In April he had lovely hooves, but in July he had an abscess and everything fell apart somehow. I can only speculate why his hooves have reverted back. Perhaps the lack of movement - I stopped taking him out altogether because he was limping on one or the other forehoof, sometimes both.
The first time I noticed his hooves looking bad again was the day he came out of bandages. No idea.
My farrier was out 3 weeks ago and she didn't like the way I trimmed his forehooves. I'd left the hinds for her. So she did not touch his forehooves. But what happened to the hinds?
It's difficult for me to post photos like this, but I look back on my photo records of Baasha's and Mara's hooves and they looked great. Mara's were even what I'd call beautiful: )
I will call my trimmer again and have a talk with her about how we can resolve this, because this situation is going to make it take longer for his hoof to heal, and all the others are ticking time bombs at the moment, it's almost certain that another hoof will abscess as well.
LF - the one he cannot use. It has a hole on the medial side from the abscess, and a new, bigger hole on the lateral side from the white line problem. You can see a little cotton sticking out where the bad hole is. The vet left the wall intact so that it's possible to stuff cotton inside, but I have to dig inside every day, and that hurts.
This is the hoof that is doing most of the work, the RF. Very reluctantly he let me trim it last night. Lots of zinc cream but the scratches are almost gone.
LH has a quarter section removed that you can see here, from another potential abscess/white line separation.
RH
Two holes filled with ichthammol goop and cotton and why not, the frog too. I change this twice a day and this morning I was amazed at how well the packing stays in, keeps it dry, and when I found a drop of what I thought was blood in the hole today, it was black goop. So as sore as he is, I know the medicine is staying put even without a boot. Of course, he's not allowed to walk through the spring in our pasture!
I think the fronts look better than the hinds, but honestly all 4 are back to where we started when I bought him.
The zig zag on his leg is from his fight with a Tpost.
It's hard not to be depressed in addition to stressed, but I am not going to let this happen again, and I'm hoping it can only get better from here.
Prayers appreciated.
UPDATE: I watched one of my Pete Ramey DVD last night, the one on heel height, and he said this problem is 10% trim and 90% diet. I admit, I had this in the back of my mind because of the no hay issue this Summer, but I couldn't do anything about it, and still cannot - no one has hay to sell. It rained all Spring and farmers simply ran out. Our hay farmer said that in 2 weeks he know someone who has some bales that will be ready to feed, but not yet.
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9 comments:
His rear feet look just as long as his fronts to me (though I am by far not an expert! :)) even though the trimmer did those, so I would not feel so bad about your trimming job. If you fixed him before, you can do it again! My baby just had his second abscess since I got him. I have some sleuthing to do to see if there is anything I can change to help him avoid them.
My first thought was diet as well. With the hay situation your hands are tied. Our hay guy only brought half our load today. The areas drought has him falling short & he doesn't want to empty his barns in case someone is in dire need. He takes good care of his regulars
GPG, abscess, choke, I'm sick of these new experiences lately!
Camryn, HEY, I GOT 5 BALES! Tiny ones (fit in prius) but it's something! You mentioned your farmer saving for dire need - that's what we have here, since both my animals have abscessed/are abscessing! I don't think the farmer understood when I told him, but he reluctantly parted with 5, and we paid more than I've ever paid before! Mag is so happy, but the donkey is telling me it's not good enough, she wants apples from the trees. (But now they're both eating it.) Hay farmer explained that this is the worst haying year of his life, and the Winter won't be any better. Worst case scenario, we buy hay pellets and feed them as mashes every day. Oh how I hope we do not have to go there!
lytha, can you buy hay pellets now? Are you still feeding beetpulp?
Aarene recommended your blog to me, I've happily been reading it. I am so excited to meet other people who work on their horse's feet themselves! I also want to get back to endurance, but Military deployments are putting a kink in that plan for me. After I got back last time, my boy ended up with the same issue as yours- white line eating away the lamina and leaving him lame, almost laminitis-bad. I had to dig out horrible big holes, some scary-deep, to get ahead of it and it took three months to grow back in. Getting ahead of it and getting my guy off grass and onto low-sugar hay finally did it. I hope your boy feels better soon!
