Historic Hoofcare: The Ice Harvest

What you are seeing in this video is a pond in the Pocono Mountains region of Pennsylvania. This particular project is to cut ice for one residence. The video follows the workers from the measurement of the thickness to the cutting of the ice to the removal of the blocks, loading the wagons, a visit from the man who had hired them, and then the transport and unloading of the ice.

It's hard to say how much ice a residence like the one in this film would require for a year, or even if the house is a year-round residence or not. But it was important to get the ice in, and if there's a saying for the summer months about making hay while the sun shines, there must have been a similar saying in the old days about cutting ice when the mercury's down in its bulb and the roads were clear of snow drifts.

I've been thinking a lot about ice lately. The heater isn't working in my car, which means that the defroster isn't, either. It's been below zero (Fahrenheit) and ice forms on the inside of the car while I'm driving. I'm not sure why, unless it is the condensation from my breath. But all the scraping (while holding my breath) gives me plenty of time to think about ice.

My conclusion: ice is great when it's where you want it (in a hockey rink, on an event horse's pastern, in your gin and tonic). But on the inside of your car, on your house steps, and especially in the form of black ice on a curvy road at night: not so great.

To say that we take ice for granted is an understatement.

But it wasn't always that way. Ice was an industry, and that industry used a lot of horses. And ice wasn't all created equal. Different climates, different water, and all sorts of different conditions affected the quality of the ice harvest. Some years have gone done in history for either the quantity of ice that was harvested or the quality--crystal clear blocks of ice were what they wanted to pull out of a pond. A warm winter sabotaged the preservation of perishable meat and foods the next summer.

So even though horses grow winter coats, they don't grow winter hooves. Crafty yankee horsemen had to figure out how to make their horses useful 12 months of the year. And so, it came to pass, that what we call "winter shoeing" was born.

Here's the ultimate in winter shoeing: four drive-in studs, a rim of borium, anti-snowball pads and frost nails on the hind foot of a Hanoverian driving horse who is in a serious training program in Vermont this winter. He's kept fit with regular sleighing work, but changing conditions mean that he can be on hard pavement, soft or hard-packed snow, ice, mud, or state-of-the-art indoor arena footing--or any combination of those. It's ok, he's ready for anything.

Winter shoeing these days is all about special anti-snowball pads, frost nails, studs or borium (or sometimes all of these!) to prevent slipping on multiple surfaces, or in some cases, studded removable hoof boots. Where we used to un-shoe horses for the winter months, many horseowners now opt add to their horses' shoeing complexity in the hope of making their lives safer. Many stables don't allow winter calks on hind feet for obvious reasons if horses are turned out in groups or blanketed.

In the old days, the concern was less about slipping in the paddock and more about helping the working horse stay on his feet and dig into the soft snow or hard ice to be able to pull a load, which was usually on some sort of a work sled in the winter months. Horsemen became connoisseurs of calks--just the right calk for that horse, that day, that road, that load.

An exception was the unusual contraption shown in the photo at left. This strap-on ice shoe was on display at the Monetta Farrier Specialties booth at the American Farrier's Association Convention in 2009. You might scratch your head over that one, as I did, since that company is located in South Carolina, where they were importing ice, not making it! But...collectors are collectors.

This shoe is similar to the strap-on and bolt-on shoes worn around here for salt marsh haying so the horses didn't sink into the boggy ground. Except where those shoes have a platform bottom, these have a steel shoe on the bottom, with welded projectile calks protruding around perimeter. This device would have been easy to remove so the calks wouldn't be worn down on a paved road but could be used when a horse need to grip in the snow or get up a hill. I wonder why we don't see more of these, and why Never-Slip calks were used so extensively instead?

The ice industry relied on very cold weather (like today) but without a lot of snow. The conditions had to be right, and when it was, it was a community effort to harvest the ice. The horses had to be shod so they could walk out onto the ice, and that part of the history of ice shoes was made universally possible by the invention of Never-Slip interchangeable calks. Otherwise, a change in weather meant a trip to the forge to add or remove or sharpen calks. And an expense.

Harness racing on Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. From an article by Caperton Tissot in the Adirondack Almanac about ice racing. In Minnesota, the horses raced on the Mississippi River.

Here in New England and in Maritime Canada, it wasn't just the draft horses who needed ice shoes. The speedy trotters  and their sleighs set out on the lakes and ponds and often raced across the ice. In Maine, I believe they still have Standardbred racing on the ice. I've always wanted to see that (from inside a cozy warm ice-fishing shack.)

