Torn hoof Trauma

[kclifton]

I found my mare this weekend with major problems. Left rear hoof - center of hoof, about a 2 inch strip of hoof was peeled up and perpendicular to her hoof. Hinging at the coronet band. Very little blood, about 6-12 hours old (checked everyone the previous day) Called the Vet, said there wasn't anything he could do that a farrier couldn't do.
Farrier came out, cut the "hang nail" off just below the coronet band. We cleaned everything out of the gaping wound. Just below the coronet band there is a small egg shaped white patch - he said was the soft laminae and it had swelled due to the trauma - it would get smaller in a few days.

He said he would come back in a week and see if he could get a shoe on to provide a stable base.

No barn, just small turn out pens with grass. Its been raining (thank God) so I wrapped her up with pine tar (as suggested by farrier) a diaper, and duct tape. I change it everyday, soak with eposom salts, dry and re wrap. He suggested as soon as the weather clears, stop wrapping and watch. There might be a possibilty of proud flesh, if so, we would have to wrap again with caustic powder.

Are we on the right track??

Mare is an out to pasture ranch horse, fat and sassy. Now that she is kept up, she receives 14%protein (oats, corn and soy hull pellets) twice a day with a packet of gelatin in the feed each time. (small amounts of feed - working our way along) Free choice fert. bermuda grass hay, auto waterer.

[calshoer]

Mare is an out to pasture ranch horse, fat and sassy. Now that she is kept up, she receives 14%protein (oats, corn and soy hull pellets) twice a day with a packet of gelatin in the feed each time. (small amounts of feed - working our way along) Free choice fert. bermuda grass hay, auto waterer.

First ,she is fat already, so STOP feeding her the grain! You could founder her. If she is used to being out all day and is now penned up there absolutely NO need for all that high carb diet.

She won't die on a no-grain (or rather candy) diet for a few weeks.

As to the feet , do you have opictures? I wonder why couldn't the farrier get shoes on her at the same time he peeled the loose piece of hoof off?There are plenty of alternative places to put horseshoe nails in a damaged foot, IF the farrier has a few basic forge skills ..and a forge. ;)

Is her "sassiness" a shoeing issue?

I am also not a fan of soaking. It just makes the whole foot weaker. I prefer packing a hof wound with a drawing antiseptic like ichthammol and a good wrap and just letting it alone fora while. That draws the wound and toughens the hoof.
And is she even lame? You didn't say. If not ,and the rest of the foot is stable enough, maybe she could just go back out barefoot and grow the piece of missing foot without help from shoes.
Patty

[kclifton]

Thank you for the info. The mare isn't not a problem to shoe/trim or work on. She has been wonderful to work with through this ordeal. Farrier even commented on this the first day.
As for the feed, she gets less than a 24 oz cup of feed twice a day, mainly as a medium for the gelatin. I realize a fat horse in a pen getting tons a feed is a no no, especialy when we are already having foot problems. (she isn''t obese, but not in working shape)

Where can I get ichthammol? I will try to locate some today and I will stop soaking the foot.

She is lame at a trot, but not noticible at a walk. If she steps on uneven surface, she will give to it.

I would turn her back out, but with the other horses, I am afaid she will run and play with them and possibly do more damage. the pen she is in is about a 30 x 60, and I can shuffle her to 5 other pens the same size as needed.

I will try ti attach some pictures. Please realize the hoof was not clean when I took the pics, they were taken right when we found the injury.

[calshoer]

I would go ahead and get some shoes on her. There is plenty of hoof along both sides to nail to.
A heart bar, or EDSS, or a straight bar, there are several options to support the foot and stabilise those hoofwalls. Left the ways she is she is justygoing to spread the foto like a cow hoof.
Encorporate the frog into sharing the load evenly with the walls. The breakover should be taken back off the toe , so those two toe corners are unloaded and not getting pried apart every time she takes a step. I would guess that those corners moving are still causing her the pain.
Ichthammol is usually found in bigger feed stores, ranch supplies or from a vet suppply or your vet. It is a good poultice and will harden the exposed tissues too. If you can't find that, the concentrated epsom salt paste works really good too, (and smells better :) )
Patty

[kclifton]

Thank you very much Patty!

I did locate the ichthammol and I have plenty of epsom salt too.
I have a call in to the farrier, hopefully he will be out before the weekend and get her shod.
I will repost and let you know how she does.
Thanks, KC

[kclifton]

Well, the mare is now shod - has been for almost a week. She shows no lameness. I kept her up in a trap so I could watch for anything weird that might happen (abcess...) All is well and I turned her out yesterday. I plan to catch her every evening and check everything and apply ichthammol as needed.

Thanks for the help!

[Ronald Aalders]

I don't want to unnerve anyone here, but it did strike me kind of funny that a healthy foot would crack up like that.

Are you sure this is not a chronic foundered horse? If so, in addition to what Patty said you certainly need posterior sole support too. But a full check by your vet and shoer into the laminitis issue here (if any) is needed urgently.


Ronald Aalders

[calshoer]

Ronald I saw a hoof last week that abot made me braaken. :eek:
The horse had caught it under a metal barn wall and literaly split the whole thing in half.

Cracked the thing all the way around the coronary band on the lateral side from center of toe all the way to heel bulb, down beside the frog, forward through the sole to almost the toe and UP the center of the toe all the way to the coronary band. You could literally move the entire lateral half the foot independently of the other. The only thing holding the half of the foot to the other was the little strip of sole near the toe. AND as it turned out, he had fractured off a huge hunk of the lateral wing of the coffin bone . (the bottom half of the wing .) Basically the horse resected half the hoofwall and a third of his coffin bone. Luckily I didn't have to work on that one. Just got to see it. UGLY mess.
Patty

[Ronald Aalders]

It's funny how ****** horses get when their feet get stuck! They start pulling ready to pull the entire foot off! There's no stopping them, something's got to give, usually the leg or foot.

