Henry Heymering - Hoof Care for Horses

Henry Heymering, C.J.F., R.M.F.

When it comes to caring for your horse, good advice never goes out-of-date. In 380 B.C., Xenophon, the Greek general and author of On Horsemanship, wrote of the importance of making sure a horses feet are dry: Washing down of the legs is a thing I absolutely forbid; it does no good on the contrary, daily washing is bad for the hooves. He also noted, Even naturally sound hooves get spoiled in stalls with moist, smooth [flat] floors. The floors should be sloping to avoid moisture . The mere standing on such [completely dry] floors strengthens the feet. As Xenophon was responsible for at least one 3,000-mile military excursion on horseback, his recommendations can be trusted, and they still ring true today.

The requirements for maintaining healthy hooves are the same as for maintaining a horse in overall good health: a clean and dry environment with good diet and sufficient exercise, and regular care from a qualified professional. Any problems with a horses hooves will have an immediate and serious impact on his health and usefulness. There is an old saying that is as true today as it ever was: No foot, no horse.

Preventive maintenance will do more to improve hoof health than any and all corrective treatments, and it will prove to be less expensive. The most important requirements are dry footing, good ventilation, proper diet, and exercise.

A common misconception in hoof care is the idea that hooves regularly require external moisture moisturizing dressings or mud or water to stand in. On the contrary, knowledgeable horsemen have long stressed the importance of keeping the hooves dry. Even a small amount of outside moisture may prove to be excessive; horses with dry feet will be much easier to keep healthy. To ensure that your horses feet are clean and dry, you must properly maintain all of the locations where you keep him.

To Shoe or Not to Shoe?

Free-roaming wild horses do fine without shoes, as do brood mares, so why should horses be shod? There are three reasons to shoe horses: protection, traction, and support for the leg. If none of these reasons apply, then your horse does not need shoes.

Protection. Shoes lessen hoof wear and help prevent cracking and chipping. Excessive wear usually comes from improper management hooves that are too soft and weak from moisture and urine cannot stand much use.

Traction. With shoes, traction can be modified according to riding discipline or use. Horses that pull wagons or logs want more traction as much as possible. Reining horses to do a sliding stop requires less than normal traction.

Support. With shoes (or, for foals, sometimes with artificial hoof material such as Equilox, Grand Circuit, or Equithane), the area the horse stands on can be extended to provide more support. A foal that stands base-wide, for example, can be fitted with shoes that put the area contacting the ground more directly under the leg. A horse with a bowed tendon, a strained suspensory ligament, or with navicular disease may be shod with a shoe that extends behind the heels of the hoof to provide more support to the leg and decrease tendon and ligament strain.

Stalls. The stall floor should be higher than the surrounding ground, slightly inclined, and impermeable so that the flooring doesnt collect or retain moisture, especially urine. Clay is an excellent material for flooring; once it is packed down, it stays separate from the bedding, prevents urine from soaking in, and provides some cushioning. Solid rubber mats, which are available commercially for stall flooring, work even better and can be installed over any fairly smooth surface. Any dry bedding is adequate if the dampened and soiled bedding is removed at least once a day and the floor allowed to completely air-dry. If any urine is left to soak into the flooring, the stall eventually becomes an open latrine. Sprinkling lime (the slaked or hydrated type) or a commercial product like Sweet PDZ over the bare floor at least once a week before bedding down will reduce odors and eliminate many disease-causing organisms.

Paddocks and loafing sheds. Small areas such as these encourage horses to stand in their own urine and manure, and the ammonia from these is even more destructive to hooves than is the moisture. Manure in paddocks and loafing sheds should be picked up every day. Horses tend to avoid urinating on hard surfaces that would cause the urine to splash on their own legs; this means that if hay is fed on the ground, the horses will trample some hay underfoot and urinate on it, then stand in that area. You can prevent this by keeping the hay off the ground or by feeding it from hayracks with mats underneath. To further discourage horses from urinating where they loaf, lay down smooth rubber mats without bedding or hay in the areas they most often stand, and put down a little old bedding or hay in a different area for urination.

Pastures. As with paddocks, ensure that horses do not loaf in their pasture bathroom areas. Filling potholes and draining swampy areas of the pasture and fencing off those areas until repairs are completed will keep your horses hooves drier; it will also help to control mosquitoes and horseflies.

Without adequate ventilation, floors will not air-dry, and ammonia from urine left on floors will collect. Ammonia on the floor dissolves hooves, and the presence of ammonia in the stall air has been linked to pneumonia in foals. A horse may generate 10 gallons of moisture through its urine and exhaled moisture each day. Outlet vents must be installed to remove the old moist air, and inlet vents must be installed to supply fresh clean air.

As the air in the stall warms, it holds more moisture and naturally rises, so roof outlet vents such as turbines, cupolas, or ridge vents will provide escape for the foul air. The total size of these outlets needs to equal about 1 to 1 percent of the area of the floor. For example, a 20-foot-by-20-foot building has a floor area of 400 square feet and would need 4 to 6 square feet of outlet vent, such as a ridge vent 10 feet long with a 6-inch throat.

Inlet air vents must cover two to three times as much area as the outlets. They should be larger, more widely spaced, and located above horses to reduce drafts.

Environmental factors such as dry footing and adequate ventilation have by far the most influence on the health and integrity of the hoof, but good nutrition also plays a role. A horses diet should be mostly grass or grass hay, supplemented with a loose salt-mineral mix, with plenty of fresh water. The healthiest working ranch horses Ive seen ate nothing more than grass and loose salt-mineral.

A salt-mineral supplement is necessary because of the declining mineral content of our soils; grass and hays alone no longer provide sufficient minerals for horses. A loose salt-mineral mix (such as MoorMans GroStrong or similar products by Carnation or Purina) can be fed free-choice and is generally palatable, inexpensive, and effective. A loose salt-mineral is superior to trace-mineral salt blocks because it contains not only salt and trace minerals but also major minerals (such as calcium and phosphorus) and vitamins.