Ok, raining today, so I have time to post again :) Here are the back feet... They were shorter to begin with, but still had the same issues going on, that the front feet had...This picture is right after I was all finished. He was still standing under himself a bit guardedly, but after I had his owner walk him around on his new feet, he stood normally when asked to just stand again. Goody goody!
This is before the trim...length of feet is much more normal and from the outside they don't really look all that bad (though when I first started, the back feet were long and high heeled as well as the fronts)
This is pretty much what both feet looked like on the bottom. That long sole/bar growth and not much frog (though much better than the fronts). The "divot" at the point of the frog was normally not present though, same for the flakiness at the front of the bars...sole looked uniformly even (thus, again, no guideline for me to know where to hack away at it).
When you look closer, you could see that there was a crack separating sole material in the sulccus...before, it always looked like the "crease" you can see just above the actual crack...solid, with no access into the hoof. Now, when I put my nippers in there, I could just easily peel back the bar and frog material... So again, I had a guideline to work with
After peeling off that first bit, I was able to trim him up the rest of the way. I suspect all that false sole and some of the thrushiness was causing abscessing in there (since in both this foot and the front feet you can see the "holes" left) and that allowed the sole to finally start peeling away (though I never saw any exit holes either in the sole or the coronet while trimming him).
And the left hind pretty much finished with the trim... big difference to before!
Then I did the right hind..(forgot the "before" pics on this one..) This seems the most intact of all the feet, both from the frog and sole aspect of the foot...
And the end result from the side and on the ground... feet not a whole lot shorter, since they were much better off than the fronts to begin with, but looking "normal" from the bottom at least again :)
It realy sounds like there is a mineral imbalance in that area as you see a distinct pattern with this group of horses that you don't see on your normal route.
ReplyDeletemineral imbalance? The only thing I see different up there, is the high heels and bars growing around the point of frog... that is a trimming issue, not a mineral one. We ARE deficient in selenium though, but because we know that, most ppl here (and CC is the same "area" as here when it comes to that) feed a mineral supplement with extra selenium in it :) Unless I was missing something? Could be! LOL
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