I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW
We call ourselves “barefooters” or “Natural Hoof Care Practitioners” but these are really misnomers which have lead an army of well-intentioned horse owners and trimmers astray – myself included. My 11-year-old APHA mare has never been shod; I have been practicing the natural trim inspired by Jamie Jackson since 2007 with varying degrees of success. My mare, Farletta, has run the gamut from comfortable to super foot-sore on rocky ground.
I turned to Natural Hoof Care (NHC) shortly after I got my mare in 2006. A friend shared Pete Ramey’s book, Making Natural Hoof Care Work for You with me and my eyes were opened. Combine this with the experience of a traditional farrier butchering and crippling my poor mare with a “pasture trim” and I would never turn back.
Due to advances in NHC and the piles of research conducted in the last decade or so, Ramey has since deemed his 1997 book “obsolete.” I believe this is in large part due to the lack of discussion on the effect of diet and environment on the hoof. When I began trimming I believed as I was taught, I could trim the hoof in such a way I could prevent hoof ailments such as laminitis. If my horse was “foot sore” it was a result of an invasive or incorrect trim and/or the “transition period” as she grew a healthier foot. While both of these can certainly cause a horse to be sore over rough ground, I wasn’t aware of the underlying issues of diet which were not being addressed.
WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?
As I said before, Farletta has had varying degrees of success with going barefoot. Over the past 7 years she’s covered the range from totally sound over all surfaces to barely sound on soft grass to chronically lame in one foot and practically immobilized by the prospect of walking over gravel. Often I classified her as “kind of lame and sort of sound” which was frustrating for both of us. I was convinced there was something I was doing wrong, I’d somehow forgotten how to trim or perhaps she needed her coffin joints injected again? Maybe at the ripe old age of 11, she was hopelessly arthritic or had developed navicular. I began researching NHC again, looking for answers but initially, found nothing that I wasn’t already doing.
"The posts were quite blunt; often poking holes in the "truths I'd learned early on..." | At some point, I ran across a Facebook page for a UK-based NHC service called “Hoofing Marvelous.” The posts were quite blunt; often poking holes in “truths” I had learned early on in my quest to understand NHC. Hoofing Marvelous (HM) kept |
Unfortunately, it wasn’t until this past summer when Farletta began to really struggle with chronic lameness, hoof abscesses and frog infections that those HM Facebook posts really started to sink in as I began to look for an answer as to what was going on with my horse.
GRASS: WANTED FOR MURDER
That may be a little melodramatic but sometimes we need a little drama to drive home an important point. Farletta’s sound years also coincided with the times I had her boarded in Michigan with nary a blade of grass to be found. She spent most of her time in a dry lot with either a clay or clay/sand mix surface. Even when we did move to a place where she had access to pasture, the grasses in my part of Michigan simply weren’t that lush. Due to the long winters, the prime grass season is also quite short. In August of 2013, I moved Farletta to Kentucky. She had 24 hour turn out (good) on really beautiful, lush pasture (not so good). I was concerned about the grass so I had Farletta wearing a grazing muzzle overnight and during the day she was either stalled or put in a dry lot. She did pretty well with this but was a little tender on the gravel. Soon winter came, the pasture died off and my horse was no longer foot-sore.
2014 has been an unusual year here in Kentucky. You see, normally by about July or August the pasture is totally fried and the grass is relatively safe (at least safer than it is in the spring). This year, however, the grass never fried and in fact, even now is still going strong. This year, | "When Farletta started coming out of her stall so lame she could barely walk, I was both concerned and completely baffled" |
When Farletta started coming out of her stall so lame she could barely walk, I was both concerned and completely baffled. I knew stalling was not ideal for her but she was susceptible to severe sunburn also so I felt my hands were tied. The final straw that prompted change was the day I tried to pick Farletta’s feet and the mare almost collapsed to the cement barn aisle when she attempted to lift her right front hoof. In surprise, I dropped her foot and when it hit the ground, Farletta briefly rocked back into a stance that resembled that of a horse suffering from laminitis. I had been monitoring her feet and there was no excess heat in her hooves and the digital pulse was barely noticeable. Aside from her strange behavior, she appeared normal.
That night I placed Farletta in the dry lot rather than returning her to her pasture. The next day as was her routine, she went to her stall to escape the sun and ate grass hay from her slow-feed hay net. When she walked out of her stall that afternoon, she was about 70% better than she was the day before. I got all 4 feet picked with only a slight resistance to lifting the right front. I put her back in the dry lot that night and by the next day, about 48 hours after being taken off the pasture; Farletta was completely sound coming out of her stall. A few days after that, she was able to walk on gravel with reasonable comfort. Yes, it happened that fast.
A couple weeks later, I was able to move Farletta to my home where I built the beginnings of a “Paddock Paradise,” an environment where I had complete control over her feed intake and could limit or remove all fresh grass from her diet.
So, that is our story. I’ve started this blog to chronicle Farletta’s journey as she goes from being a roly-poly pasture pony to a sleek, fit, sound and happy resident of an ever developing, fancy-pants dry lot.