Believe it or not most of the problems your horse has are due to the environment the horse is in. Most people don’t believe it but it is true.  The common problems on my website farrierfletcher.com they are all common because they are all environmental issues that are common when it comes to horses. There are other problems that I don’t get into because it falls more to the other health issues other than movement and feet.

 One good common problem is the heaves. Heaves is when a horse coughs like the horse is going to die or have an asthma attack. Heaves are mainly caused by dust in the lungs. If you have horses out on dirt roads and there is lots of dust in the air constantly, guest what? Your horse is going to get the heaves. Same with the hay, if you get hey from a back road with dust all over, your horse is going to get heaves. Feeding round bales will do the same but it doesn’t matter if you bale the hay in central park in New York City, there is dust because the large amount of hay drying in the bale. Yep Drying hay makes dust. The smaller the bale the less dust you have in the bale.

Dried hooves are one of the biggest problems I see. It seems like every horse has them sooner or later. On the web page I talk about hoof oil to help keep the hooves from drying out but, I’ve seen horses go from completely dry, cracked, brittle hooves to the most well conditioned hooves I’ve seen in days when you take a horse fetlock high in mud to nice lush green grass pasture. I think it is the oils in the grass constantly in contact with the hooves that make them so conditioned.

The big thing is getting the horse out of the mud and muck. That’s the biggest thing you can do. If you have small acres stalls are what you need with hand walk to turn pasture.  But horses can’t live in the pasture with small acres. They will just tear it up too fast. Feed and water the horses in the stalls and move the water around a lot in the pasture. The horses will gather where ever food and/or water are. You leave it in one place guess what, mud and muck? It sounds like a lot of work. Well owning animals are. If you just like to look at horses out your window get a picture. Don’t let the animals suffer.

If you have large acres, you want to split the land up and rotate the land. You still need to move the food and water around to prevent the horses from hanging around in one spot too much.  Shelter still needs to be clean daily. I find wood floors make things easy to clean in lean-tos.  Horses can live out in large acres with out mucking it up but you still need to take care of them.  One of the drawbacks to large acres is that you have to go get your horse. Plus, in wide open space anything can happen. Wood chuck holes, predators, many things you can control because of the distance.

A lot more injuries and accidents happen to pasture horse vs. stalled horses. I’m not saying one is better than the other, I’m just stating a fact. It all depends on your life style which is better for you and your horses. Remember it’s all about the horse. I am a big fan of stalls. I feel it makes me give more attention to the horse because if I don’t do anything then the horse is stuck in a stall all day which makes me feel bad. Other people just won’t care. For them pasture is the better option.

 I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. Please fill free to comment, tweet, facebook, etc. This information is for all. I only ask that you make sure that the author me Gene Fletcher is put on all the copies. Thank you and if you have suggestions on topics please fill free to contact me. You can sign up to be notified of new blogs by entering your e mail to the right. This is so you don't have to keep looking to see if I posted a new blog. Again thank you for reading.

    Underrun heels are heels of the hoof that grow under the hoof instead of growing down. The Picture to the right is a very good example of underrun heels. There is not a lot of information on the internet about them that I could find so I decided to write about them and how I fix them. If you look at the picture to the right and you look at the hairline you’ll notice that the hairline curves in the heel area. The hair line is a direct representation of the levelness of the hoof. In other words, what you see in the hair line is what the hoof  looks like on the ground surface too.

    Underrun heels usually occur only in the front hooves. It is possible to have underrun heels in the hind end but unlikely. If underrun heels do occur in the hind end it is easier to fix then the fronts and I’ll explain why.

    Underrun heels are said to be caused by long heels but there is more to it than that. You can have a 6 inch heel on a horse and it won’t grow under unless the angles are wrong.  It’s the horses own body weight that crushes the heels causing the underrun heels to grow under. How do we get this to occur? We simply take the hoof capsule and move it forward. As a horse stands there its an axis from which all the weight of the horse goes down. This Axis is not in the middle of the limb like you and I. It goes down the middle of the shoulders to the middle of the hair line if the horse can stand straight.

    If you look again at the picture up top and look at the hair line, find the center of the hair line, and then you will see it is right on top of the heel. You can achieve this underrun heel through long toes. Ideally you want to take this center axis of weight and have 50% heel to 50% toe. If you let the toe grow you will find that the toe percentage will rise and the heel percent will lower till you have what is in the picture a 100% toe to 0% heel. This allows all the weight that limb bares to come right down on the heel.

    As I said earlier it is easy to fix in the hind end. This is because a horse bares most of it’s weight on the front hooves. Since there is not much weight on the hind end you can easily work on the 50% to 50% heel to toe through a trim. Again the objective in the trim is to bring the whole hoof backwards. This includes the brake over of the toe. If the break over is not brought back you will get nowhere. The whole hoof has to come back.

