Hoof Signs

Learn to Read your Barefoot Horses Hooves

Contents

Introduction to Hoof Signs

To further your understanding of your barefoot horses hooves you need to be able to read, see and interpret signs in their hooves. This will help deepen your understanding.

What we mean by this is there are a number of external hoof signs on hooves, which if present and are recognized, will give you an indication as to how healthy the hooves are and what is occuring.

Keep in mind that what you feed your horse is reflected in their hooves and signs can appear due to inappropriate feeding practices.

Once you are able to recognize these signs if they start appearing you will then be able to take appropriate action and be able to monitor changes that you introduce.

Signs in Hooves

Growth Rings

These can show as ridges or furrows going around the circumference of the hoof wall and reflect a sudden change in the hoof wall structure. They can occur from sudden attacks of laminitis as well as dietary changes or the administrations of drugs and vaccines.

In the above picture the upper most recent growth ring was due to changes in this horses living.

In this instance this is a positive sign as the new angle of growth is steeper and is what we are looking for in a barefoot hoof.

This new growth angle was due to dietary changes. The horse was removed from rich grazing pastures and put onto our grazing track where the diet was predominately hay.

This steeper angle also meant that the hoof walls attachments were becoming stronger which is fundamental towards creating a healthy hoof.

(I am not able to explain the growth rings further down as this horse was not with us then but it is a sign of too much carbohydrate in the diet.

Wall Flares

Learn to differentiate between natural and unnatural wall flare. This is outlined clearly in the Official Trimming Guidelines of the AANHCP

White Line Separation

Our goal is to have a tight white line.

This is very important. A tight white line shows that the hoof wall and internal structures are as they should be. Stretched white line is very common, another phrase for it is sub-clinical laminitis.

Ie. If it is stretched you have inflamation of the laminae which means a weakened hoof wall attachment to the coffin bone. Without going into great detail, it is important that you are able to recognize a heathly white line.

So if the white line is stretched (you will recognise this by seeing if debris is able to get up into it and if it forms a deep groove and is wide, as opposed to just a line) this is indicating that all is not well with the hooves and dietary changes, living conditions need to be addressed.

Above is what one is aiming for with the white line, it needs to be tight.

(What is missing however in the hoof above is the outer wall, which has been over rasped from above; but that is another story and not relevent as regards the white line shown here in the picture.)

To summarize Signs

Once you begin to learn to read your horses hooves and recognize the different signs that can show up, some good some bad, this will help you enormously towards having a healthy sound barefoot horse.

The three areas to continue to study for a healthy hoof are the following:

• Correct Trimming see Barefoot Trimming
• Correct Nutrition see Equine Nutrition
• Correct Living for Horses see Barefoot Grazing.