Hoof Balancing & Horsemanship: Stacia Langille, Farrier

12/11/2023

Well, time to make an official announcement.

TLDR: not shoeing for the foreseeable future, trimming services to continue as normal!

My work truck was rear-ended on on November 28th. Fortunately, both my daughter and I are okay. Unfortunately, my truck is not drivable, the insurance company won’t total it, and it will be a minimum of 2-4 months before it will be repaired.

This has been an infuriating loss, and given the current used vehicle market and the demands of motherhood/homeschooling/grad school, I’m not able to to financially justify replacing my work truck with something that can hold up to carrying my shoeing body over the long term.

I’ve always said that my trimming business supported my shoeing hobby, and I’ve had to make the difficult decision to sell my shoeing body and buy a lighter duty truck. I will be continuing to offer trimming services, but will not be able to offer shoeing services for the foreseeable future.

There are too many variables right now, and I do not know if I will outfit this new lighter duty truck as a shoeing rig in the future or not. I’ll be keeping all of my tools as I’m still shoeing at my barn, and when I graduate from my MA program in April, I’m going to take a minute to catch my breath and decide what makes sense! I will be continuing to offer trimming services for as many decades as possible.

(And, after almost 3 years of not being able to accept new clients… maybe I will be able to open my books again in May 2024!)

03/17/2023

"Perfect is too short." - James Welz
If you nitpick a hoof to death, or keep trying to make it look "picture perfect", you will most likely end up over-trimming. Be satisfied with leaving small irregularities. This is the real world, not fantasy hoof world. Even healthy wild horse hooves are asymmetrical. Your goal is to normalize the shape of that hoof as much as possible, each trim. This doesn't usually mean making radical changes; small consistent work towards that round, short-toed form will reap positive results in time.
Happy Hooves! - Yvonne Welz

01/05/2023

2022 1st cut, pickup only at our farm in Boscawen NH. 40-44lb bales, $10/bale. Tests safe per ECIR standards, so there is no need to soak for your metabolic horse!

I can also resell our custom blended minerals, $1.50/cup, one cup balances 20 lbs of hay. Includes flax, salt, lysine, selenium, magnesium, and minerals to test result specs (copper, zinc, manganese, and phosphorus for this batch). Just top dress on a carrier and add Vitamin E, and your diet balancing is complete!

08/09/2022

Marketing of horse feed can be incredibly misleading, or even downright dangerous, especially when it comes to laminitic or metabolic horses.

If you have a horse with hoof issues - this one's for you!

I have learned to never believe any marketing tag lines on a feed until I read the labels. I see so many brands that boast "Low NSC!!" or "Low starch levels!," when the actual label breakdown shows the feed would cause a sensitive horse to relapse into laminitis. It can be infuriating!

But how can a feed with what seems to be a lower NSC % cause issues, you may ask?

The two main components in feed that affect insulin levels in horses are starch and ESC (sugar). Between those two, ESC converts about 50% to glucose in the body, while starch converts 100% to glucose in the body. That makes starch a much more significant player when it comes to hoof issues and metabolic control.
Through over 2 decades of field study with the ECIR group, Dr. Kellon and other ECIR members have found that feed should be less than 4% starch and less than 10% ESC+starch combined for metabolic horses to maintain comfort and help manage proper insulin levels.

So a label could boast "10% NSC!" which certainly sounds low to the average consumer, and yet the starch alone in that could be 8%, making it unsuitable for horses struggling with hoof issues.

I can't tell you how many times I've had owners say "but it's a low starch feed!," only to read the label and see that the starch levels are just too high for their horse. This can affect hoof comfort and sensitivity, laminae connection, ability to grow healthy wall and sole depth, and make or break hoof rehab in laminitic cases.

Have you read your labels lately?

To learn more, visit ecirhorse.org

04/15/2022

Foals thrive on the nutritionally rich spring grass, but adult horses with Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS) may develop pasture laminitis because sugars are high at this time. Clover and alfalfa in pastures are also dangerous to EMS animals as both sugar and starch can be high.

Multiple studies have documented that approximately 90% of laminitis cases are caused by elevated insulin and insulin elevations are the only predictor of which horses will develop laminitis. Thoroughbreds, Standardbreds, Warmbloods, Quarterhorses and purebred Drafts are at low risk of EMS but may develop elevated insulin if they have PPID, aka Cushing’s Disease. Pregnant mares of any breed also become insulin resistant in the last half of pregnancy. Examples of breeds at high risk of EMS include ponies, minis, donkeys, Arabians, Morgans, Haflingers, Icelandics and Paso Finos.

