Impactful Hoof Research in New Zealand: Computer Model to Gauge Equine Limb Reaction to Change in Surface Condition

Researchers at New Zealand's Massey University are creating a dynamic computer model of the racehorse limb in motion. Their goal is to use it compute the effects of a change in surface on the limb.

The Day the Forge Caved in under the World Champion "Fighting Blacksmith"?

This photo of World Champion boxer Bob Fitzsimmons is a mystery. "The Fighting Blacksmith" from New Zealand posed with an anvil wearing his apron. His left foot seems to be on top of a very large horseshoe.

I’m not a boxing fan, but I like a good story. I wish I could say that this story has been passed down through generations of horseshoers around the world, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Bob Fitzsimmons made the headlines more than 100 years ago, when one of the most celebrated sports figures in the world was hailed as “The Fighting Blacksmith”. But he seems to have been erased from the public’s memory, and neither the farrier nor blacksmithing worlds has ever tried to keep his fame alive.

Maybe this story will change that.

Research: Hoof Conformation and Flat Feet in New Zealand Thoroughbred Racehorses

In a previous article, the Hoof Blog described a study conducted in New Zealand to survey the way sport horses in that country are shod, and what management aspects may affect the condition of feet. (Please see the article "Research: farriery and hoof care trends for dressage, showjumping sport horses in New Zealand".) Now the New Zealand hoof researchers move on to the racetrack.

Research: Farriery and Hoof Care Data Collected for Dressage, Showjumping Sport Horses in New Zealand

Not too long ago, a sport horse at an international show could trot by and you could tell what nation he was from by the way he was shod. Those days are gone, but there are still distinct differences in some parts of the world. We'd do well to document them, while we still can. And in at least one country, they have.

There was once a time when you could look at a foot and practically see the national flag. Those big, broad Dutch toe clips. The heel-to-heel fullered shoes of the British. The daring of an American rider to compete in a heart bar shoe. The way farriers of all nations displayed subtle national preferences in how and where they drew their clips or executed a nailing pattern or finished their heels or chose where to position their stud holes, or even how many stud holes they drilled.

The Anzac Hoof: Where were the farriers during the battle for Gallipoli?

The Anzac trophy hoof / inkwell lives in the heraldry collection of the Australian War Memorial.

Today, a salute to our friends in Australia and New Zealand, where it's Anzac Day. It's not exactly a holiday; it's a day of remembrance, lest the people in those countries ever forget the extreme national tragedies experienced during World War I when Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) forces landed on the Turkish coast in 1915 at a place called Gallipoli. According to the Australian War Memorial, more than130,000 died, on both sides, during eight months of trying to take the strategic piece of land.

What most people know about Gallipoli is the terrible Australian loss that occurred on April 25, 1915, when half of the 500 unmounted members of the Australian Light Horse cavalry who charged ashore were mown down and killed. The moving 1981 film "Gallipoli", starring Mel Gibson, tells the story.

While the Australian Light Horse and New Zealand Mounted Rifles were trained as cavalry, they fought on foot at Gallipoli. Their horses waited in Egypt. A large corps of international farriers waited with them, to care for them, keep them shod, and help them adapt to life in the desert. 

They kept themselves busy, and hung on the news drifting back to Egypt about what was happening to their countrymen at Gallipoli.

Kiwi Farrier Finesse: What's Underneath the Burghley Horse Trials Best Shod Horse?

When is a horseshoe more than a horseshoe? When this much work goes into it. This shoe looks like other British-style shoes nailed onto event horses, but it was specially crafted for the winner of the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials last week. Ringwood Sky Boy, ridden by Tim Price, and shod by Andrew Nickalls, won the Best Shod Award from the Worshipful Company of Farriers. This article describes how this horse's shoes were different from the other 60 horses who competed. (photo of Ringwood Sky Boy's front foot courtesy of Andrew Nickalls)

As is becoming a custom, the Hoof Blog's articles about a "best shod" winner at a major three-day event is split into two parts. First comes the announcement, and the inevitable curiosity about whether the best shod horse is also one of the top-finishing horses. That's the easy part, once the winner is announced.

