The Hypothetical Dun

After I posted my saga about Hawkeye's feet, Rebecca asked me if a dun horse with tough, dark feet would fare better in our wet, acidic soil.

(For those interested in hooves, I suggest this article about the effects of excess moisture in hooves. Pay particular attention to what the author has to say about Chincoteague ponies, it is most applicable to our situation.)

We have not had any duns around, but, genetically speaking, a dun is a dilution of black and we have had black as well as grey (which is also a dilution) and dark bay.  Dark colored horses do tend to have very tough hooves.  Ramsey's hooves are harder than Emma's, which shows that the same holds true for donkeys.

Do those tough hooves do better?  Yes.  Do they also have problems?  YES.

For example, here is one of the hooves of RB's other horse, Izzy (short for Izolde).  I don't mention her much because she is 29 years old and has been retired for many years now.  She is a purebred Arabian mare that RB has had for at least 25 years.  She has never worn shoes.  She is a very dark bay with no white and super hard, tough feet.  She has MUCH better feet than any of the other horses currently here.

This is more like what a horses heel should look like, although you can still see what the constant wet does to them.  It is wide with a well-developed frog, the hairline is parallel to the ground and even overgrown and ready for a trim, they are short.  Izzy never has sore feet - except for the very rare occasion when she goes for a short ride on gravel.  She never leaves her home environment so her feet never have to adjust to hard ground.
If you look close at the toe and along the right edge though, you will see hints of the troubles that do plague her feet.  That little divet at the toe is actually a crevice of wall separation that extends halfway up her foot.  We get the black holes to grow out, then they reappear as soon as mud season hits.  They have been treated with resection, tea-tree oil, White Lightening, cider vinegar, Clean Trax, copper sulfate, plus a few others I can't remember.

The holes don't bother her because she has thick, tough soles and a big chunky frog.  I manage them with trimming and we have given up on everything else because the horse is sound and none of it helps.

I trim the walls down to the level of the sole and put a strong bevel all the way around to help push the walls inward instead of outward, which is what happens to hooves in wet ground.  It is a constant battle to keep her hoof walls in tact.  Left to "self-trim", the walls just get longer and longer and the separation gets worse.  Her feet are so tough, that they never break off, they just keep splaying out and getting longer even though she has a large area of pea gravel that she has to walk through daily.  The gravel should wear the excess down, but it isn't enough. It helps, but not enough.

Izzy does have arthritic knees, if her feet are left long to self-trim, she becomes quite lame in the knees because it is so much harder for her to break over.  I keep her feet trimmed short and make sure that she can break over where here crooked knee wants the hoof to break over.  It keeps her happy.

This is where the wild horse model fails in the Northeast, or any other wet environment, it just does not take into account the constant wet nor the acid soil.  A friend had her soil tested and it came in at 3.8pH.  In the hospital where I work, we use a diluted acid solution to dissolve the keratin in samples of fingernails that we get.  The pH of that solution is generally around 3.5pH.  Soaked overnight, the nail becomes soft as butter so we can cut microscopic sections of it.

Hooves are made of keratin.

When Hawkeye was doing so poorly, RB bought Bailey, a young, black mare.  Not only black, but half mustang as well.  She had very tough, self-trimming, rock-crunching feet that were a large selling point for RB when she bought her.  We were VERY interested to see how her feet would hold up here.

Before Bailey got here, she was living about an hour away, in an area that have gravely, well drained soil.  She was eating unlimited grass hay, pasture and getting several pounds of sweet feed each day.  RB continued the same diet except for the sweet feed.  We work hard to limit the amount of sugar in the the diet, because it is a leading cause of hoof and metabolic problems.  By all rights, Bailey's feet should have at least stayed the same or even improved.  They did not.

Within two weeks, Bailey's feet still looked good, but she was no longer comfortable on hard, rocky ground.  RB began using boots on her for riding and she was fine.  We did not do anything with her feet, hoping they would continue to self trim.  After about 12 weeks, her feet were very long and large crevices were developing in the white line.  I trimmed them and they immediately improved.  After that, we kept her on a regular trim cycle and she was fine, although we continued to battle wall separation if not trimmed short enough - just like Izzy.