Insulin blood tests will identify most horses at risk of pasture laminitis. If the horse has high insulin there is really no safe way to allow grazing these high-risk spring pastures, as it has been shown that horses given limited grazing time will eat as much as 3 times faster to make up for it.

Many people are understandably resistant to the idea of keeping their at-risk horses off pasture, but you have to ask yourself what would you rather have — grass access or laminitis and the smoldering damage it causes. The good news about EMS is that exercise is the best way to control it, so saddle up and you will probably be able to treat your Metabolic Syndrome horse to some grass after work!

As always, contact your veterinarian for more information and for any questions specific to your horse’s situation. To read more about spring grass, see: https://wp.me/p2WBdh-op . For detailed information on Equine Metabolic Syndrome and its diagnosis, visit: www.ecirhorse.org.

Thank you Dr. Eleanor Kellon Vmd for sharing these important facts about spring grass and horses affected by EMS!

01/08/2022

What a year! So many incredibly talented colleagues have been struggling with illness and injury lately. My heart goes out, and I want to help. We have an incredibly strong and supportive professional community here in New Hampshire, and I have been fortunate to both help cover for others and have help when I needed it over the course of my career. Although there is currently a great need, I'm sorry to say that unfortunately, I am not able to take on additional clients until at least October of 2022, as we are commencing a large construction project and I need to ensure I don't overcommit. I am incredibly grateful for all of the inquiries and referrals, and if I hear from anyone, I'll do my best to continue connecting folks with other area colleagues. I hope for us all, that we find the resources we need to be well 💕

12/22/2021

Well said, Alicia!

I know many of us horse owners and hoofcare providers have seen the conversations about iron in a horse's diet, and the potential effect on hooves. Before we get too into the nitty gritty of diet and the hoof, I want to back up and look at a horse’s needs, based on the NRC Requirements. Hooves are so often a reflection of the health of the animal, and to make sure a horse can grow the healthiest hoof possible, we need to make sure they are meeting all their nutrient and mineral requirements. Thank you to Dr. Gustafson for helping me understand this a bit better myself!

MINERALS IN FORAGE- are they sufficient?
From Dr. Gustafson’s database of hay testing, she found that out of 250+ samples of forages tested, 97.8% were deficient in zinc, 95.2% were deficient in copper, 12% were deficient in manganese, and 0% were deficient in iron. That means that just from hay, a horse could consume the daily requirement for iron, or sometimes far exceed it. On the other hand, horses rarely if ever meet their requirements for copper and zinc from their forage. That alone is a problem - one that grains and feeds rarely correct well, since so many horses can't handle or aren't fed the recommended daily amount of grains, often due to lower calorie needs or hoof issues preventing owners from feeding grains with sugar and starch above 10% combined. So horses are often walking around with frank deficiencies of minor minerals- copper and zinc to be exact.
But, many feed companies make a ration balancer to handle the caloric issue and they have a much more concentrated nutrients at a much lower feeding rate, you say! Sounds great, right? But here’s the catch: they often add iron, and sometimes a lot of it. We will talk about the issue with this in a second.

IRON AFFECTING COPPER AND ZINC ABSORPTION
On top of the fact that horses are walking around with copper and zinc deficiencies, the frank deficiency is worsened with a relative deficiency from iron - since we know that iron inhibits the uptake of copper and zinc. Dr. Piper Klemm has studied iron chelation extensively for her dissertation, and actually chatted with me on her podcast about why excess iron inhibits the uptake of copper and zinc in the body, and the horse has no natural way to chelate iron (other than bloodletting). Iron competes with copper and zinc absorption in the body, and copper and zinc are needed for healthy hooves.

BUT IS IRON REALLY ABSORBED?
Now, there are some groups that tend to say that iron isn't absorbed well or isn't bioavailable in various forms. While this would be wonderful- it just doesn't seem to work out well in practice. Aside from the fact that many hoofcare providers can show bloodwork on personal or client horses with high serum iron, TIBC, and ferritin, and have horses with diagnosed iron overload, article after article online shows how horses rarely if ever have an iron deficiency (in fact, iron deficiency anemia is almost unheard of in horses). So they are clearly getting their dietary iron from somewhere. One study linked below shows 22 equines on a property with high iron in the water, and each horse was found to have excessive iron stores and liver issues.

BUT ISN'T IRON REGULATED IN THE BODY?
Yes, hepcidin does regulate iron in the body, but unfortunately this can go awry if it is overwhelmed with excessive iron supply (Equine Applied and Clinical Nutrition, 2013). Couple that with the fact that horses with metabolic issues may also have problems with hepcidin and iron regulation, we can assume that not all horses are regulating iron properly.