    The Front end is more complicated. Since most of the horses body weight is in the front and all of that weight is bearing down on the heels. Hmmmm!!! I wonder why my hoof looks like that? LOL The  only way to fix the underrun heels is to take the weight off the underrun heels. How do we take the weight off the underrun heels? We would put on a bar shoe. Hopefully you read my blog on bar shoes. You can apply a heart bar shoe. The weight that the underrun heels bare can be transferred to the frog with a heart bar. Now that the weight is relieved from the underrun heels the heels can grow down without being crushed. You would re-shoe And trim to achieve that 50-50 heel-toe. After that the shoes can come off and the horse can go bare footed if you care to.

    I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. Please fill free to comment, tweet, facebook, etc. This information is for all. I only ask that you make sure that the author me Gene Fletcher is put on all the copies. Thank you and if you have suggestions on topics please fill free to contact me.

    I’ve been to barns where you say bar shoe then they kick you out of the place, never to return. Then I read an article on bar shoes and discovered why. A horse with bar shoes is considered devalued.  This myth and it is a myth is that a horse with bar shoes is a worthless horse goes a long with the myth that once a horse is shod they always have to be shod. Uneducated farriers and horse owners are how these came about. These horses are suspected of being worthless because if you have bar shoes then the horse has problems. So what do people do? They let their horses suffer for fear of bar shoes.

    This is what this world is coming down to. Oh let’s make our horse suffer because we don’t want to ruin the value of the horse. Not like it didn’t lose value because of problems anyway. This is just another scam people do to get rid of horses they don’t want to deal with.  I would much rather buy a sound horse with bar shoes on then an unsound horse or a horse with problems that no one has done anything with. At least if I see bar shoes I know someone cared about the horse and the horse is probably well cared for unlike not putting shoes on a horse that needs them.

    The strategy of covering up a problem instead of fixing one that some farriers do doesn’t help the now bad name bar shoes have either. Like a horse with soft soles. Let’s just cover it up with shoes and pads. Do you know I’ve seen horses go for years like that? Covering the sole up with pads usually leads to other problems as well such as white line disease. To fix soft soles it only takes about a month if done and cared for properly. That’s without shoes and pads. Isn’t that crazy? I think so.

    What would you rather have a horse with bar shoes that is in the process of having problems fixed or a horse with problems that aren’t being fixed and sometimes becoming worse because of not helping it at all? Either way hopefully I can change some minds on this and get people back in this century as well as the most important thing is to, of course, help some horses. Bar shoes aren’t as bad as people want you to believe.

    Yes, bar shoes are for horses with problems but that doesn’t mean they stay on forever. Underrun heels for example; I use bar shoes the most on underrun hooves.  These shoes stay on for a year or two, depending on the horse and the hoof growth, then the horse is fixed and the shoes come off. Bar shoes are the only way I know to fix underrun heels. Regular shoes won’t do because you have to relieve the weight off the heels to get them growing down instead of under.

    Contracted heels are only fixed with straight bar shoes. The narrow heels rest on the straight bar in the back of the shoe and allowed to move outward across the bar to expand the heels in time. You cannot do such a thing with just a plain shoe. Depending on the horse, the nutrition, how fast you can increase angles, and the environment the heels can be fixed in a shoeing or two. Plain shoes the horse may never be fixed. There will be a lack of blood flow do to the lack of natural movement that will lead to lameness eventually.  There goes the value of the horse!

   Heart bar shoes when placed properly with help increase blood flow and make your horse healthier. I wouldn’t just put some on just because I can because well barefoot is the healthiest if you can do it. Not to mention the expense, worries of shoes coming off etc. I hope I changed some minds about bar shoes.  They are made to fix problems yes but doesn’t mean lame horse for rest of its life. 

    I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. Please fill free to comment, tweet, facebook, etc. This information is for all. I only ask that you make sure that the author me Gene Fletcher is put on all the copies. Thank you and if you have suggestions on topics please fill free to contact me.

    This is a question I get ask a lot. The truth of the matter most horses don’t need shoes at all. People get con into them by a farrier or they have some problems here and there, after that they think shoes are mandatory to keep the horse sound. This is rare! Though there are horses out there that has something physically wrong and require a shoe full time.

    Some farrier trim hoof to short. This is not necessarily the farriers fault this is just what the farrier was taught to do. This trimming short will cause sensitive feet and a shoe is a quick cover up. If the horse is continued to be trimmed short with shoes on no one is the wiser. The horse is sold the new owner tries to remove the shoes and the horse is lame. Now the owner believes the horse needs shoes for the rest of its life.

    The different associations out there don’t help owners decide. They are either one way or the other.  The AFA (American Farriers Association) supports every horse needs shoes. Then you have the barefoot movement were shoes are bad and no horse needs shoes. The truth is they are both can be right depending on the situation. Each horse is a special case. Again what works for one does not work on all.