Bailey is not the only one.  When I first moved to this property in the fall of 2009, I had two horses, Suki and Gwenna.  The were both in their teens or twenties and had good feet.  Suki had great feet.

Until coming here, I paid no more attention to hooves than any good horse owner. I fed good hay, paid a farrier to come out every 6-8 weeks and didn't think about their hooves much.  I didn't have to because they never had problems.  Suki started having hoof troubles, just like Izzy's, within the first month.  That was the true beginning of my epic hoof odyssey.

Suki now lives a hundred miles from here, in sandy soil and her hooves are, once again, fine.

Every single horse who has lived on either of these properties, has ended up with hoof problems, as have the horses living on the soil that tested at 3.8pH.  The horses with tough feet, like Izzy, Suki and Bailey do handle it better.  Their feet are better to start with and their troubles are less severe and easier to deal with.  A horse like Hawkeye, who was shod from an early age, has a long history of hoof disease and has metabolic issues, is very difficult to manage in this environment.

Would the hypothetical dun horse do better?  I think he would be just like Izzy, Suki and Bailey.  He would do better, but not without problems and not as well as he would in a better environment.

Forward, backward, onward

For those interested in feet, it's about time we had a recap and an update on Lakota.  It's been just about a year since I started working on him and it has certainly been an interesting journey thus far.  We started out with a whole laundry list of problems despite a lifetime of excellent, conscientious care:

• Distal descent of P3 (otherwise known as a sunken coffin bone).
• Badly flared and poorly connected hoof walls.
• Severely under-run heels.
• Runaway toes.
• Contracted heels.
• Six degrees of coffin bone rotation.
• A poorly developed, weak and diseased frog.
• A deep and persistent central sulcus infection.
• A severe mineral imbalance and life-long deficiencies of key nutrients.
• A coffin bone showing damage and remodeling caused by constant pressure and bruising.
• And, only 2 mm of sole protecting the bottom of that coffin bone from the outside world.

 6/27/13

I took over care of Lakota's feet out of desperation.  Every farrier who had worked on him to that point had generally made things worse for him.  They did not mean to, but I don't believe they recognized all the different, yet intertwined, problems going on with this horse.  Each one focused on just one aspect of his feet and assumed the rest would take care of itself.  Riding Buddy and I have taken a very holistic approach to all of the foot problems we had been struggling with and made changes in diet, management, environment....everything.  I worked on his feet all summer, trimming them every two weeks and, by Fall, we had made significant progress.

10/27/13 Still troubled, but sounder than he ever had been....

Unfortunately, not long after the above picture was taken, Lakota broke through a fence and gorged himself on windfall apples causing an episode of laminitis.  About a month later, he got out on a pasture that still had a significant amount of grass under the snow cover and had another episode (don't ever assume that winter grass is safe for a highly sensitive horse or donkey).  Last month, Lakota came up severely lame with a bad sub-solar abscess that set us back even further.  He was finally sound enough (barely) for me to work on his feet again about three weeks ago.

On a much more positive note, he had a new set of x-rays taken about the same time and, despite all the setbacks, Lakota now has 10 mm of sole depth.  That may not sound like much, and it is still terribly thin, but it is 5 times what he had last year.

3/30/14 before trim.  You can see that the front of the hoof wall, which had nearly become straight in the Fall, once again has a slight dish to it, caused by his back to back bouts of laminitis.

3/30/14 after trim.  It's not all bad.  Despite the setbacks, this is still a MUCH stronger hoof now than it was one year ago.  The heels are dramatically improved, much less under-run and de-contracted.  He has a relatively healthy frog, it is still somewhat weak, but all signs of disease and infection are gone.  The bars are no longer folded over on themselves and, he has 10 mm of sole.