DOES IRON CAUSE METABOLIC ISSUES?
In short- we can't claim that. And no one is trying to claim that. Let me explain.
Dr. Kellon and Dr. Gustafson published a study last year of hyperinsulinemia and hyperferritinemia in horses. They found that every single horse in their study, all hyperinsulemic horses, had serum ferritin that exceeded the reference range. They did NOT say that iron causes metabolic issues, or laminitis, though.
There is a CORRELATION between high iron and hyperinsulemic horses. I want to be clear that correlation does not mean causation so I’m not saying that high iron CAUSES metabolic issues, but it seems that metabolic horses may sequester iron, which can lead to a host of issues.
Another study in 2012 using horses (actually hoping to compare to rhinos) found the same correlation - high ferritin levels at peak insulin concentrations after dextrose administration. They even mention captive rhino diets are higher in iron, that the captive rhinos have more fat stores, and they are moving less. I’d say that is similar in domesticated horses compared to feral/wild. The issue here is hay is often high in iron, or at least not deficient in iron as Dr. Gustafson’s database mentioned, and some places also have high iron water, and then people will sometimes feed iron supplements or grain that has iron added. There is no "shortage" of iron in the equine diet. And we know that iron inhibits the uptake of copper and zinc, which is needed for healthy hooves.

SO WHAT CAN DO ABOUT THIS?
So what do we do for horses to ensure that they are getting all the minerals they need for a healthy hoof? Well, we know that feeding at least the NRC amounts of minerals is important for whole horse health and therefore hoof health, and often it can be a minefield, since feeding an excess of one mineral can affect absorption of another mineral. Dr. Kellon has a running field study (over 2 decades now) cataloguing owners practicing tight mineral balancing on metabolic horses, tracked on the ECIR online database of case histories. From there, we have seen that this mineral balancing over time, for example keeping an iron:copper:zinc:manganese ratio of 4:1:3:3, helps to balance for possible dietary iron excesses or at least meet mineral deficiencies, observed through hoof changes, bloodwork, and comfort over time. Many of us have seen a direct result of healthier feet, tighter white line, increased comfort, when doing this. I’m sure many of us could talk for hours about the improvements we have seen in feet when mineral balancing- anecdotally of course! And interestingly enough, there was a study in 1999 that even suggested that supplementing copper and zinc can help with the susceptibility to white line disease (Pollitt quoted this study in 2005).

Since the safe upper tolerable limits of copper and zinc are much higher than we would ever supplement, and since some hays almost hit the safe upper limits for iron, I'd say it's fairly cheap, easy, and safe to avoid added dietary iron and try testing hay (I use EquiAnalytical), and balancing copper and zinc in the diet. You just might be surprised at the results you see in the body, coat, and feet 😊

A few things to explore:

Iron issues in metabolic horses: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32042647/

The rhino study, using an equine model: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23156707/

Iron overload in horses: https://forageplustalk.co.uk/iron-overload-in-horses-by-dr-kellon/

Iron issues in water and liver issues:
https://beva.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/evj.13029

Balancing copper and zinc to iron: https://www.hoofrehab.com/Diet.html

Podcast episode where Piper Klemm and I discuss iron and copper and zinc here: https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2021/10/22/plaidcast-252-michael-tokaruk-alicia-harlov-by-taylor-harris-insurance-services/

Podcast episode with nutritionist Scott Cieslar discussing iron and mineral balancing here: https://madbarn.com/videos/mad-about-hooves-scott-cieslar-on-nutrition-for-hoof-health-the-humble-hoof/

Podcast episode with Sally Hugg here, for more basic information: https://thehumblehoof.com/2023/08/08/nutrition-and-the-hoof/

I also have a webinar which spends 40 min on nutrition and the hoof here: https://youtu.be/RUKjGgoKnyw

This webinar includes case studies/pictures.

11/23/2021

Hello Friends!

I want to put the word out regarding a stall coming available at the end of December. I am not in a rush to fill the stall, and an excellent fit is my top priority. Due to paddock space, we will have room for one gelding who would do well on a grass track, with turn-in at night in the winter.

I have received several inquiries this fall, and I believe I have emailed folks who might be a good match over this past weekend. If I have missed you, please message again!

The ideal gelding would be between 12 and 15 hands, have a temperament well-suited to therapeutic work, and be owned by someone interested in receiving a $15/session credit towards their board for use in therapy sessions. We host two types of programs here. First, and Occupational Therapy (OT) program that utilizes hippotherapy in the form of 30 minute hand-walking sessions, during which children engage in a variety of positions on horseback with the assistance of a sidewalker. Second is Equine Assisted Psychotherapy, which is ground-based and primarily at liberty.

