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| British cavalry horses are large Irish-crossbred types and generally are selected because they have big enough feet, acceptable conformation and good bone. Their lameness problems tend to be less dramatic than you might think, and more in line with recreational horses than sport horses. |
Showing posts with label Household Cavalry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Household Cavalry. Show all posts
Friday, August 02, 2013
Equine Lameness: British Cavalry Horses Suffer Common Minor Hoof and Leg Problems Similar to Recreational Horses
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Farrier Axes Out in Force at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Parade
Only a few people in the world noticed them. They were at the back of the column. Only they had black plumes on their helmets. Only they carried big bad farrier axes instead of lances.
Only they made the Hoof Blog.
They were, are and possibly always will be the farriers of the Household Cavalry, stationed at Hyde Park Barracks in inner London. The unit serves the Queen and the farriers serve the unit's horses.
The Household Cavalry of Buckingham Palace requires the services of no less than 11 farriers, plus the regiment's Farrier Major, Staff Corporal Neil Sherlock, who oversees his men's work on 120 horses per week.
One of the interesting aspects of the job is that they don't enter the military as farriers. They may be sent to Afghanistan or any number of assignments in the military world. When they rotate through London, they all ride. Some are interested and step forward to start farrier apprenticehips, but they already know how to ride.
Part of the duty of farriers is not to just stay in the forge and work hard, but to stay in training as riders as well so that they can accompany their regiment in their ceremonial role as carriers of the axes. The pole axes were used to lop off the feet of fallen horses after battles--the feet have numbers burned into them for inventory control purposes. You can imagine what the spike was for.
The farrier's ax has been featured on The Hoof Blog quite a bit--we followed it during the Royal Wedding last spring and watched one being restored at the Army Museum for the War Horse exhibit there.
We've seen quite a bit of interest in the ax--and not just from farriers. The world wants to know more about the ax and the men who carry them: when was the last time one was used? how do they decide how many axes are needed? Who shaprens the ax?
I can't answer your questions but I will try to find someone who can if you keep sending them in.
Photo kindly loaned by Alexandra Wade, a London-based photographer who thinks of this blog whenever she hears hoofbeats on the street--and has taken some spectacular photos for us!
To learn more:
Why Is That Guy Following Prince William and Kate Middleton Carrying a Big Shiny Ax? Because He's the Farrier, That's Why!
Farrier's Ax: A Museum Restores a Gruesome Tool of Mercy Designed to End the War for Horses
Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal
Read this blog's headlines on the Hoofcare + Lameness Facebook Page
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Trophy Hoof: Taxidermist Rowland Ward Preserved Part of a Favorite Horse Forever
Every once in a while, you'll see one in an antique store or on eBay: a preserved hoof from long ago. A favorite hunter or cavalry charger lives on because one of his hooves was preserved as a trophy.
The National Army Museum in London, England has their collection on display now as part of their "War Horse: Fact & Fiction" exhibition.
The two primary ones used in curator Pip Dodd's video lecture are excellent contrasts in hoof form and shoe fit.
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| Would you care for a cordial? Rowland Ward combined his big game expertise and his hoof trophy specialty in this mini-bar created from an African elephant's foot. |
Now, here's my question: Did they only preserve one hoof? Would they have just tossed out the others? What if it was a really famous horse?
More recently, I've come to question the preparation of the hooves themselves. If British army regulations required hooves to be burned with identification numerals, and if the farriers were required to retrieve the numbered hooves after battle, why do we seldom see hooves with numbers burned into the wall? Were they sanded down until the numbers disappeared?
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| Were some preserved hooves merely vehicles to display horseshoes? This heart bar shoe is almost 100 years old; it lives in the beautiful tack room at the Badminton House stables in England. The hoof doesn't look particularly like it suffered badly from laminitis, although the beloved horse who wore the shoe apparently did. There may have been different priorities for hoof trophies. |
Perhaps the answer lies here, in this blog's story from December 2011 about the dreaded farrier ax:
"The Household Cavalry still burns numbers into three out of four of each horse's hooves. The near hind bears the horse's army number, the near fore his squadron number and the off fore has the regiment's initials."
While some people are repulsed at the site of hoof trophies, others are intrigued. First of all, they were preserved in an era where a rider may not have had the option of a photo or even a drawing to remember a favorite horse.But what intrigues Hoofcare + Lameness readers is that the final product of a trophy doesn't seem to have much--if anything--to do with how the horse was shod. The shoes attached to the trophies seem to have been crafted by silversmiths, not farriers. Their fit is questionable and some even lack nails, although the clinches can still be seen in the hoof wall.
Much more information on hoof preservation--not just of horse hooves but safari trophies and game--was detailed in the 1883 book, Observations on the Preservation of Hoofs and Designing of Hoof Trophies, by Rowland Ward of London and Nairobi.
