a different horse”

31/12/2023

Happy new year to all my lovely loyal customers I've had the privilege to work with up to 10 years and new ones this year. Here's to an exciting year ahead doing what we love and do best working with our equines. Huge announcement to make January marks exactly 10 years of going solely on my barefoot journey and running my own business barefoot... That was a huge decision! What an amazing journey its been and without you all my barefoot journey wouldn't of been the same. Much love let's gooooo 2024 🥳🥳🥳

24/12/2023

Where credit is due a customer made me a hand made detailed hoof choc cookie very clever 🍪 😋 😊 Thank you to all customers with your lovely gifts you've all been so generous and kind means so much. Merry Christmas 🎅

22/12/2023

That's a wrap until Wednesday. Merry Christmas to everyone and a happy new year. Thank you to all my lovely friends and customers for such a good year. See you all soon 😊

05/12/2023

Let's play a game. Same horse which hoof has been barefoot for a while and how can you tell? New horse I'm working on.

02/12/2023

Before and after photo with a horse with negative planter angle of near hind hoof with medial imbalance. First trim and I'm happy with the outcome and you can clearly see an improved angle which is the correct HPA angle growing down which I trimmed to. I think another two or three trim max and this horse will be 100% correct hoof balance wise. Due to the feet in correct for several years this has caused back issues so I'm sure these feet will help the back specialist massively to improve this horse all round. Very satisfying.

12/09/2023

Heya all my lovely customers :) Just a quick post to say I'm away on holiday from 13th Sept to 20th Sept. I really appreciate all of you and I will be fresh and ready to carry on our return. Off to Greece Kos 🇬🇷 with family so going to be lovely family time. I think I've left fairly organised work wise however I will sort any bookings needed on my return in 7 days time :) It's extremely hard getting away being self employed and one man banned so I really appreciate everyone's help with this. I look forward to seeing you all again very soon. I'm still at the end of the phone if there's any queries on concerns and happy to help best I can. Much love Chris ❤️

24/08/2023

Massive well done to my customer Donna and her friend Amanda for achieving level 2 Trec pair champions 🏆 Donna has been barefoot with me for around 7 years now and always done extremely well in Trec. Goes to show you can do all terrains barefoot :)

20/08/2023

I intended to wait a year before uploading this new horse one of my customers has recently bought. Due to seeing severe hoof imbalance on video before customer purchased this horse I advised x rays to rule out anything more under lining like arthritis or navicular due to excessive strain due to imbalance.

I've only uploaded one hoof as all four hooves before and after and x rays would be to much for one post so I'll post each hoof over next few weeks. So this is the off hind as you can see on x rays and hoof there is excessive flare on the lateral aspect of the hoof. Caused due to confirmation of the horse which you can never remove but can correct with good remedial trimming.

However this needed to be addressed the hoof lands excessively hard on the medial aspect of the hoof allowing the lateral aspect of the hoof to grow more un balanced causing severe strain and excessive wear on the whole limb and horse joints ect and in time can lead to severe issues.

So you can see on the after trims I have levelled and balanced the hooves best I can in just one trim few days ago. You can see the natural confirmation is set and cant be changed but in just one trim im pleased i have managed to balance the hooves to remove the strain on the limb/ horse. Im happy with the progress i have achieved in one trim however this isnt 100% there yet. Id say 2 or 3 trims from now on a 4 week trimming cycle i will have the hooves where i want them and from there the hoof will start to recover and grow into the trim/ balance achieved and will self support with just management trims needed and ill start seeing thicker wall and no stretched white line.

I'm uploading these now as in a year from now the customer said she might re take x rays to show how much we have helped this horse so stay tuned for progress and also the other three hooves ill upload shortly and I'll also upload each trim of our hoof journey to show how barefoot helps :)

I always work without x rays for balancing usually however this is lovely to show proof of what goes on inside as I'm always explaining what we are doing to help not only the movement but also how much good trimming helps the whole horse and reduces further issues. Sorry for essay I've tried keeping it short.

