Posted by Denise McLain on September 22, 2003 at 15:43:22:
In Reply to: Re: ANNE, ONE HOUR to do a trim? posted by Bill Adams on September 18, 2003 at 11:19:45:
:
: Denise,
: We will also need to see your documentation that wild horses are only lame from injury. I trimed a BLM horse monday that was adopted as a weenling that has the worst toeed in, m/l balance I have seen. It's an old happy pasture pet that got around fine packing kids but needed extra triming all its life, was never shod. Would have died years ago in the wild. The BLM says the avrage life of ferral horses is seven years. So I've heard.
: bill
Bill,
There have been some informal studies (Dr. Liz Scott, Nampa Idaho) (and maybe formal studies, Dr. Redden))done on the BML horses that are captured and kept in the domestic environment and lifestyle. When they are first rounded up they are nearly 100% sound. Within 3 months 90% of the horses brought in become lame. I recently trimmed a yearling mustang who was captured as a weanling and not adopted out till five months after capture. His feet had never been touched, and he had been living in the domestic environment for a good 9 months. His frogs bled when I cleaned them, they were so badly diseased by thrush. His heels were a good 2, almost 3, inches too long. I know of another mustang mare that is approx 5 years old and was captured a year ago and adopted out just five months ago. Her feet have had no attention since her capture and they look like shovels. She is kept on soft terrain in a large round pen. Once the horse is taken from their natural environment and placed in the domestic situation they develop problems just like the domestic horse-sometimes worse-if they can not be handled for regular trims. Who is to say that the weanling you trimmed wouldn't have gotten along fine had he been able to move enough to be self trimming? Perhaps just being confined for a couple of months was enough for him to become quite unbalanced, especially as his joints were developing.
I have heard that ages of the feral mustangs range up to 30 years old, and that they used to think they were generally under 10, only because of how well they looked physically. (source Gene Ovnicek)
I do know of some feral horses that are having hoof problems on Arabaco Island. They have been displaced from the scrub habitat they survived on for the past several hundred years and are now in a situation much worse than even our domestic horses. They are suffering badly from laminitis and obesity due to a rich lush diet while now existing on soft terrain in a plantation type environment, exposed to all sorts of pesticides, nitrates, etc. Jaime Jackson also reported such problems happened with the western feral horses when some of them were confined in a rich grazing area.
Denise