Ward, who had aspired to become a sculptor in his youth, was quite a prolific trophy artist; he offered more than 50 designs for hooves in his shop. His designs were patented and his clients included the Duke of Edinburgh.
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| A Rowland Wolf hoof chair |
The book details an important part of hoof trophy-making that has always challenged me. He states that the shoe worn by the horse is useless when making a trophy because the foot will change shape during the preservation process, and that crafting a suitable shoe for the trophy is part of the trophy-builder's task--and that a farrier is not the craftsman to be hired to build the shoe.
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| A Rowland Wolf hoof lamp |
He also mentions that part of the skill of the trophy-builder was in repairing the frogs of horses that had been affected by thrush, which apparently was prevalent in the hooves sent to him for preservation. Unfortunately, he doesn't go into much detail about how he did this.
Ward employed an assistant who worked on nothing but horse hoof trophies for more than 20 years.
Rowland Ward died in 1912 but the Rowland Ward business is still in business in Johannesburg, South Africa. For some time, there was a US branch of the business, most recently headquartered in Dallas. The US office closed in 2009.
The company's web site is a mecca for what is left of the big-game hunters, and those who study the history of hunting and taxidermy, and the skillful arts of Rowland Ward.
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| A Rowland Wolf hoof scale |
Today we have plastination and freeze-drying to preserve horse hooves, but the reason behind the preservation tends to be for educational purposes, rather than to preserve a memory or create a memorial. We demand lifelike detail, rather than artistic expression.
For Rowland Ward, a hoof from a dead horse was a blank canvas for artistic expression and his imagination ran as wild as the big game that arrived on his doorstep to be preserved, hooves and all.
To learn more:
National Army Museum (UK) hoof trophy feature
Sports Illustrated (1959): A Man Who Knows How To Stuff An Elephant
Farrier's Ax: A Museum Restores a Gruesome Tool of Mercy Designed to End the War for Horses
Why Is That Guy Following Prince William and Kate Middleton Carrying a Big Shiny Ax? Because He's the Farrier, That's Why!
A collection of hoof trophies, including at least one by Rowland Ward, in the collection of the Canadian Anglo-Boer War Museum
Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal
Read this blog's headlines on the Hoofcare + Lameness Facebook Page
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Farrier's Ax: A Museum Restores a Gruesome Tool of Mercy Designed to End the War for Horses
Courtesy of National Army Museum, London
As people in the US prepare to line up at movie theaters to see War Horse over the Christmas holiday, here's some farrier background about a tool you may even see in the movie. I am not sure when they stopped actually using this tool, but no one has stopped talking about it, that's for sure.
It's the farrier's ax, and you'll see one close-up in this video from the National Army Museum, which currently has a major museum dedicated to war horses staged at its London galleries.
The Hoof Blog had plenty of information about the ax when the Royal Wedding took place last spring and a farrier's ax was paraded by the Household Cavalry farrier in the procession.
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| This is the ax of the Royal Horse Guards' farrier, courtesy of http://householdcavalry.info/ |
The ax, as the video says, served two purposes: the spike was used to mercifully end a horse's suffering. The sharp blade was used to hack off one of the horse's hooves. The farriers returned from the battlefield with the severed hooves, which would be counted and analyzed. Each hoof was burned with inventory numbers that told the quartermaster department a lot about the horse that had died--was it an artillery horse? a cavalry mount? a mule?--and what would be needed to replace it.
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| Something you don't see anymore: these antique hoof guards, worn for decoration, were probably from India. They are on display at the National Army Museum in London for the War Horse exhibit. |
The history books state that the burned numbers in the hooves not only helped keep track of horses killed in battle; they prevented a soldier from selling his horse to civilians in war zones. They were desperate for transportation or (perhaps) food.
Their farrier also still parades with his regiment through the streets of London--and carries his ax wherever he goes.
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| Here are the hind hooves of the famous War Horse puppets in the stage play in London. The play is also on Broadway. (Geoff Marston photo) |
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| Even a puppet War Horse needs a farrier--and who better than England's David Gulley? Mr. Gulley, who is from Leicestershire, was on-stage in London's West End with the War Horse cast and he had to check out what was on the bottom of Joey's front foot. David, an ex-military farrier, saw the play with a group of veterans recently. Luckily he wasn't carrying an ax. (Geoff Marston photo) |
TO LEARN MORE
Why Is That Guy Following Prince William and Kate Middleton Carrying a Big Shiny Ax? Because He's the Farrier, That's Why! (farriers at the 2011 Royal Wedding in London)David Gulley Elected President of European Federation of Farrier Associations
Follow Hoofcare + Lameness on Twitter: @HoofcareJournal
Read the Facebook news feed when you "like" the Hoofcare + Lameness Facebook Page
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
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