Burghley Best Shod Horse: Who Won the Worshipful Company of Farriers Eventing Prize?

New Zealand rider Tim Price and Ringwood Sky Boy are in fifth place after dressage at the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials in England. But they have already won one event: the Worshipful Company of Farriers' Best Shod Horse Award. Photo © Libby Law.

File this under "breaking news", with more details to follow.

New Zealand rider Tim Price and Ringwood Sky Boy are tied for fifth place after dressage at the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials in England. Tomorrow they will face one of the world's most formidable cross-country courses. But they have already won one event: the Worshipful Company of Farriers' Best Shod Horse Award.

Laminitis Researcher Ray Geor to Leave US for Post in His Native New Zealand

Edited from a press release 

Beginning in 2015, Massey University's College of Sciences in New Zealand will be led by internationally-recognized veterinary and agricultural science specialist Professor Raymond Geor, BVSc, MVSc, PhD, DACVIM.

Professor Geor is currently Professor and Chairperson of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine in the United States. In recent years, his research and publications have been invaluable to the understanding of obesity and Equine Metabolic Syndrome in horses, and how it may relate to laminitis, as well as more than 180 other research papers in equine nutrition and physiology.

The university Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey announced today that Professor Geor will replace the current Pro Vice-Chancellor of the college, Professor Robert Anderson, who is retiring later this year.

Professor Geor is a Massey Bachelor of Veterinary Science graduate (1983) who has worked in tertiary education in the United States and Canada for most of the past 30 years. He was raised in Havelock North and attended St John's College in Hastings, both in New Zealand.

He has a Master of Veterinary Science from the University of Saskatchewan, a PhD in Physiology from The Ohio State University and breadth of institutional experience in veterinary medicine and agriculture as a leader/administrator, professor, clinical veterinarian, teacher and researcher.

That experience includes his current role at Michigan State, as well as posts at Virginia Tech University, Kentucky Equine Research Incorporated, University of Minnesota, the University of Guelph and the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, as well as a practicing veterinarian in New Zealand.

Geor has been a frequent presenter in the research program at the International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot in West Palm Beach, Florida.

He will join the university in March next year.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is the news service for Hoofcare and Lameness Publishing. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a headlines-link email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.  

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Disclosure of Material Connection: The Hoof Blog (Hoofcare Publishing) has not received any direct compensation for writing this post. Hoofcare Publishing has no material connection to the brands, products, or services mentioned, other than products and services of 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.

World Equestrian Games Farriers: Other Countries Heard From

The World Equestrian Games had a staff of French farriers on staff at the vet hospital; here you see two credentials for Jean Michel Goubault and Fabrice Cave. Nigel said they worked at Haras du Pin, the National Stud in Normandy.

The whole world was there, so there were bound to be more farrier pictures to show you. Thanks to British farrier Nigel Perrott, eventing team farrier for Ireland, who snapped (and shared) these photos.

Farriers Finish 1-2-3 In the Saddle--Not in the Forge--at FEI Bayer New Zealand Showjumping World Cup

Something caught my eye today in a news release from the always-helpful Equestrian New Zealand High Performance Media Liaison Officer, Diana Dobson.

New Zealand Farrier Stuart Muir Joins Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital Podiatry Center in Kentucky

New Zealand farrier Stuart Muir is now in the USA working at the Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital Podiatry Center in Lexington, Kentucky (image by Fran Jurga © Hoofcare Publishing)

New Zealand farrier Stuart Muir has crossed the Pacific and joined the staff at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital's innovative Podiatry Center in Lexington, Kentucky.

Muir has been working at the clinic for about six months, but this weekend he took the stage at his first farrier-vet seminar with podiatry center director Scott Morrison DVM. The team traveled to New York to share their expertise at the Equine Clinic at Oakencroft near Albany. The clinic hosts a vet-farrier podiatry seminar each October and invited Morrison back for the second year in a row.

