Infinity Hoof Care

06/09/2022

Laminitis is way easier to prevent than treat. I know muzzles and dry lots are tough but it’s so much worse to see them in such intense pain.

LAMINITIS

Spring is upon us, and for some areas, that means an uptick in laminitis cases. Dr. Alicia Nolfi said in one of The Humble Hoof podcast episodes that we should assume hoof-based lameness is laminitis until proven otherwise. Why? Because treating lameness as laminitis doesn't hurt if it isn't laminitis, but if it IS, waiting and not doing anything can lead to further laminae damage, or worse or catastrophic rotation or distal descent.

So how can we identify laminitis and work to get the horse comfortable?

Laminitis in horses can have less-than-obvious symptoms:

🔴Moving more "gingerly" over harder surfaces, especially if they were previously comfortable on them. This is still concerning even if they seem to be moving perfectly fine on soft surfaces!
🔴Trotting instead of their usual canter in the paddock. Walking instead of their usual trotting. Seeming more "sluggish" than normal.
🔴Recurring abscesses
🔴Thin soles- possible symptom of weakened laminae connection causing poor suspension of P3 in the hoof capsule
🔴Heat in the hoof or increased digital pulses
🔴Moving more stiff throughout their body
🔴A "new" sensitivity or soreness after a conservative trim - damaged laminae can become suddenly more painful even with minute changes to the "status quo" the horse was using to compensate.
🔴In extreme cases, rocking back onto hind feet

I know I've said it many times before, but I never view hoof sensitivity, thin soles, abscesses etc as "normal" - to me this is a weak hoof that requires further investigation into diet and metabolic status. A horse with "chronically weak feet" may already be dealing with some chronic laminitic symptoms.

So what do you do if your horse is experiencing laminitis?
🔵Call your vet, and consider getting bloodwork for insulin and ACTH levels, as 90% of laminitis is endocrinopathic. Let your farrier know what is going on.
🔵Remove all access to grain and grass (even w**ds or "grazed down to nothing" paddocks - short grass is stressed grass and sugars can spike!)
🔵Implement the ECIR emergency diet to remove any dietary triggers to allow the horse to become more comfortable - see link below
🔵I prefer to utilize therapy boots like Easycare Cloud Boots with their therapeutic pad inside, to relieve weightbearing on the laminae and prevent distal descent. Many horses become significantly more comfortable immediately in therapy boots. Using boots for rehab allows frequent small changes to the trim to help realign the bony column and hoof capsule. Shorter trim cycles can mitigate the need for drastic trims that can be more painful for the horse.

Once the trigger is found and removed, the horse should become more comfortable. If the horse is still uncomfortable - keep investigating to find a possible trigger!

Please note, the other 10% of laminitis cases include SIRS (Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, think high fever, colitis, illness, retained placenta, ingestion of a toxic w**d, etc) and Supporting Limb Laminitis due to lack of perfusion in an overweighted limb in an acute injury case. These cases will not respond to diet change or metabolic bloodwork management. Winter laminitis is a subset of metabolic laminitis but also doesn't respond to diet change etc, as it is often due to AVA shunt damage in the hoof causing lack of proper circulation in the winter - it might be similar to the painful feeling that people with Raynaud's may experience in cold weather.

If your horse is experiencing acute laminitis, please join the ECIR forum online at ecirhorse.org - they are a volunteer non-profit group that has over 20 years of experience helping owners to troubleshoot management and recovery of laminitis, and getting horses back to soundness and even productive, happy lives.

06/04/2022

Made 9 donkeys a little happier with the donkey whisperer KT Barefoot Trimming ❤️

03/30/2022

Spring grass is here! Your horse will thank you later when they’re able to be out not on stall rest recovering from laminitis.

03/08/2022

Friendly reminder to make sure you have your muzzles ready! That spring grass is popping up quick!

