Frog shedding 🐸
All totally normal - sometimes horses will shed large pieces or even what looks like their entire frog. It’s just a case of old tissue exfoliating away and often happens when it’s getting ready to go and then conditions change from wet to dry.
On this pony’s hind foot you can see the perfect new frog tissue underneath ready to take over. The owner left this for me, and I just helped it on its way.
Wishing all my clients and their horses a very merry Christmas and a happy new year 🎄🎄🎄
Thank you for your support and for being the reason I get to call this my job!
Here’s to another year of working together to help our horses ❤️🐴
And this, children, is why you don’t poke your fingers into the baby Mini Shetland’s pen 🤣🤣🥰🥰
It’s ok, I still have all my digits for trimming 😅
Sound up for the giggles 🤭
#barefoottrimming #barefoottrimmer
Maybe not massively exciting, but I thought this was a kinda useful visual.
The joys of clay soil - this is a bit of compacted clay my 12.2hh pony fired out of her hoof whilst trotting across the yard this morning. I thought it was interesting because it shows visually the concavity of the sole of her foot.
Videos and 2D pictures aren’t great for seeing depth so I will describe what it shows.
One the bottom side you can see it’s pretty much flat, but on the side where it has been packed in around her sole and frog you can see it has a gentle dome shape. Horse hooves have evolved to be this shape because it is advantageous - an arch is able to withstand more pressure than a flat structure (think bridges).
She doesn’t have any excess hoof wall - she was only trimmed last week and she moves a lot over a range of stone surfaces (as well as muddy ones 😞) so what this is representing is just the shape of her sole and collateral grooves either side of the frog.
Some horses will have more concavity than this, others less, and some it will develop over time through correct trimming methods, but I just thought this was an interesting little find 🐴
What’s in your bucket, Bluebell?
What we feed our horses can contribute in a positive way to their overall health (and in turn hoof health), or have a negative impact. It’s also important to make sure they get the minerals they need AND avoid things that aren’t good for them. Unfortunately, a lot of feeds and supplements don’t have enough of the good and also add in some of the bad. Marketing is an amazing thing and horse feed is a huge industry, so just because it says it’s healthy on the bag doesn’t mean it actually is 🧐 Shock horror, who’d have thought it was all about the money 😱🙄
I try to use what I’ve learned to make sensible decisions and to listen to people whose knowledge and experience I respect. This has meant at times I’ve to change my opinion and start doing something differently. I also tend to take an approach where if there is potential that a feedstuff can be harmful - maybe not everyone agrees it is, or perhaps it only affects certain horses - if there’s a suitable safe alternative, then I’ll play safe and go with that instead 🤷♀️
So this is what was in Bluebell’s bucket this morning if anyone is interested (I know I’m always interested in what other people are feeding 😂):
Thunderbrooks organic meadow nuts (soaked - about a coffee mug full)
Micronised linseed (150g approx)
Honeychop light and healthy (molasses and alfalfa free chaff - large handful)
Salt (10g per 100kg body weight)
Calm Healthy Horses UK premium MVA (vitamin and minerals with amino acids)
Calm Healthy Horses UK GrazeEzy (Magnesium supplement balanced with calcium to buffer imbalances in green grass)
Powdered Boswellia (at 65% boswellic acid to support the joints as she has an arthritis diagnosis)
🐴❤️
Certified hoofcare professional providing barefoot trimming across Cumbria, N.Yorkshire & N.Lancs