One of the most difficult aspects of correcting all these issues is that the hoof gets stuck in a kind of endless negative feedback loop.  The walls need to be trimmed way back, especially at the toe, in order to get healthy connection and sole growth.  However, with such thin soles, those overgrown walls are all that he has to support him.  The soles won't grow because all the energy of the foot is going into growing excess wall, the walls can't be controlled because they are all that is protecting the soles.  Round and round it goes.  Unless something can be done to break out of this loop, it will never end.  That is where Lakota has been stuck for the past 15 years.

This is where the casts and dental impression material come in.  The dental mold provides support, cushion and stimulation that the sole needs...

The casts (hot pink was on sale - 1/2 off!) provide even more support and protection as well as stabilizing the entire hoof capsule while still allowing for expansion and contraction.  These are what gained us that hard won sole depth.  We're hopping for more.

The most interesting thing to come out of Lakota's recent bouts with laminitis can be seen in the photo below, taken mid trim.

We horse people tend to think of laminitis in a rather limited, one-dimensional fashion.  We generally focus on the toe and think in terms of rotation of the coffin bone.  This isn't really accurate though. The coffin bone is the anchor for the entire hoof capsule, it is the planetary core that the crust is attached to.  No matter how severe the laminitis, it is not the coffin bone that moves downward, even when we think of it as puncturing the bottom of the foot.  The coffin bone can't move, it is joined to the bone above it (P2) and that joint does not fail during a bout of laminitis.  Rather, it is the hoof capsule that loses its attachment to its anchor and rotates upwards, affecting every part of the foot - not just at the toe, but the quarters, heels, sole - everywhere.

In this photo, you can see a butterfly-shaped pattern of "bruising" right in the center of the hoof, on either side of the frog.  This is not bruising from an external source, it is the damage that was caused to the lamina of the sole during a minor laminitic episode.  It has taken this long for it to grow out enough to be visible, both front feet look exactly the same.  It is clearly visible here because there is so little pigmentation in the foot...not something you'll see every day (thank God). 

That lack of pigmentation is interesting in itself.  Lakota does have very white feet, however, constant pressure and bruising to the bottom of the coffin bone can cause the sole to lose pigmentation as well, similar to the way a scar will grow in white on dark colored horse. 

Note: I did not trim anything from this sole, only used my knife to scrape away the dirt so that I could really see what was going on.  The line drawn in front of the apex of the frog is approximately where the white line should be (hopefully, will be someday).  The short line just in front of that is where I brought his toe back to in this trim.  This may look scary, but most of that toe is lamellar wedge, the hoof's version of overgrown scar tissue that needs to be removed.

Lakota was sore when I started, but walked off much sounder after his trim and has improved since.  I'm happy to have been able to stick with one of my cardinal rules of hoof trimming - the horse should be at least as sound after the trim as he was before.

Finding its way?

A Ramsey update.....

I think the last time I talked about Ramsey's foot, I mentioned the concerns I have about the way the foot is distorting laterally as you can see so clearly in this photo from 10/21/13...

I have been doing very tiny trims each week trying, not to "fix" the foot, but hoping to guide it and stabilize it until we can get more growth.  One of the really big problems that my feed analysis revealed was a bad phosphorus deficiency coupled with high calcium and manganese, both of which further inhibit absorption of phosphorus.  This is the main cause of angular limb deformities, early arthritis and hoof deformities in growing babies.  I really am going to get around to talking about this more, I am just finding it difficult to figure out just how much anyone wants to hear.  People's eyes tend to glaze over when I start talking nutrition. What, if anything, would you folks like to know about equine nutrition?

Anyway, there has been some improvement, 12/4/13....

There is a spot on his sole, below where the coffin bone was removed, that is going to slough off.  It is hard to know, but the recent abscess he had may have originated there or it migrated to the weak point.  Fortunately, I caught it quickly and it seems to be growing out.

I think it is interesting to note the color variations on the entire lateral (on left above and right below) wall.  All the white, irregular areas along the upper left side of the foot, mirror the irregular bone beneath.  There is certainly a lot going on in this one tiny foot.