As folks here know, I am tremendously supportive of these programs, and not just because they bring the joy of horses to our greater community. My personal horses benefit mentally and emotionally through undemanding time during EAP sessions, and from long slow miles in OT sessions.

Please contact me directly with any inquiries!

Sincerely,
Stacia Langille 603-731-3144
Ancora Imparo Equine Center
www.ancora-imparo-equine.com
Find Us On FaceBook!:
https://www.facebook.com/ancoraimparoequine/

Exceptional horse boarding. Therapy. Unapologetically ND affirming LGBTQ+ allied BIPOC inclusive.

08/22/2021

Ditto.

A handful of people have asked me lately about what diet I recommend for hoof health. I often post hoof progress photos with positive changes, which I attribute to the diet change the owner incorporated, and then the inquiries about diet come in.

Before I write this, I want to mention I'm not a nutritionist, nor do I have a degree in equine nutrition. I have taken multiple courses with Dr. Kellon on equine nutrition, as well as webinars with Carol Layton, and have all but memorized Pete Ramey's online article on "Feeding the Hoof." I have been an active member of the ECIR forum for 4+ years, and part of their approach troubleshoots nutrition changes for hoof comfort and healthy laminae connection, so it's been a regular part of my practice for a while.

And with that, my perspective comes from seeing horses with weak or unhealthy hooves grow stronger feet as the owner adjusts diet to give the body (and hooves) the nutrients it needs.

Whenever I come to a horse with hoof issues or discomfort, I seek to get them on a forage based, mineral balanced diet. What that means is that the majority (if not all) of the calories in the horse's diet comes from a forage source as much as is possible. For sensitive horses, I look for that forage, and all aspects of diet, to be less than 4% starch, and less than 10% ESC (ethanol soluble carbs/sugar) and starch combined.

While forage is great for a horse's source of calories and for their digestion system, unfortunately it is rarely enough by itself to meet all the daily mineral requirements. Hay is very often high in iron, and notoriously low in copper and zinc, which is needed for a healthy laminae connection and healthy hoof horn. Not to mention, iron itself competes with the uptake of copper and zinc, making these deficiencies feel even greater.

In an ideal world, owners would have a reliable enough source of hay where they can send a sample of the hay to be tested, check the sugar and starch levels, protein, ADF/NDF, major and minor mineral balance, and adjust their supplements accordingly for their horse's age, workload, and health needs.

Unfortunately, not all owners are able to get their hay tested, and in those cases I generally see how the horse does with proper amounts of hay, a forage-based "carrier" feed for their supplements, and a good balanced supplement with the 3 limiting amino acids (lysine, threonine, methionine), high levels of copper and zinc (hay from my area, for example, often needs at least 300mg copper and 900mg of zinc per day added to balance high iron for a full size horse), as well as additional vitamin E.

From there, each horse and even each environmental area can be different. Harder keepers might need more calories from a variety of "safe" sources, for example. There is no "one size fits all," but troubleshooting to meet the nutrient needs first and working from there is important.

If your horse is having hoof quality issues, the first port of call in my opinion is to check what you are feeding and how you can adjust it to ensure your horse is getting the nutrients it needs without excess sugars and starches. It can mean the difference between weak, shelly, chipping, sensitive feet, and strong, "rock crunching" hooves!

03/29/2021

A colleague who has given tremendously to our industry needs a hand while recovering with COVID pneumonia. Check out The Humble Hoof podcast, incredible free content. And donate!

Please Donate to The Humble Hoof As many of you know, Alicia Harlov of The Humble Hoof was hospitalized in March 2021 with COVID pneumonia. Her friends have started a fundraiser to help cover her l…

03/26/2021

We have a the very pleasant surprise of an extra trailer load of hay. Medium-course 2020 1st Cut.

It tests just over ECIR rec's for ESC+Starch =/< 10%, with ESC at 10.1% Starch at .4%. I'm very happy with this hay and don't need to sell it, however given the hay shortage, I want to make it available.

I have 300 bales I can sell, pickup only, $12 for a 40-45 lb bale. If you buy 100 or more bales, $10/bale. Please PM me to purchase. Cash or credit card (paid in advance via invoice) accepted.

01/28/2021

I have been trialing this product for a couple of months now, and I'm blown away by the improvement in frog health.

My favorite thing about it? Other than the fact that it works, it's easy to apply. I'll be adding this to my list of recommended products!

And they have referral codes, so that's cool!

http://hoofdoctor.refr.cc/stacial