Horse Hoof Trimming

[KristyHall]

Hello,
I've owned horses over a decade and have always hired a farrier to trim my horses hooves. I have two Calvary line Arabian mares that are intelligent and tough as nails with hard hooves. I don't shoe my horses since they never go on anything harder than the soft fields. Well except when the cross my drive way when I let them graze the front yard and this never seems to faze them) I am considering trimming their hooves myself to save money but I was told that if done wrong it could cripple the animal. The thought of hurting my girls worries me. Any opinions on home hoof trimming? Any warnings and advice anyone can give me?

I greatly appreciate your time.
Kristy

 

[adoptedbyachicken]

While it is true you can hurt a horse if you really cut into the hoof badly (as in cut until you drew blood) if you are a reasonable person the work is safe for you to do. I keep hearing this threat of 'crippling' horses, well you would have to really try IMO, to make a cut way too deep.

I do all my own trimming and will never go back. When you do your own you do them when they need to be done, and only what needs to be done, rather than someone else trying to fit them in to the average rotaion of all their customers, or the circuit that they want to drive to keep expenses down. My horses are much better off, and I'm not standing around waiting for a farrier that will maybe show up 2 hours late, or not at all. Even with 9 horses I can get them all trimmed in less time than I used to waste waiting on a farrier. My costs are of course way lower as well.

There are many sites and books out there to help you learn, as well as DVDs. www.hoofrehab.com is a great place to start, Pete's DVDs are fantastic. http://www.star-ridge.com is where I order my rasps from (with good hooves if you keep up you will never need nippers so save yourself that cost) they have really good ones reasonable priced. Don't just get a tack store rasp, you will get frustrated and tired really quick. Depneding on the horse you might need a hoof knife.

Find a local barefoot trimmer that will work with you at first, have them put a correct trim on the horses and then follow it, with them checking up on you every few trims.

Good luck! Have fun, it's a great way to expand taking care of your horses.

 

[KristyHall]

Well that makes me feel better. I use to do both domestic and wild animal rescue and rehabilitation and have clipped nails and claws of all sorts of species and rarely cut too deep. Usually when the animal was struggling too much or had at torn nail I had to finish removing so i could doctor it. So I had hopped it would be similar, simply trim the excess growth, clean the hooves and file them to avoid tears and cracks?
I have two horses, a mother and a daughter, and both are very calm and gentle. My farrier did not want to do them at first because he had an opinion that Arabians were too jumpy. I was very proud when my filly had her hooves done for the first time. She stayed calm and only started to squirm when he was doing the last hoof and she was just getting bored.
He said most people let their yearling push them around and he was impressed that I had her so use to being handled already.
It will be easier on my old retired mare since she has a history of abuse and when I rehabilitated her, she has grown devoted to only me, and gives anyone else a hard time. I have to be at her head the entire time the farrier works on her. She doesn't kick or really fight, but she becomes visibly nervous and will breath heavy and keep her head held high in the tense alert stance. If I walk away she will do her best to follow me though will stay put if he really insists, even though she isn't happy about it.
So I suppose this is more that just money. I think It will be easier on her state of mind and on me and my worry wart self to learn how to do it.
On a local trimmer? Well I cannot find anyone willing to teach me without charging a large fee.

 

[miss_thenorth]

We have a barefoot trimmer come do our horses. Our trimmer is teaching my dd, along with some online courses. Here is the link. http://www.equinesoundness.com/courses.htm

 

[KristyHall]

Thank you both for this wonderful information. I look forward to learning how to tend to the girls hooves.

 

[adoptedbyachicken]

Sorry to hear you don't think you can find help. Then just get a really good farrier in every once and a while, and do look at the links on Pete's site, read and see all you can on those pages, and get his DVD set to watch.

I fixed the seond link too, forgot the hypen.

There used to be a list of certified barefoot trimmers in the US, see if you can find it, they are well trained and are all willing to help owners learn, it's part of the registration deal. They should not be charging muc more than a trim from being there with you. Mine did not anyway.