You story made me remember another one. On a rare occassion you run into something totally the opposite.

Years ago here in Holland I worked at a barn where they had like 20 head or so. (Not even really small for Dutch standards.)

Out in a pasture a few where grazing, one of them close to a barbed wire fence. I noticed when I was cycling home. The next morning I rode back and saw the same horse in the same spot just standing there, the others miles away. I know the morning is not my favourite time of day, but even I thought something was going on here. So I jumped of the bike and had a look. The horse had gotten is tail entangled in the barbed wire, chasing off flies I guess. It really was a knotted into one solid ball of tail around two strands of barbed wire.

Not only did this horse quietly wait all night until someone had the decency to get him out of his predicament, but also had not kicked or tried to jerk its tail of the fence. It just stood there, you resting a hind foot on a toe, sometimes switching to the other. What surpised me most was this half moon shaped bare patch of grass where he stood. He had eaten all of the grass he could reach with his tail caught in the fence and when the grass was gone he decided to just wait.

One cool pony.



Ronald Aalders

[Red Amor]

G.day Guys n Gals

We had a horse down the road from home here caught its tail in fence
pannicing it tore the tail out of the crup breaking the bone and tore a huge sheet of the skin off of one rump
apparently an horrifick sight and the horse was put down

our own pally mare will just stand and call and call to my wife if she is in trouble and our welsh cob will call for the missus to kill bot flies

young Mick our welsh mountain wont do or say anything to make you notice him , as if you do you'll put him away in the genny craig paddock :)

[tbloomer]

When my wife was a teenager her QH gelding got his shoe caught in the fence. He stood there all day waiting for her to come home from school and set him free.

When she got off of the school bus she immediately knew something was wrong, 'cuz ol' Red Hands would always meet her at the end of the pasture where the bus stopped. On this day he was standing at the opposite end of the pasture calling to her. She had to get a set of wire cutters to cut the fence wire and free his shoe.

There's something to be said for the old cowboy training methods - where a horse is taught to stand hobbled. The idea is that a properly trained horse shouldn't panic if he gets his foot caught in something.

I've only met one trainer in this area that includes hobble training and general bomb proofing as part of the standard training package. He doesn't get many show horses in for training.

Tom Bloomer

[Ronald Aalders]

Hi Tom,

I shoe a lot of show horses and I have not ran into a lot of them that were ****** and good!

It's funny how the really good ones often are bomb proof.


Ronald Aalders

[tbloomer]

Hi Tom,

I shoe a lot of show horses and I have not ran into a lot of them that were ****** and good!

It's funny how the really good ones often are bomb proof.

Ronald Aalders

This thread started out talking about how ****** horses get when their feet get caught.

Let me clarify my context. In my area western pleasure futurities are a big deal. The 2 and 3yr old WP horses are trained only in rail work. There are very few senior Paint and QH show horses at the breed shows because the money is in showing the young ones.

The trainers are only concerned with winning futurities and selling the young horse for a high price. Therefore, the horse never receives a proper training foundation (in the bomb proofing aspect) - which should include hobble training or some form of sacking out involving leg restraint.

The senior show horses, the ones that have been showing for 4 or 5 years or more - those are pretty bomb proof. They have been hauled to enough strange places and handled in enough strange cir***stances that they just take it all in stride. But let one of them get its foot tangled up in a piece of bailing twine out in the pasture or get a foot caught in the fence and see what happens. I know of two senior (>15 yrs old) horses that died this year due to this exact cir***stance. Both of them would have survived if they had been trained to hobble. Both of them were considered bomb proof in the show ring and on the trail.

After hearing about these horses I started to work on teaching my own green broke horse to yield its legs when somethig is wrapped around them. This is a horse that I am breaking myself. Right now I can lead him by wrapping a rope around any one of his legs and pulling. Actually we turned it into a fun game.

I have another green broke horse that my trainer started this spring. He doesn't lead with a rope wrapped around his leg, but he will not pull his leg away or panic either. I found out that my trainer had "sacked him out" on the rope around the leg . . . before he ever put him under saddle. 'nuther words, he spent a lot of time working on bomb proofing the horse before he climbed up on his back and rode him. He will also walk over a plastic bag or tarp. He will also cross water, jump or walk over a log, stand quietly while a deer crosses his path on the trail, and generally do anything that you would expect of a bomb proof horse.

The show trainers in this area don't expose a horse to any of those things when they "break a young horse for the show ring." All they see is the riding arena. In fact usually by the time the horse is 5 or 6 years old, they are ring sour. The trainers that do not destroy a young horse's spirit are far and few between in my neck of the woods.

OTOH, a lot of the english pony clubbers and hunt club horses appear to be pretty bomb proof. But again we are talking about youth mounts that have been around the block for over a decade.

I agree with you about the really good ones. But to be really good, they have to be really well trained. Unfortunately we have a lack of really good trainers in this area and a lot of pretenders.

Tom Bloomer

[kclifton]

Thought I would post a follow up of the injury to my mare's hoof. She has shown no lameness since we put the first set of shoes on. she has been shod every 5-6 weeks since the injury occured. So far so good!
Hoof seems to be growing back quite smoothly.
I have added some pictures. The original injury, the hoof after cutting off the flap and the last pic is of the hoof right before the third shoeing.
No laminitis - however, we noticed that the right rear hoof was cracking on each side of the toe, the exact location where this hoof split and ripped upward - even with shoes.
We are in a drought - which is unusual here. All of our horses are showing up with more cracks and splits - even with regular trimming.