Muir is a native of Christchurch, on the south island of New Zealand, and a 14-year veteran of the farrier profession. In New Zealand, he shod sport and race horses; he is a rider and had taken up Western riding before he and his wife made the decision to move.

How do you prepare for a high-profile job like staff farrier at Rood and Riddle? Muir is a certified farrier through the New Zealand national system and said that, like so many others, he acquired the skills needed for his position at Rood and Riddle by independently pursuing ways to further his education. He traveled to Australia to attend farrier education events with icons like Chris Pollitt and Grant Moon, as well as events at home in New Zealand, but in 2010 won a grant from the Equine Research Fund of New Zealand that financed a trip to the United States.

At the Equine Clinic at Oakencroft, farrier Stuart Muir worked on a pair of front shoes that illustrated two different ways to achieve asymmetric collateral ligament support  for the front hooves of a barrel racing horse. And then he nailed them on. (image by Fran Jurga © Hoofcare Publishing)

As part of that trip, Stuart spent a week doing an externship at Rood and Riddle, which was followed by a second externship in 2011. When fellow New Zealand farrier Rodney King left Rood and Riddle to return home, Stuart was looking into what it would take to fill the vacancy.

Stuart and American Jeff Henderson are currently the two farriers who work fulltime for Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital. The Podiatry Center employs five veterinarians, including Dr. Morrison, and numerous technicians with equine podiatry support expertise.

--written by Fran Jurga

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To learn more:
Gateway page to the New Zealand government definition of a "farrier" and explanation of the national farriery training and certification program there.

New Zealand government horse careers interview on farriery as a career with Stuart Muir 

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.  

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.

Racing Two-Year-Old Thoroughbreds: Does It Promote Longer, More Successful Racing Careers? Kiwi Numbers Might Not Tell the Whole Story

Zenyatta was the exception to the rule, if judged by the New Zealand statistics. She began her phenomenal racing career in the fall of her three-year-old season. (Dave Cooper photo)

Just published: The association of two-year-old training milestones with career length and racing success in a sample of Thoroughbred horses in New Zealand JC Tanner, CW Rogers, EC Firth Equine Veterinary Journal. doi: 10.1111/j.2042-3306.2011.00534.x

New research, published this month the Equine Veterinary Journal (EVJ), has suggested that exercise early in life has a positive effect on musculoskeletal health and may have a positive impact on the future racing careers of Thoroughbreds.

The study looked at the association of two-year-old training milestones with career length and racing success in a sample of 4683 Thoroughbred horses in New Zealand. Retrospective data were obtained from the Thoroughbred foal crop born in 2001/2002. Three training milestones were observed: 1) registration with a trainer, 2) trialling to assess race potential and 3) racing.

The association of the training milestones with career length was measured by assessing the number of race starts and the number of years raced.

The results:

1. The horses that raced as two-year-olds had significantly more race starts during their careers from three-years-old onwards than those first raced as three-year-olds or older.

2. Horses that raced as two-year-olds had significantly more years racing.

3. Horses registered with a trainer, trialled or raced as two-year-olds were more likely to have won or been placed in a race than those that achieved these milestones as three-year-olds or older.

4. In addition, horses that first trialled and raced as two-year-olds had greater total earnings than those that first trialled or raced at a later age.

Jasmine Tanner of the Institute of Veterinary, Animal and Biomedical Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand, who instigated the study, concluded: “Musculoskeletal injuries are one the main causes of wastage in racing and days lost from training. This early study indicates that horses in training or racing as two-year-olds may have better musculoskeletal health throughout life than those first in training or racing at a later age. This could have a positive impact on their future success in racing. If this is indeed the case then it may be possible to manipulate the initiation and structure of race training to reduce the risk of such injuries in the future.”

Tanner previously analyzed statistics of racing milestones for Standardbred racehorses. She is pursuing a Master's degree while also training Standardbreds and recently received an award for her achievements as a trainer. According to the university web site, her research is funded by the New Zealand Racing Board.