 

[ridinglizzard]

My husband is really into barefoot trimming for all our horses. He does each horse faithfully on a 4 week rotation. He had a great farrier who taught him initially, and then he has learned a ton from books, videos, and the good old internet! Our horses are all relatively new to us, and most of them (4 out of 6) came to us with really poor hooves. The horse who had the worst hooves came to us a year ago with huge cracks, long hooves, and pretty bad white-line-disease which had to be dremmelled out. Now you would never know that they had ever been so bad; they are hard, smooth, and have a beautiful shape! Another advantage to doing them on this schedule is that each trim is really quick once the hooves are in such good shape.

 

[patandchickens]

Um, the problem with "if you do it wrong" is not DIRECTLY crippling the horse, obviously you can be careful not to remove huge chunks of sensitive tissues or pare the sole down to blood or anything like that...

...the worry with "if you do it wrong" is that it is awfully easy (in some horses more than others) to mess up the balance or structural integrity of the hoof, and cause long-term damage. Sometimes it shows up right away but often if the hoof is chronically-dysfunctionally-kept you will not see signs of it for quite a while and they can sneak up on you and be misinterpreted as other things like arthritis or training issues. And the thing is, if a hoof gets into bad shape through chronic mistrimming, it can be real hard -- sometimes virtually impossible -- to set it right again.

Look at how many PROFESSIONAL FARRIERS do a really crappy job and produce chronically-lame horses due to mistrimmed hooves.

If people who've been *trained* to do it (sometimes trained wrong, but sometimes trained basically right only they do not 'get' it correctly) and have *practiced* on thousands and thousands of horses can still so-often do such a dysfunctional and damaging job... I would suggest that it is not something to leap gaily into oneself.

In particular it is NOT AT ALL like trimming goat or sheep or wild animal hooves. The fine points matter much, much more with horses, for a variety of reasons.

That said, if you have horses with basically good hooves that are correctly balanced now, that is at least your 'best case scenario' for doing it yourself. Take pics of all four of each horse's feet, from the knee to the ground, from the side and from the front and of the sole, for future reference. And after you do your trims, or at least a few times a year once you've been doing it a while, check against those photos to see if you seem to be 'drifting'.

Honestly though I think that most peoples' horses are much better off with a GOOD farrier/trimmer. Among the horses I've seen and worked with, the percentage of "I did it myself" -trimmed hooves that are really BADLY out of whack is much higher than among the horses done by a GOOD farrier/trimmer. (Good referring to skill, not to reputation or price bracket)

JMHO,

Pat

 

[miss_thenorth]

What Pat says is true. We got our horses 4 years ago. and were new to horses. We found a farrier, and we blindly trusted her. We figured, she went to school for it, so she must know what she is doing, since I certainly do not--regarding horses hooves. Flash forward--last year, my QH was baically lame. Up until I fired her, I had been mentioning every tiem that it looked like his heels were too high. She aid they were fine,blah blah.

I went in search of a barefoot trimmer after that, and found an awesome one. She took the professional course from the sight I linked to. I, and my daughter have learned so much just from watching and listening to her while she trims. There is so much to know about balance etc. My dd is taking the horse owners course, and being mentored by our trimmer while she is learning. My daughte has a good eye, (a strong back, which is why i am not doing it) and she is learning quickly. Even after dd completes the course, Our trimmer will come every now and again to assess, and we will also take pictures of the hooves and email them to have them assessed. I highly recommend the equine soundness course. In the year that we have had our barefoot trimmer, both of our horses hoof structure and integrity has improved big time. My Jiggs is no longer lame, although he did suffer some by having a bad trim before from the farrier, we suspect some coffin bone damage.
So, I guess what I am trying to say is don't take this lightly. It is serious, and you can screw up a horses hoof by continual bad trims.

 

[KristyHall]

Thank you for the information. I have looked up these sites. While the closest people are an hour away, I'll be contacting them and seeing if I can get them out here. I'm planning to offer extra gas money to make up for the distance.
It makes me wonder....
My old mare started stumbling and her knees swelling about two years ago when I started a new farrier. I thought it was just because she had previous injuries to her legs and her age so i retired her from being ridden. Perhaps she has been improperly trimmed.
Now I'm concerned.