This case study is a 17 year old standard bred mare who has been a broodmare.
Broodmares are often trimmed infrequently. This must have been the case for this mare until she came to her current owner who has her trimmed on a regular cycle. I firmly believe that all horses whether competition horse, happy hack, broodmare, retired, or pasture pet, deserve regular hoof care.
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Above: These photos show the positive improvement for this horse with 6 months of regular trims. We can see how the length and angle of her toe wall has improved. A shorter toe is bio-mechanically more efficient. Less effort is needed to move the foot over the toe and lift it off the ground. Therefore less strain is exerted on tendons and ligaments, and injury is less likely.
In the before photo the pastern angle is more sloping. One might think that this was her conformation, until you see that the angle is more upright in the after photo. Even standing still the unnaturally low pastern angle was putting extra strain on tendons and ligaments.
The following photos show her poor internal hoof development, with little or no improvement in the after photos. Notice how narrow her frogs are, and how far they are recessed into the hoof. It isn’t that her heels are too long, rather her frog and digital cushion are very thin and don’t fill the space between her heels.
Above: The red lines highlight the distance between the ground contact of the heels, and the frog. The distance is too great for the frog to make contact with the ground. The frog needs to touch the ground for proper stimulation and development. It is not possible to trim the heels shorter until her frog did touch the ground as this would cause a very thin sole and lameness.
This is common (although not always to this extent) in retired horses, horses who have not had a ridden career, and horses who were shod very young. This mare has spent a fair part of her life at grass producing foals, not a bad life by any means. But her hooves have lacked the stimulation of miles of exercise on varied surfaces. Without this stimulation she has never developed good structure in the back half of her foot – her frogs, digital cushions and lateral cartilages are undeveloped and weak. Her feet do not have such good ability to absorb concussion as a horse with a better developed foot. As she does light work and lives on a soft grassy field, concussion is not an issue and she is perfectly sound and totally comfortable in her environment.
If she were a younger horse with more work to do and we wanted to improve the weak structures, we would use hoof boots with frog pads inside (below). With the frog pads to stimulate the frog and digital cushion she would need many miles of riding (built up gradually). Each step would cause a little bit of internal development until eventually her frog would touch the ground, and her digital cushion would be thick and strong enough to absorb concussion.
