When To Shoe Your Horse
Games Guy | January 28, 2012
While there are plenty of angles to horse raising and training, one outwardly minor detail that may pose a gigantic quandary for horse owners and trainers is whether to let the steeds go shoeless or shod.
Leaving horses barefoot or having them shod both have their own advantages. Having the horses shod will protect the feet particularly if the hoof gets worn faster than it can get replaced. On the other hand, allowing horses to go barefoot will improve their general hoof health. Being barefooted provides horses room for movement, growth, and circulation. The heels of the horse expand, the walls of the hooves thicken, and the depth of the soles grow deeper.
But you simply can’t choose on a whim. You must first know what is going to be better for your horse, as is your responsibility as an equestrian. How are you to know that? Think about your mare and her condition: her workload, the environment she’s in, the health of her feet. Putting these things into proportion will help make it less complicated for you to choose if it’s better for your mare to put on shoes or go shoeless.
Have a look on your mare’s feet. Are the feet of good quality? Top-grade feet have solid heels with cup on the sole, thick walls that don’t have flares, and frogs free of any disease. Such feet can put on a shoe real well and can also go shoeless. You may know it when you are one of the lucky few who got a horse with such healthy feet. The telling signs are: you—well, your mare—hasn’t faced feet issues, like a fungal disease among others; your farrier gives a positive evaluation; and your mare’s feet displays the quality of healthy, solid feet, e.g, front and rear are comparatively even.
Checking the state of your mare’s feet is just the first step. You still have to study her environment—the kind of footing the horse has in the area where she lives and works—and her workload.
If the ground where your horse works is soft and non-abrasive, and her workload is marginal, (you do little more than enjoy basic horse riding), you can leave your horse without shoes. Then again, regardless of whether your easy going horse riding is on coarse terrain then your mare will be much better off being shod. If you would like to push the barefooted technique, just remove the shoes in the months when your mare has no workload, say during the winter.
Other situations where it’s smart to have your horse shod are: when she has got a navicular illness; is badly foundered; has delicate feet like Thoroughbreds or have little hooves like 1/4 horse, which usually can’t go without shoes; or if her feet has cracks, which if it’s the case, you will have to hang around for the cracks to heel before you can expose them again to being without shoes.
Horses are Heather Toms ‘ passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge thru her 100′s of articles with other horse lovers like all things about horse rugs .