    To support the barefoot movement; the horse does have better traction because the hoof can move and bend with the ground. The hoof is free to move. See my writing on form and function and function on my website.  It is natural and it cost less to trim. Things to look out for are improper balance of the hoof such as low heels will restrict the natural movement and make horse flat footed thereby promoting lameness. Not all lameness can be fixed through a trim.

    To support shoes. You need a shoe to fix some things. That’s all there is to it. No matter what they say not everything is fixable through a trim. Good examples are; low underrun heels in the front end, horses that have lost half their hoof, a hoof completely split in half, etc.  You need a shoe no other way around it. Things to look out for in shoeing is; that shoes can restrict the natural movement of the hoof, Shoes can be hard to keep on,  shoes are used to cover up problems, shoeing take more understanding and patients from the horse.

    How I come up with shoe or no shoe. My teacher Bryan taught me there are only three reasons to shoe a horse; 1 limb disparities or deviations, 2 weak hoof walls, 3 performance. Most of the time horses only get trimmed. That is all they need. Weak hoof walls can sometimes be caused by shoes. Remember the natural form and function of the hoof? Well the shoe restricts that. Eventually nature will win and the hoof will fall apart to move like it wants too.  Of course to stop this you can cut the heels off then the foot won’t want to move at all.

    If one trims and balances the hoof properly then the hoof will tell you when it needs a break from shoes. I see this as a good thing. It is like an old tool like a knife or shovel. They did their jobs well but if it wasn’t meant to do the job it would tell you or not do it. Like an old knife was meant for cutting and that’s it. You didn’t use it as a screwdriver or anything else like that and it was easy to sharpen and maintain. Now a day’s people try to use tools for things they are not meant for and want happens they break. Well buy a new knife but, do you really want to buy a new horse?    

    

    I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. Please fill free to comment, tweet, facebook, etc. This information is for all. I only ask that you make sure that the author me Gene Fletcher is put on all the copies. Thank you and if you have suggestions on topics please fill free to contact me.

     Current theory states a farrier is to cut the heel down till the frog touches the ground. This theory came about from an expert and a video camera.  At least this is what I’ve been told by other farriers. What happened was someone recorded a horse walking, and then slowed the footage down to 60 frames per second. The person noticed that there was a crushing motion in the back of the limb when the hooves hit the ground. Mind you, everything looks weird at 60 frames per second. Said person then noticed the closer the frog was on the ground the less crushing there was in the back of the limb. This is why current theory is to cut the heels down till the frog is on the ground.

    This study was only done on horse to my knowledge. I believe this to be so because if you were to attempt to do such a thing to any other equine, A.K.A. a donkey, mule, zebra, the equine would be lame. In donkey and mules the frog is located behind the heels of the hoof wall unlike horse were the frog is in line with the heels of the hoof wall. If you were to video a donkey or mule and slowed the footage down to 60 frames per second, you would see this same crushing motion as was see with the horse.

    
    With everything in life, everything has a point and purpose. Just because I just said this theory is wrong based on the fact of horses vs. other equines doesn’t mean it is not tool one should throw out of the tool box. I find this technique works well with founder (or laminitis) horses and if done right you can slowly fix underrun heels too. The thing about horses is they are live creatures that are constantly growing so; you cannot treat them like a machine. In the mechanics world you fix one make and model one way you can fix most the same way. In the world of the horse each case is an individual must be treated as such.

    My theory in heels of the hoof is to let heels grow to achieve proper hoof angle. Proper hoof angle is where the pasture angle and the hoof angle are the same. By doing this the sole of the horse is lifted off the ground and become concave, thereby reducing lameness from flat feet. The horse also has good brake over and there is no strain on tendons or ligaments. You also reduce the chase of Navicular by not applying so much pressure on the heel.

    My theory works great on the majority of horses and other equines. Once in a while I get a horse that does not “cooperate”.  The horse insists on low heels. Well, if this is where the horse is comfortable then this is where the horse is met to be. Again every horse is its own case. What works for one does not work for all but one must try to do what he or she thinks is right first and at least try to put up a fight. If X rays are done maybe the coffin bone is positioned right with the horse having low heels. You can still ease break over by bringing the toe of the horse back.

    I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. Please fill free to comment, tweet, facebook, etc. This information is for all. I only ask that you make sure that the author me Gene Fletcher is put on all the copies. Thank you and if you have suggestions on topics please fill free to contact me.

     Welcome to farrierfletcher.com blog. I'm starting this blog to discuss horses and hoofcare. I hope you enjoy this blog. Feel free to comment on any blogs. If you haven't visited farrierfletcher.com please feel free, there is alot of information on hoofcare and training that may not be discussed in the blogs. Please feel free to subcribe and enjoy!!!

                                   Thank you Gene Fletcher of FarrierFletcher.com