Nutrition.....ah, put some sweet feed in a bucket twice a day, throw out some hay in the winter and put the horse on pasture in the summer time. This used to be how we fed horses. It sounds simple, and it is. But this diet does not often lend itself favorably to healthy, comfortable, bare feet. It can quite often be a presciption for sore feet that do not ever come totally sound.
Why? Because too many sugars and simple carbohydrates in a horse's diet lead to not only full-blown founder, but more often, low-grade laminitis that ebbs and flows depending on the season and availablity of rich grass and grain.
Shoes and pads can cover up a multitude of dietary sins, but they will not fix the underlying problems. If you truely want your horse gravel-crunching sound in his own barefeet, we will have to address his diet, and get it right BEFORE we can expect perfect soundness no matter how he is trimmed.
First of all, I'd like to recommend two websites for your study. They are www.safergrass.org and the equine cushings group at http://www.yahoo.com.equinecushings. . Here you will find more scientific information than I am capable of giving. I can tell you what works for most horses. You horse may need a more specific diet than I am going to recommend. In that case, please turn to these websites and your vet for study and help.
The basis of our horse's diet should be a good quality hay, (meaning no molds or excess dust or poisonous weeds). If you have pasture, great, but if you have a horse who is sensitive to sugars (and this can be determined by blood tests and to a great extent, simple observation,) then his pasture may need to be limited. Saying you have a perfectly normal horse with absolutely no issues at all, pasture should be fine, and when he needs more calories, a simple grain such as oats or oats and plain beet pulp can be fed. He will also possibly need a vitamin/mineral mix, usually fed free choice. No sweetened, grain-laced blocks please, these will be consumed in about 10 minutes.
But what if you have a horse who is insulin resistant? These horses will need a dry lot, large enough for plenty of room to move and hopefully with at least one horse buddy. He should be fed a low-sugar hay. They can be turned out to pasture during the winter months, or in the summer with a grazing muzzle if they will tolerate it. Night,evening or early morning turnout is preferable on hot days as the muzzle can become stifling. You may need to tape up the hole in the bottom if the horse cannot tolerate any grass at all, but just needs turnout for exercise and boredom relief.
There are various things we can add to our horse's diets for added nutrition and help in controlling laminitis symptoms. There is flax, kelp, cinnamon, D.E., certain oils like olive and corn, and the list goes on. My horses get hay or grass with a mineral mix in the summer time, and hay and pasture in the winter with oats/beet pulp, soaked and warmed, ground flax, kelp, D.E., (for help with parasites), and their vitamin/mineral mix called "healthy minerals" from Countryside Naturals." This seems to work well for us, but we did have slight laminitic signs this spring from lots of grass.
Our experience this past spring/summer:
No one foundered, but two of my horses, who had never been shod, and had never been tender, were suddenly tender on rocks. My two geldings, whose hoof care past is largely unknown, whom I have had for a year or just under a year, were also tender, but I do not know what their hoof care was before I got them. At first I attributed the tenderness to their soft pasture, although they did have a rocky/pavement area. Now that I have moved them off grass, and it has been a couple of months, I see the results of the increased spring sugars when I trim, even though they are no longer eating the same diet. My two year old, who has three white hooves, had pink all the way down. The white lines are twisted and ragged, even though trims are three weeks apart. I am a firm believer that the feet mirror the diet. They do not lie.Their soles remain just as thick as they have always been, but the lamina failed, moderately, but enough to create tenderness and thwart my efforts at supremely healthy feet.
|