I am pleased with the new growth that you can see here that has occurred since correcting the nutrition issues.  The white line, which is that very thin white line that runs around the outer edge of the foot, is much cleaner and tighter looking.  The curve in the frog has straightened some as well, which, I hope, means that we have managed to stop the twisting distortion of the hoof capsule.  It is hard to see here, but the new growth where the coffin bone is missing is coming in better as well.  Hopefully we can continue that way.

10/21/13                                                                         12/4/13

What I hope, is that I can help support the foot and the leg as they both continue to find where they need to be and gain strength now that the major mineral imbalances have been accounted for.  It is both a blessing and a curse that donkey feet seem to react to environmental pressures faster than horse feet do.  When things go wrong, they go very wrong very fast.  But, they also come right faster when given a chance.

***

As I am always posting pictures of bad feet I thought I'd add some of a GOOD foot.  Below is what a nice donkey foot should look like.  It does have a steeper angle than a horse foot and is a bit more upright, but it is still compact, tightly connected with a nice low heel.  The front of the foot is perfectly straight, with no deviations, indicating a well connected hoof wall.  If I ever had an x-ray taken of this foot, the front of the coffin bone would be parallel with the front of the hoof wall and there would be plenty of sole thickness.

The entire back third of the foot is thick, well developed frog, extending well past the back of the heel buttresses, as it should.  This is one of the biggest differences between donkey feet and horse feet.  That massive frog combined with the greater elasticity of the hoof are what make donkeys so amazingly sure footed on rough, rocky terrain.  The small, narrowness of the foot is also why they do not do so well in mud, snow and ice.

Living on soft ground like mine do, a donkey foot will never wear enough to keep up with growth and will not self trim.  The soles of donkeys on soft ground need to be trimmed back or the foot will just get taller and taller until it falls over.  This is why it is so much more common to see extreme hoof pathology on neglected donkeys then it is to see it in neglected horses.  X-rays of Ramsey's other foot showed that, even after trimming the sole back as much as I had thought was safe, he still had 15 mm of sole depth.

The foot is well balanced and I have no doubt that an x-ray would show the bottom of the coffin bone to be ground-parallel.

This foot toes out almost as much as his other foot, but remains balanced to his conformation and is a highly functional and sound foot.  If I were to try to "correct" his stance, I would cripple him.  Pretty-is-as-pretty-does and this is a very pretty foot.

One step Forward, Two....

Been a while since I updated any of the feet posts.  Here is where Lakota was 6/7/13...

and where we were 10/27/13

The photo above is showing some really great progress.  The dramatically shorter toe, lower heel, tighter connection and straighter hair line are all great.  Unfortunately, about the time these were taken, Lakota managed to break through the fence separating him from a massive trove of windfall apples and he came up rather ouchy with warm feet and strong digital pulses.  All not-so-great things.

As a result, I think we lost a bit of ground, not a lot because we got on top of it very quickly, but the tiny sliver of concavity in his sole disappeared.  Here is where he was 12/21/13...

In spite of that, there is some positive news to share.  We have made some significant changes to all of the horse's diet in the form of a custom mixed mineral supplement that I have put together and we have seen dramatic improvements in just a few weeks.  I think you can see it in the top 3/4 of an inch.  There is some nice growth showing there that began almost to the day of the nutrition changes.

In my last update, I also mentioned using dental impression mold to stimulate frog growth and it sure does work.  If you look at the two photos below, you can see what I mean.  The photo on the left shows a very weak, thrushy, diseased frog that is painful to thumb pressure.  Amazingly, it is actually a significant improvement compared to what it was back in April.  These poor quality, painful frogs have been plaguing all of the horses and are at the heart of nearly all the hoof problems we are dealing with.  They are one of the main reasons I have been working on nutrition so obsessively.  The only way to have healthy frogs is to grow a healthy frog.  The only way to do that is through diet and proper stimulation.  Which is where the dental impression molding comes in.  I hope that you can see that the frog on the right is much improved.  It still has a looong way to go, but it is much stronger as is the entire back half of the foot.
 7/20/13                                                                               10/27/13

12/21/13  I think that if we can ever get that very deep crevice at the back of the foot to grow in, we will finally start seeing a much more functional foot.  Healthy movement is what grows a healthy foot.