The Year-Round Hoof

From practicing daily hands-on care to taking baseline photos for later comparison, here are tips for keeping your horse?s feet healthy.

How much attention do you give your horse’s feet? Many times it’s just the old

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From practicing daily hands-on care to taking baseline photos for later comparison, here are tips for keeping your horse’s feet healthy.

How much attention do you give your horse’s feet? Many times it’s just the old once-over with the hoof pick … until there’s a problem. But hooves are the equine athlete’s silent supports, absorbing and adapting to stresses of all kinds. To be at their best, hooves need regular attention throughout the year.

Winter: When The Weather Outside is Frightful

What’s slower than molasses in winter? Not much, if you live in a cold, icy climate. But no matter your average temperatures from November through February, a generally slower pace of activity means it’s the perfect opportunity to spend quality time with your horse’s feet.

“The way to avoid most hoof problems is through proactive daily care and regular observation, so that you’ll notice the subtle changes before clinical symptoms, and more serious problems, develop,” advises Tracy Turner, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVS, of Anoka Equine Veterinary Services in Elk River, Minn. “If you get a good idea of what your horse’s hooves look like on a daily basis, you’ll notice the small changes that can be a sentinel to larger problems.”

William Moyer, DVM, professor and head of the Large Animal Clinical Sciences Department at Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, agrees. “Wild horses don’t pick their feet,” he says. “The feet naturally pick themselves through motion. In a stall environment, manure and moisture fill in the hoof and get packed in. What people should be doing is picking up the feet, gently cleaning them out every day, and getting an idea of what that foot looks like as a reference point

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