No Foot No Horse – The organic way to better hooves
It’s the oldest saying around horses, but it’s true. Not only do horses need to have healthy feet to be ridden or driven, they need healthy feet just to be happy and comfortable. That’s why all horse owners – not just competitive riders – are always looking for ways to get healthier hooves. And there’s plenty of suppliers out there offering to sell you the ultimate cream, oil, or supplement to get your horse’s feet in top condition. But do they work? Are they safe? And are they worth the money?
Understanding what makes up the hoof, and what its roles are for your horse’s health will help you to better understand how to keep them in good shape. The hoof does a lot more than just act as a platform for your horse to stand on. The horse doesn’t have any muscles in its lower legs, so the hoof contains complex connections for bones and ligaments to help the horse move, and each step helps with the circulation of the lower leg, pushing blood and fluids back up the leg as the sole compresses. That’s why stabled and idle horses ‘stock up’.
These bones and other structures are small and delicate and need protection, and that’s where the hoof wall itself comes in. The wall of the hoof, or the ‘horn’, is similar to your fingernails, but it’s actually a type of skin, with an inner and outer layer of ‘dermis’. The outer layer has no blood vessels, so it gets all its nutrients from the inner layer. This is why most farriers don’t recommend hoof oils – they may make the hoof look pretty, but there are only a few preparations (like TuffStuff) that are actually designed by farriers to make a difference. Veterinary research suggests the hoof wall can’t absorb nutrients and moisture effectively from the outside – only the inside. So here’s tip number one; don’t spend a lot of money on expensive topical preparations, unless they come with a specific recommendation from your farrier or vet.
The hoof gets its hardness from keratin, which is the same material that you have in your fingernails. Keratin is built on amino acids, like proteins, and it’s the amount of keratin in the hoof that determines how tough the wall is. But even though it feels hard, a healthy hoof wall is still flexible, allowing the hoof to compress ever so slightly and then bounce back after each step for cushioning and circulation. A dry hoof won’t be able to spring like this, and can crack or chip because it can’t absorb impact. An overly soft hoof also won’t spring and isn’t healthy. You need a hoof that’s somewhere in between.
So how do you get a moist, flexible hoof? If your horse’s feet are dry and chipping, chances are the problem is dehydration in the horse as a whole. There’s not a lot you can do to fix a hoof once it’s dry, but you can keep it from getting worse. Likewise, if you need to put a shine on for a show, you don’t need to use environmentally unfriendly petroleum based oils. A mix of ten parts olive oil to one part tea tree oil makes a gentle, moisturizing, and mildly antiseptic surface treatment for your horse’s hoof and sole, and prevents some moisture being drawn out of a dry hoof or soaking a soft hoof. But to really fix a damaged or weak hoof, the simple fact is you need to grow a new one.
The most important thing to realize about your horse’s hooves is that they grow from the top –the coronary band – and they grow very, very slowly; about a quarter inch or so per month. That means that for most horses, it will take nine months to a year for the hoof to grow out completely. That’s why hoof cracks and damage are so important to prevent – they can take a very long time to heal! Here’s a few tips to grow – and keep – healthy hooves.
1. Movement
A healthy active horse will have better circulation and be much more likely to have good feet. Daily exercise, whether it’s just turn out or harder exercise, is important, especially if your horse has to spend a lot of time in a stable, to get the blood moving around the feet and carrying fluids to the hoof wall.
2. Diet
Remember how we said that the hoof wall gets its nourishment from inside? Well, that means that for good feet your horse needs a good, well-balanced diet. Choose the best quality feed you can afford, store it properly, and get advice from your vet or feed supplier to make sure you are feeding the right feed in the right amounts for your horse. For good feet, protein and calcium are key. Too avoid feeding too much protein, choose a low NSC (non-structural carbohydrate) feed. A good quality feed fortified with basic nutrients is the best start, and low sugar or NSC feeds are best to encourage a healthy metabolic rate.
3. Trimming
We tend to think that the best way to protect a horse’s feet is to put shoes on them. For some horses, that’s true, and if you need studs then you definitely need shoes. But it’s safe to say a lot more horses wear shoes than need to. There’s a lot of benefits for your horse in going barefoot, including traction, increased circulation (which improves overall health and endurance), and removal of the risks associated with shoeing, such as nail bind.
Talk to your farrier about the natural ‘wild horse trim’, in which you opt for a shorter heel to encourage a better step and improved circulation. The shorter heel encourages a faster ‘breakover’ in the step, letting the leg move more freely, and increasing the circulatory benefits. If your horse has been shod for a while, or you ride on rocky terrain, your horse may need to wear hoof boots for a few months while the hoof adapts and grows out. Many riders whose horses had chipped and cracked hooves saw the problems improve with a new hoof that had grown out barefoot.
4. Supplements
What about all the many supplements available that promise better hooves? Most of these contain biotin, which is a B-vitamin. Most horses on healthy diets of good feeds make enough biotin themselves, but there is some evidence that biotin supplements can help horses grow stronger feet. Adding a supplement containing at least 15mg of biotin daily won’t do any harm, and it may help your horse’s hooves, but remember, it’s going to take a long time to see improvements!
Some amino acids have been shown to help hooves. Methionine has been shown to help the horse produce more keratin, and build stronger hoof walls. Most hoof supplements will contain methionine as well as biotin, and other nutrients like iodine and zinc that may help hoof growth. Whether they work even better when they are all together isn’t known for sure, but most supplements will have a mix of these. Look for one with organic zinc and in a natural yeast base, and best of all one produced in a drug-free facility. They’re hard to find, but products like Equi Life’s Formula4 feet is an exampl
Hoof products can be expensive. If your horse already has good feet, chances are you can protect them with a good quality feed that has these nutrients added in already, and you don’t need to spend money on anything extra. If your horse is prone to cracks or has other hoof problems, then adding more may help. But remember – whatever you do, you aren’t going to see results overnight.
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