The foot is not bearing weight evenly. When he is standing square, all of his weight is on the back of the heels and the toe does not touch the ground.
He generally moves well and seems sound on it, but occasionally the heel become a pivot point and the whole foot drops down with the toe pointing upwards, stretching the pastern.
It seems like the foot needs to be trimmed back so that it will bear weight and land properly, but there is still a hole in his sole and the sole seems too thin to trim any more.
There is also some separation at the white line in this one area.
Questions:
Is this normal hoof development after such surgery?
How/should I trim this?
How long is it likely to take for this hole to close?
I have finally been able to bandage the foot without covering the coronet band or his heel bulbs, which are doing much better without the constant irritation.
I wish I had a real comment for you, I just don't know enough about hooves and even less about little donkey hooves, to give you anything constructive.
ReplyDeleteThe only insight I have is that my friends Dad's TWH stepped on something once and put a huge hole in his hoof. It took over a year to go back to anything that even resembled normal.
I'll be interested in seeing what others say.
I am not an expert on donkeys but I agree with you that the toe looks awfully long. It would be nice to see what the other hoof looks like side by side for comparison purposes. My horse had a bad blow out and it took a year for it to grow out. I would be very interested to see what the experts say. My feeling is that the toe needs to be carefully shortened over time until the growth rings are symmetrical on the hoof wall. FWIW
ReplyDeleteOh, Kris... will you have to haul him back there and have a therapeutic farrier work on him? I hope they can help you!
ReplyDeleteI hope they can give you some good advice!!
ReplyDeleteIt will take time, lots of time. Long enough for the hoof to grow to the ground again.
Are they sure he didnt founder on that foot? I will be interested to know.
We had a mare when I was a kid, when she was two she stepped on an old trough edge, when one of the other horses ran her over it, and cut a tendon in her fetlock. Right hind foot. It was shaped like this, very long heal bulbs and the toe was always a lot longer. My Dad was a farrier and he took care of it. Unfortunetly the vet put her in a cast, and then my Grandmother died, and it was on a couple weeks to long. Any way what I was getting at is the shape of the foot after the trauma. That mare lived until she was 27, we rode her and used her like normal, although she would never take a left lead, unless thrown onto it. You may always have to do a special trim on him. We always had to rake off a lot of toe with this mare, as the foot would rock back onto the heal. I got good at giving her a good trim, a lot of rasping!!