23/07/2023

This horse became severely lame after being sick with other issues a few weeks beforehand. After a thorough examination with x-rays nothing could be seen abcess wise.

However, I had one last look as things were looking grim and I felt a soft area just in front of the frog. I double checked the x-rays for sole depth and there seemed to be plenty of sole left.

So I took a layer of sole away and boom!! clear fluid burst out which firstly I thought abcess which technically it was. However, after reflection, this was a severe gas pocket which had turned into an abcess formed from laminitis. Laminitis was brought on from the stress of colic etc from a month or so beforehand. So I had a few issues to treat this abcess which left a huge cavity and soft fresh sole underneath, the infection, plus laminitis which caused rotation which I then had to realign the hoof angle back to.

8 months on and all sorted. The abcess area has fully grown out and healed plus I've managed to get the hooves back to the correct angle. I'd say another 8 months and I'll have the hooves much tighter around the white line which is currently still stretched a little from the rotation, so still room for improvement.

This wouldn't have been possible without the team work from the owners and working closely with the vets. The horse was 90% more comfortable after I drained the abcess. However, it needed a poultice and boots for protection for a long time. After two months the hoof was weight bearing and fully sound without a boot. This achievement is huge as this was by far one of the greatest abcesses with a combination of issues. I'm really pleased with the outcome and the trust my customer gave me as I felt I could save this horse which we did.

The horse is now living out the best life and on a special diet. I wanted to share this as it really tested all my knowledge, one for finding the issues and then two, planning how to recover from all the issues. I've documented a few images with dates below :)

03/06/2023

Proper chuffed with my van signage done by Thank you 😊

06/05/2023

Here is the follow up from the post I posted on August 24th on this page I have screenshot the post so you can find to compare improvements my self and customer has made since. I'm very pleased with the progress of the hooves regarding HPA angles and hoof balance and quality. Regular hoof trimming every 6/7 weeks. Good balanced low sugar diet on sand turn out in the winter and field turn out during spring/ summer. Still many improvements I want to make regarding frogs and thicker walls but that will come in time as the hooves grow and manage barefoot.

12/04/2023

I'm pretty pleased with this horses feet 😊. This was before trimming today I had to admire the hoof first 😅

03/02/2023

Beautiful barefoot hoof 👌

02/01/2023

Good morning first horse of the year done 😊. What a beautiful first day back 😎

01/01/2023

Customers and friends feel free to try win :)

Let’s do a new years day give away.
•Like or follow this page.
•share and tag as many equine friends as possible.

Giving away a pot of wax and 500ml pot of balm to a randomly selected person who has done all the above. Free delivery to anywhere in the UK and £4.20 reduced delivery to abroad winner must pay the rest of the delivery! Have fun winner announced tonight at 11.30pm and will be announced via a post on this page!

our products are sold on our website www.parkersequine.co.uk

31/12/2022

Happy new year to all my friends and family. See you all soon let’s raise a glass or two or three….. tonight 🤣🥳🥂🍾 Really excited for 2023 let’s make some more memories to be thankful for ❤️

23/12/2022

That’s a wrap!! I would just like to wish all my customers who are also friends a very merry Christmas and happy new year. Thank you all so much for especially this year which was very hard being sick with covid for nearly 3 weeks in June sticking with me while I caught back up. I look forward to 2023 looking after your equines feet and watch you all enjoy them more and more. Many of you have been with me for years and I feel very honoured to have such a great barefoot community around me. Funny pictures below earlier this month when secret Elf came around 🤣🤣🥳🥳🎅🎅🌲🌲🐴🐴🤠🤠🥰

18/12/2022

📣📣Make the most of our super sale discount on our unique hoof care products. Use code fest12.5 to redeem your discount of 12.5%. Top tip saver if you select a bundle which gives you money off plus apply the code you can save even more money. Please visit www.parkersequine.co.uk to redeem code and to read about products.

24/08/2022

Some before and after photos of my first trim on this horse! I look forward to more trims with this horse to carry on correcting the angles to the correct HPA balance. Was lovely to have fresh feet to work with and I will keep the updates of more trims with this horse as I improve hoof balance and hoof quality!