Monday, December 23, 2013

Hoof photos - Today vs. last April

I got photos today for you hoof geeks out there. These hooves are 4 weeks in since the last trim. They are growing incredibly slowly so I won't be doing too much.


It's fun to look at them in comparison to when she first arrived. Note how each hoof is medial/lateral imbalanced, with stretching/separation on the lateral sides.

Lameness update: I took her out to the field to lunge her on soft ground and she was so exuberant she tried to pull me off my feet a few times. Clearly she feels it's her pasture and she shouldn't have to do what I want out there. I finally got her to just jog and stop prancing around, and she looks better but in total took 3 bad steps, always favoring the RF. *sigh* In a few more days I'll do this little test again.



















And April:

One of the things that makes me curious: the color of the wall. On even her white feet when she arrived here, the hooves were dark. If you want to see that you can go back in my blog to April where I showed her feet from the side. Why would the walls be dark on her two white-socked hooves, matching the two others, and then later turn pale (normal)?




















4 comments:

EvenSong said...

Gotta tell ya, Lytha... Either posting those sideways photos messed the proportions, or that's one set of very LONG feet! ;-D

Anonymous said...

Love it, I guess I am a hoof geek too, tho I look at cloven hooves all the time instead! Wow, what an amazing transformation, it's really interesting to see how much they've improved in such a short time. You have done an amazing job with them. I went back to look at your April post, and there is that photo of the chippy, uneven hoof- good heavens! It looked like back then, it had huge horizontal lines implying "nutrition events"? Am I interpreting those right?

As far as color, I wonder if she had a diet higher in copper before? I have noticed that increasing copper in my sheep's diets seems to come through as mahogany-colored hoof material in the places which would normally be non-pigmented. I do believe Pat Coleby's life and literary assertion that minerals have a big impact on things like hoof tissue. But it's always such a mystery chasing that root cause, since minerals interact so much, and diet is constantly changing with the seasons.

Bakersfield Dressage said...

Wow! Beautiful feet. Can't answer your question, but since they look so good now, I'd tend to appreciate how lovely they look without worrying. :0)

Achieve1dream said...

Wow! The difference in such a short time is amazing! You're doing a great job with her. :)