Aarene, I can get hay pellets and I'm not feeding beet pulp at the moment. Not sure if beet pulp would be a good thing - what do you think?
CS, Thanks for reading! I hope I don't have to restrict all grass completely! Did you have the hay tested before you bought it, or how did you find low-sugar hay? I'm happy to have any hay at all right now but I wonder if haylage would be better. My trimmer says it's not white line disease, it's pododermatitis. But I cannot seem to find the difference between the two issues. *sigh* I sure miss cheap APO postage rates. I spend more on shipping packages here than the contents of the packages.
If you're hunting for low-sugar, I think beetpulp ("washed" if necessary) is a good choice, but I went to library school and not vet school. CSLindaberry? any thoughts?
Haylage is so foreign to me that my brain. just. won't. People who know more?
Awesome Post: http://www.karenchaton.com/2008/12/myths-reality-beet-pulp-dr-susan-garlinghouse/
Beet Pulp is awesome, so long as it's molasses-free or soaked and strained to remove the molasses. My guy is +/- IR... haven't tested him to be sure, but he got fat for the first time in his life, his feet got sensitive, and then started falling off. I got him off grass, back on hay and low sugar feeds, and his feet improved within two weeks and he slimmed down, so I think it's reasonable for me to treat him as though he is. We vets and farriers argue about the definition of WLD ALL THE TIME. If it quacks like a duck and treating it like a duck is a safe option, I recommend it.
Low sugar hay was a 'cheat' for me, because he had been on 100% lush Kentucky pasture, which is full of some of the highest sugar grasses (Rye, etc) that exist, and then I took him back to the barn that buys hay from the same fields every year that he's always done well on. Unless you're testing EVERY batch of hay, you cannot know what the sugar content is. That said, all I had to do it take him off the extremely high sugar diet and get him back on a more "moderate" sugar diet to see improvement. Some horses are more sensitive and really require a LOW sugar diet. He gets hay, BP, SmartEssentials (for his vitamin and minerals and omega 3 that hay is low in) and Quiessence (for chromium and magnesium for IR support).
The short version is constant slow-feed with either low sugar hay, or soak and drain whatever hay it is you can get (soak, not steam!). Only allow pasture during the lower sugar times of day/weather (http://www.safergrass.org/) and choose low-sugar options for feed, ie, beet pulp over grains or bran, and low-sugar treats (no eating all the fallen fruit!). Most importantly- get them skinny again. Just like people, being overweight makes a horse more prone to IR problems all by itself, no matter what is going in their mouth. Unfortunately, arabians have a "thrifty" metabolism and are extremely prone to IR in lush environments since their systems are designed to handle famine and not plenty.
Re Haylage I am under the impression that haylage is far lower in sugar than fresh grass because the fermentation process consumes some of the sugars to turn into acid (like in wine), and it can be lower than hay depending on what kind grass it started as. Lower sugar grasses turn into lower sugar hays and lower sugar haylages.
Hi CS, I'd already read the article but want to thank you for typing so much about your expeiences. Last night the trimmer was here and complained that none of the pastures around here are fit for horses, better for cows. Since all the hay we get is local (you never see hay trucks on the autobahn, EVER), we have little options for low sugar. I am considering rinsing my hay. The trimmer noted that Mag does not have a body condition that implies risks (he's too thin actually, considering he's not in work). I tried to get info about whether haylage is lower in sugar than hay but like you said it depends. Also, we don't have enough animals here to feed haylage safely - it must be consumed in a short time after opening, it would go bad before we could feed it. I've also read safergrass.org. Grain? For no work, not for my horse. Unfortunately our beet pulp has added sugar and since they don't need it right now, I'm not willing to go to the trouble of rinsing after soaking. If the horse ever gets a job, we might do fancy stuff like that: ) Did you read my post about the lady who brought me a sack of feed for Mag as a welcome gift - the lady I helped at the horse show last Sunday - it was race horse feed for horses in "full training" *lol* Fallen fruit is hard, we have so much of it, but I know it's not going to help so I just let it lay there. So they purposefully grow high sugar grass in Kentucky, for horses?
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