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- From: hannah@pomponio.ai.sri.com (Marsha Jo Hannah)
- Newsgroups: rec.equestrian
- Subject: Re: Hoof Care Products
- Message-ID: <HANNAH.92Nov16153044@pomponio.ai.sri.com>
- Date: 16 Nov 92 23:30:44 GMT
- References: <1dmn9vINN7up@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>
- <1992Nov10.170646.18707@nb.rockwell.com>
- <BxKDw4.7K0@quake.sylmar.ca.us>
- Sender: news@unix.SRI.COM
- Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA
- Lines: 45
- In-reply-to: buckaroo@quake.sylmar.ca.us's message of 11 Nov 92 18:26:26 GMT
-
- In article <1dmn9vINN7up@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>, pallas@cephalo.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu (Sarah Pallas) writes:
- > I'd like to start a new discussion about hoof care products. Here in
- > Houston, our soil has lots of clay, which means that either the horses
- > are swimming in mud or that their feet are bone dry.
-
- This is exactly the soil/hoof problem that we face in the coastal
- mountains of the San Francisco Bay Area. I don't claim to have found
- the magic formula (and would be happy to hear what others do), but
- here's my current "recipe". Once a week, I thoroughly clean off the
- hoof walls on our Fjords and apply a layer of Tuff Stuff (recommended
- by the two best farriers that I've used, to seal up the nail holes and
- the partially-rasped portions of the hoof wall), then I apply
- Hoofmaker in the 3/4" band between the hairline and where the Tuff
- Stuff stops. On one of the Fjords, I thoroughly clean the underside
- of the hooves and apply a layer of Corona (again, recommended by the
- current farrier). Two of the Fjords get Bio-Meth (a biotin
- supplement, also farrier-recommended) in their feed, twice-daily. The
- old mare also gets a handful of alfalfa hay in each feeding (all are
- fed grass hay, with little grain---they're very easy keepers), to
- encourage hoof growth. All 3 have fairly sturdy hooves, but with a
- tendency to chip if their hooves get too dry during the summer, or to
- pull shoes if they get too moist during mud season.
-
- The donkey, by contrast, gets no supplements and only a quick
- application of Hoofmaker to most of her hoof wall, and has the best
- hooves of the lot (she has never been shod, and rarely chips, but then
- she is not ridden). One might argue that doing less is better. Or,
- one might argue that a desert-evolved equine like a donkey has
- different hooves, therefore different hoof needs, than a
- tundra-evolved equine like a Norwegian Fjord. My trainer finds that
- she has to use different hoof care on her Arab, vs her Anglo-Arab, vs
- her TB-Welsh, vs her POA-Welsh.
-
- The discouraging thing about hoof care products (especially dietary
- supplements) is that it takes so long to figure out what is working.
- For instance, my vet offered the opinion that the biotin I was giving
- my old mare was a waste of money. However, if I stopped using it, it
- would be nearly a year before the newly-grown hoof wall (sans biotin)
- made it down to the ground for "testing". Then, if I decided that the
- vet was wrong about this horse needing biotin, it would take me a
- second year of feeding biotin again to get back to where I am right
- now.
-
- Marsha Jo Hannah Murphy must have been a horseman--
- La Honda, CA anything that can go wrong, will!
-