cyber steve wrote: Chivalry is not dead.

Dances with Hooves wrote:

Hi George, that is very interesting, do you think that long toes are a result of not enough toe length removed ? as always it depends i know But im thinking of those horses who live in stalls and have suffcient foot growth through the cycle obviously not trimming the toe enough will be a factor in negative palmar angle, but dont we all trim the toe ? i know for myself i tend to be conservative with my sole trimming at the toe .

how do you use a testers to decide how much more you can trim?

If i can make the sole move with moderate pressure how much sole depth do i have, 10 mm ? Obviously it depends on moisture content, or no ? just wondering how you decide when to stop ?

I have always thought that npa was soft tissue failure in the back of the foot and it came first, then the long toe, not the other way around. im learning

maybe im splitting hairs sorry if i am but in the south here most feet are too wet, so if the digital cushion is weak the heels wont hold up on their own most of the time .

Im not sure what type of horses you shoe, but i shoe mostly quarter horses and many are less that 1000 pounds most probably 800-900 with mostly 00 and 0 shoes how long a toe length would this type horse generaly end up at in your area ? Most i trim end up just a bit longer than 3" but on some that dense compacted sole has me stopping with the toe still alittle long

Your input is greatly appreciated !

Well that and flare that might be left at the toe and the driving force on the toe that results if heels are left too tall and allowed to run forward. So its a combination of things. Its fairly straight forward to teach folks how to trim the heels back to widest part of the frog but much harder to help them to get the toe right.

well we all trim the toe but its easy to leave too much or take too much and hard to nail the right point.

I use the sole plane at the pillars to establish M/L balance and often find a build up or bump of sole at the toe between the quarters that seems wrong and "in the way" of the plane so to speak. So the question becomes is this retained sole that the horse wants and I should leave or is it excess. My first shot to resolve the issue is to use my nipper to peel and see if its really an extra layer of sole that wants to exfoliate away. Usually I leave sole that wont peel. But sometimes it just does not look right and it wont peel. In that case if the area in question at the toe is completely unreactive to hoof testers I'll take a little bit away with my hoof knife. Check again and if no reaction continue stoping when either I have established a plane that connects the sole plane at the pillers and quarters or the moment I get any reaction with hoof testers. This is an OK procedure if a shoe is going to be applied not recommended on a barefoot horse.

No sole can vary a lot based on the weather so if your experience or intuition says it you should remove what appears to be reatained sole at the toe than the hoof testers help keep the horse comfortable. We are looking for any reaction as a stopping point. Movement or the consistancy of the sole are too variable to be used as a guide for trimming but the horses comfort seems to be a reliable indicator. Again on barefoot horses I am more conservative.

IMO errors in toe prep drive the collapse behind.

There is quite a lot of variation and I tend not to use a ruler on the toe as a guideline for trimming as it could be easy to get to close if one imposes a measurement on say all QH of a certain size/weight. For example I run into a lot of QH's that seem to have been bred with a foot a size or too too small for their weight compared to other breeds. IME these guys seem to have a boxy foot with a toe thats a bit longer. Almost like the animal is going long rather than wide in an attempt to gain more surface area underfoot. When I observe the solar surface at the toe on these guys the sole callus is always a little bit farther ahead than on a horse with a normal size foot. I find I generally place breakover a bit farther ahead on these horses. If I try and trim the QH with tiny feet with the same relative ratios as a smaller horse with the same size feet they can be sore. So I give em an extra 1/4" or so of breakover and they seem happier. So anyway I try and avoid preparing all feet to 3" or 3-1/4" or whatever at the toe as there are always exceptions to any guideline one might be using at the time.

Its easier to show this than to type it LOL.

Thanks for that reply George !

It is easier to "see" what we do every day than to try to write it !

Wish i where closer to you I would try to bum a ride along

This to me is the number one problem with farriers who know just enough NB to be dangerous. It's easy to find the wide part of the frog, much harder to find the live sole. I seldom measure toe length any more and when I do, it's more apt to be with dividers than a measure. I'm comparing right to left, neither to a preconceived length.

I have regularly encountered feet with a broken back HPA where this was the cause and on a few occasions with someone who was not a regular client and not going to be (shoeing at a show) given them a length "tell your guy that your horse was trimmed to 3-1/4 and went just fine"

That said, your three plus inches for the horses you work on is likely about right in front, the hinds a bit longer. If you have a foot that seems to be trimmed at 3-3/4, be careful, but you can likely get another 3/8 to 1/2 inch.

Somewhere in the chaos of my filing system is an old research paper showing how much more the heels have to carry as the dorsal angle decreased and it's significant. Does it cause a collapse in the foot. Likely to me, but not something I can prove.

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