01/13/2022

Mackinaw Dells 2 Whole Horse Learning Center An interactive, fun, and progressive learning experience for equine professionals and horse owners alike!

12/26/2021

Great post about diet needed for strong and healthy feet!

The very best hoof care can only go so far. We must properly feed our hooves if we want the best out of the horse and we must properly feed our horse if we want the best out of our hooves. Over the years I noticed that no shoeing or trim mechanics could grow healthy walls, laminae, soles or frogs on...

11/19/2021

11/11/2021

Watcha readin’?

09/26/2021

09/25/2021

Great week for glue. Loving this cool weather and Max was absolutely perfect for his Polyflex. ❤️

08/09/2021

Love this!

You asked, we delivered: A first-person account of the Swedish barefoot showjumpers' hoofcare by their farrier, on versatile options, like protective use of adhesive, minimalist shoes, and hoof boots. Read it here, thanks for sharing "the rest of the story":
https://hoofcare.blogspot.com/2021/08/olympic-hoof-explained-swedish-barefoot.html_0275753620.html

07/24/2021

Congratulations to William Gallagher for the win on Untapped Fire! She’s a spicy, opinionated mare, but man is she photogenic 😉

05/20/2021

Patience is hard but it takes a long time for feet to change.

We live in a world of instant gratification. If a website takes more than 2 seconds to load a picture, we think the WiFi is down. So I'm not surprised that this desire to have everything right away can shift to hooves.

When our horses are lame with a hoof related issue, many owners want something that will fix them right away. A pain med, an injection, a new shoeing package, a new farrier, a new vet. Anything that will take away the pain and allow them to continue life as usual, right?

But how often do we stop to think about the state their feet are in, and how long it took to get that way? Months, years? Maybe we can do something to allow them to become comfortable instantly, but are we getting to the root issue and addressing the health of the hoof itself? Are we allowing the hoof the time it needs to become healthy, the horse the time it needs to relearn proper biomechanics and proprioception, and the internal structures the time they need to strengthen?

Think about it this way. If you want to gain muscle and get stronger, do you expect one day at the gym will let you compete in a competition tomorrow? No! You can spend months working up slowly and strengthening different areas of your body, adjusting to aches and pains and noticing improvement as your muscles learn to handle more difficult tasks. The internal structures of the hoof take time to strengthen, too!

It can take 9 months to grow a healthy hoof capsule and internal structures, double that if the soft tissue has been damaged, and a myriad of factors influence this. Good mineral balancing, good diet, good movement, good environment, and good hoofcare, to name a few. We want the hoof to heal from the inside, out. Does this often delay our gratification and mean we have to patiently wait and watch for changes? Yes. Does this often mean the horse might need time off, or a change in diet, or a change in environment in order to get better results? Yes. But in turn, does this mean we often end up with a sounder horse that has strong feet for the long haul? Yes.

Distortion and pathology doesn't happen overnight, and 99% of the time can't be fixed overnight. If you're looking for the "quick fix," I encourage you to consider if that's the healthiest option, and the steps you might need to take to strengthen your horse's feet for long term soundness.

04/13/2021

04/13/2021

Great information about Hoof Armor! It’s an awesome product with a ton of benefits to keep horses at their best.

