One for the foot fetishists

I've had two lovely hacks today, one on Ace this morning before SH made me yomp 5 miles up hill and down dale and one on Jazz this evening after sleeping off the effects of SH making me yomp 5 miles up hill and down dale. I think he's well :-)

Very, very, very odd things going on with Ace's feet. I do so wish that I had marked them when he came to me, because he is much slower growing on the hinds than any other horse I have done. He has only just started to put out foot at a decent rate. I have been rationing my roadwork because his feet were wearing too much. Today, they looked really good, with growth to spare, so I took him out. When I got back I was astonished - he had scalped the back ones down as low as they could possibly go. They were flat and his frogs were showing signs of slight  bruising, though he had felt very good on the stones at the half way point. He has the most appalling quality of horn, to wear like that in 40 minutes on the road. The fronts were much better and had coped well, though I can see (and feel) smoother and much better quality horn about 2/3 of the way down his toe.

Thankfully Tia's hind boots fit him and I booted him up this afternoon on the yard, and will continue to do that while this horn quality is so soft. Like her, he has more problems on the back than the front. She was another who I booted behind and not in front.

I am pretty sure that he has a negative coffin bone angle on the back feet, caused by the lack of strength in his heels. His feet have got slight bull-noses on them where the point of the coffin bone is rising up against the horn. I t hink the only solution to this is to continue to give the back half of his foot the stimulus to build itself up, which will balance out the coffin bone angle. I need better quality horn on the floor for that to happen.

Now, the interesting thing is that when he arrived his horn was much stronger than  it is now. What I figure happened is this. When he was still at the stud in germany they kept him off the grass to cure him of laminitis before they sold him and this gave him good strong feet. When he came to England in September they shod him and fed him a poor diet of low quality haylage and nothing else. When I took his shoes off, he was walking on the horn he grew at stud while he had no grass and a balanced diet. That wore away over the six months that he has been with me, and what is now wearing so badly is stuff he grew in the middle of winter after being badly fed and shod. The cracking between the inner and outer hoof wall only happened in the last 3 months as well, if I remember correctly, so that fits.

He has two event lines showing in his front feet but not the backs. One is nearly to the floor and appears to mark the end of the piece of foot where the inner and outer hoof wall separate. I think that is from where he came to me. The other is the one 2/3 down from the top, which is where I think his new diet really clicked in, and the change in quality is very marked. The bottom part feels rough to the touch, the top part is smooth to touch and visibly shiny.

This begs a question how much grass he will eventually be able to tolerate without being footie. My betting is that by next year, I will be able to treat him just like the others. Meanwhile, he now has a muzzle with more fleece on it than half the sheep in the field next door! I've just had to add another two patches to the two that are already on it, to stop it rubbing under his jaw.

C