Before jumping to conclusions and overlaying this research on American Thoroughbreds, remember that there are environmental and medical differences in Thoroughbreds as you travel around the world. The way that horses are raised differs in the two countries, and in New Zealand, horses are racing almost exclusively on grass. They also are not stabled at racetracks but just travel to the track on raceday. The expectations placed on horses for a number of career starts differs around the world. Also, the medication rules for racing horses are very different from country to country.

It would be simple to say that these results from New Zealand are self-evident. A horse that misses its two-year-old career launch misses it for a reason, usually. It is true that some owners and trainers carefully delay a horse's introduction to racing because they want the horse to be physically mature, but most two-year-olds would have been started had they been healthy or sound enough to do it.

If comparing three-year-olds that have been healthy and in training with horses of the same age that have been unhealthy, it seems obvious that whatever caused the horse to miss its two-year-old start might turn into or be related to a chronic health or soundness issue that would compromise the horse's long-term career.

Hopefully this research won't discourage responsible owners and trainers from treating each horse as an individual and starting its training at the optimum time for that horse.

Take heart: Champion mare Zenyatta did not start in her first race until the end of her three-year-old season. Likewise, Australian champion Black Caviar did race three times as a two-year-old but kept up her undefeated record after a seven-month layoff in her three-year-old career.

Many routes can lead to success in racing. Comparing the statistics from New Zealand with comparable data from the United States and other countries would be fascinating.

How do different countries or even different owners define "success" in terms of a horse's race career? How do you define it? And what about the bigger picture of racing: should we be judging success on the status quo of racing ten years ago?

How can we use this data to help Thoroughbred racing move into a more sustainable future?

The paradigm of "success" needs to evolve to meet a new standard that includes a horse's exit status as well as its entry age.

In an ideal world, research like Tanner's might look at both ends of a horse's career. Data should reveal how many horses exit their racing careers in a sound, healthy condition after an acceptable number of starts and with acceptable results. That would be a great measure of success and give us information we need to improve all the numbers in a horse's life.

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© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. Please, no use without permission. You only need to ask. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page). To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found. Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.  

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.

Badminton Horse Trials Farriers Prize 2009: Photos of New Zealand's Winning Best Shod Horse

We've been halfway around the world and back again this week to catch up with New Zealand team farrier Andrew Nickalls, who in turn has been celebrating his victory in one of the world's most understated and underrated competitions for farriers, the "best shod horse" trophy at the 60th running of the four-star Badminton Horse Trials on May 7-10 in Gloucestershire, England. Andrew (photo at left) is the sort of fellow you'd want in your life boat when the ocean liner is sinking. 

He simply shot pictures of the horse's feet with his cellphone and emailed them. Mission accomplished. Of course, you can't see much, but he got the job done.

 

The shoe, first: Vortex is a 15-year-old New Zealand Thoroughbred that is at the four-star ("Olympic") level. He finished 20th at Badminton, and the only things on his feet are shoes, nails and studs. That's quite something in itself. The shoes are handmade 3/4 x 3/8" concave, with side clips. 

I asked about the double stud holes, sure that it was some Kiwi trick but Andrew said: "I put two studs in the outside branch due to the fact that it's such a major competition where they are being taken in and out so often and therefore the extra is a spare one in case the thread goes!"

Side view shows the fit and the positioning and relative size and height of the clips. 

While the shoe is set back under the toe a bit, it's fit with some fullness at the heel and quarter, perhaps more than you'd expect for a horse that is going to be scrambling through a cross-country course. Andrew obviously knows this horse and knew what he could and couldn't do there. Some horses are more careful jumpers than others.

 
This is part 2 of this article; for more about Badminton's Farrier Prize, Andrew Nickalls, please read part 1 of this article, showing the horse's front end conformation and the rider's action. Click here to go there. The competition was judged by James Blurton, who has himself won the award three times with three different horses for three different riders. Jim evaluated the horses both before the competition and on the final day, to see how the shoes and feet had held up...and which horses were still sound. 

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask. Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).