Intriguing Concept About HoofArmor and Hoof Pe*******on
Author David Jones
A current study has revealed a new concept for HoofArmor I hadn’t previously thought about. For a long time…years…I’ve been using my own pseudo-scientific testing to judge HoofArmor pe*******on. According to my previous tests, HoofArmor pe*****ted the thickness of a piece of paper but not the thickness of a piece of cardboard. Admittedly not very scientific, but the only material I had at hand. I also knew that cured HoofArmor is impermeable and we’ve seen results of how antimicrobial HoofArmor is. The updated news is that I had an independent lab do a real analysis on real hooves that showed me why what I’ve been doing for 20 years works better than I had hoped. It seems that you can apply HoofArmor and it will go where it’s needed.
The lab results were enlightening. This was a fresh hoof treated at room temp and treated exactly as it was a live foot. Deep frozen after 24 hours HoofArmor application, then sliced. It has to be frozen to slice. The photos showed that HoofArmor only pe*****ted the healthy hoof a very shallow amount, only enough for the coating to stick, but HoofArmor pe*****ted the compromised/infected/damaged hoof up to 2mm or 1/16th inch in this sample. See attached photo. Does this say that HoofArmor protects better where it’s needed most? There is still a thin flexible protective coating on healthy hoof that protects against wear and infections, but it creates a deeper penetrating coating inside where the hoof needs extra protection. It keeps healthy hoof from becoming compromised hoof and protects compromised hoof while it grows out.
Heathy hooves are pretty impermeable, meaning nothing pe*****tes. Not water nor air nor most chemicals. This was demonstrated by New Bolton Center at University of Penn veterinary college, and scientifically studied in a post I shared called “Does The Hoof Need To Breathe”. For convenience I’ll copy that study here:
http://www.thehorse.com/articles/13369/hoof-dressings-what-studies-show. This research was done by Susan Kempson, BSc, PhD, senior lecturer in Preclinical Veterinary Sciences in the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
“Using tracers (smaller molecules detectable with electron microscope) in water she found the outer layer of healthy hoof wall to be impermeable, meaning nothing could pe*****te, neither air nor water. The inner layer was permeable as was the entire poor-quality hoof wall. Dr. Kempson then looked at environmental influences. For two weeks, blocks of wall, sole, and frog were either left in the test solutions, heated to 98.6°F (37°C), chilled to 39.2°F (4°C), or left in water. Afterward, they were exposed to the water-soluble tracers.
"The results were surprising," Kempson says. "Heat, cold, and water had no effect on the permeability barrier. The sole and frog horn left in f***s for two weeks disintegrated, and poor-quality wall horn was also badly affected. Good-quality wall horn was only marginally changed. Urine alone had little effect, but combining urine and f***s had the same results as f***s alone.”
"My conclusion is that the horn has a built-in permeability barrier," she says. "As long as the horse has a well-balanced diet so that he can produce good-quality horn, leave the hoof horn to look after itself."
Dr, Kempson then applied hoof dressings containing “formalin” which is a dilute form of formaldehyde.
"Formalin causes the horn to lose its plasticity, and it becomes brittle and more liable to crack," she states. "With horn of poor quality, the formalin-based dressings pe*****ted deeper into the horn than in the good quality feet. This meant that the micro cracks caused by the formalin extended farther into the tissue and this let water and other materials pe*****te the horn. The damage caused by the formalin-based dressings was greatest in the sole."
“Poor-quality horn treated with formalin thus becomes more susceptible to infections and toxic agents, and therefore this chemical is best avoided.”
“The study also showed that hoof dressings containing solvents and tar-based components damaged poor-quality horn. In some cases, the intercellular lipids or fats were damaged, allowing water contained within the horn to evaporate, thus causing the horn to become dry and brittle. In very wet conditions, using these hoof dressings allows water into the horn, and the feet become very soft and weak.”
"When these products were applied to poor-quality horn, the damage was magnified, and I could not get results from some of the tissues because they had disintegrated in the test solutions," she notes. “Good-quality horn was affected in the same way, but it took longer for the effects to be seen.””
This study makes more sense now and the pe*******on lab tests tell me that HoofArmor is not only effective at protecting the entire hoof, allowing it to remain healthier and stronger, but even more so where there is physical damage, infection or structural weakness. HoofArmor itself is impermeable and antimicrobial. It won’t cause harm by sealing abscesses because it won’t stick to anything wet. Just apply it all over and it will go where it is most needed. Thoughts? Does anyone have ideas for practical lab studies we can do? What would you like to see?

04/13/2021

Every 1 CM of extra toe length = 50Kg of force on acting tendons.
~Dr. Renate Weller