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Listening to your farrier, you will easily understand what the meaning of the famous sentence « No foot, no horse! » is. On this issue, prevention is the only valid rule.
To allow you to take a perfect care of your horse, here is all you need to know about hooves care.
The problems to which the horses' feet are often exposed are of three kinds: rotten frogs, soft central sulcus (and therefore painful) and strips of cornified material which create cavities retaining impurities which, after maceration, can cause abscesses. |
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| Rotten frogs |
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There are several causes for a frog to rot:
• Superficial cleaning of the foot after the training
• Excessive hoof polishing. You should polish a foot once a day with damp weather, so that water can drain.
• Hoof polishing after a shower. Consequence: the water remains in the foot, macerates and softens internal tissues.
To avoid this problem, several coutions are required:
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• Polish the hooves before going to the shower and not after (picture 1).
• Polish the hoof only when it is dry.
• Don't limit yourself treating the foot, but brush it to remove all impurities (picture 2).
• Guarantee a regular cleaning of the box so that the horse doesn't remain always on a dirty ground.
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Once that the damage is done, you can only set up a treatment procedure:
• Don't polish the sole more than three times per week, in order to give more solidness to the horn.
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• Create a new wick, as large as the frog area, which you will dampen before coating it with copper sulphate that you will have previously put in a bowl. We point out that the copper sulphate can be replaced by a thrush treatment.
The wick, prepared in this way, will be placed on the frog axis and gently put on the bottom of the injury with a hoof-pick.
| This operation needs to be repeated daily, until the frog stops having a foul smell, and the horse accepts the hoof-pick pressure without reacting (picture 3).
Before training, it is highly recommended to replace the old wick with another one, completely new, which will act as a protection screen between the bottom of the frog and the ground.
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