This is what an ice-racing horse would probably wear on its feet; they are still worn today, if you can find the legendary races. It is a lightweight steel shoe with a very thin roll on the edge, into which tungsten tips are embedded, using copper solder. I've seen these shoes made in farrier competitions--they are not easy! I believe that this antique shoe is from Michael Wildenstein's collection.

One of the most interesting things I've learned about ice racing was that trainers used the snow season to spell the good horses, since there was no Florida racing until the 1930s, and only the trainers with the wealthiest clients could afford to go south. What the local trainers learned is that their good horses benefited from a rest over the winter, but that sore-footed horses that couldn't race in the summer and fall when the tracks were hard often excelled on the ice and some even went back to racing the following summer. I don't know how they conditioned horses for ice racing, but it's a cinch that the ice-cold footing, the low impact and the return to use (and its resulting stimulating effects on the circulation to the foot) were a formula for salvation for a lot of horses. Or maybe they were just going faster to stay warm.

The next time you walk over to your refrigerator with the automatic icemaker and fill a glass with cubes, think of these fellows out cutting the ice on a very cold winter's day, and think of the horses diving into their feed bags because they knew they were going to have to haul the heavy ice straight up a steep hill. Maybe those calks did a little double duty.

This is one of my favorite Hoof Blog photos, from back in 2008 when a terrible ice storm paralyzed New England.

Thanks to Adirondack Almanac, Minnesota Historical Society, Cape Pond Ice, Prelinger Archives, Farm Collector Magazine, Birch Hill Farm, Emily and Sarah Schwartz and all the people who've told me all the stories about the legendary ice races in Maine. I believe they exist. Somewhere.

To learn more: Right on cue, an article on the history of harvesting ice from the Hudson River was published in Friday's Troy Record in Troy, New York.

© 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.

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Kentucky Derbies Past: Shoe Your Own Derby Winner

Meshach Tenney at the stalljack in Swaps's stall before the 1955 Kentucky Derby. For the uninitiated, Tenney is shaping the heel of an aluminum raceplate in an indentation on a tool called a stalljack, which is a very lightweight replacement for an anvil that has a stake on the end and can be driven into the floor of a stall or shedrow. I didn't know they had them back then; they are very much in use today. Raceplates still come in boxes like the one you see in the straw, and farriers use tool boxes somewhat like the one in the foreground, but more likely in aluminum.

The year was 1955 and a young Mormon horseshoer/trainer/owner from out of the west threw down his bedroll and his shoeing tools in the straw of a stall on the backside of America's most famous racetrack. Meshach Tenney had come to do a job: to take care of his horse and to make sure it won the Kentucky Derby.

Perhaps the most famous and dominant racehorse ever to come out of California, Swaps was another of the great champions who was plagued by foot problems. He developed an infection in the sole of his right front foot after he won the San Vincente Stakes in January of his three-year-old year. Tenney made a leather pad for him--unheard of for a racehorse at the time--and in spite of the layup, sent him out to win the Santa Anita Derby as his only Kentucky Derby prep race.

An ultra-fit chestnut trained by Tenney's scientific principles, Swaps came east to challenge the royally-bred pride-of-the-East, the mighty Nashua, trained by Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons for Belair Stud. It was Seabiscuit vs War Admiral, East vs West all over again.

Just before leaving for the paddock, Tenney looked at the skies and added calks to Swaps' shoes as lightning crackled through the post parade and spooked the horses. But the biggest lightning was inside his horse with the padded and calked foot, who led almost the entire race before drawing away from the best horse in the East.

They hadn't even thought to nominate the horse for the other Triple Crown races. The two former cowboys who owned him thought only as far ahead as winning the Kentucky Derby and giving ten percent of the winnings to their church.

That night, Tenney rewarded himself by sleeping in the backseat of a car instead of in the stall with his horse.

Later that year, Nashua beat Swaps in a match race, but Swaps had re-injured his foot the day before. One observer said, "He was so sore he didn't know where to put that foot down." Swaps underwent hoof surgery after the race.

Tenney was smart to keep his shoeing tools close at hand; Swaps was plagued with foot problems throughout his career. From the vague way that reports are written, it sounds like he had recurrent sole abscesses in the same foot, but it is hard to be sure. At four, he popped a quarter crack in the same foot. He earned the nickname "The California Cripple", but he kept coming back.

Later in his career, Swaps was in training at Garden State Race Track when he suffered one of the most highly-publicized broken legs in horseracing history. Like a foreshadowing of the Barbaro saga to come, Swaps was diagnosed with what was then called dual linear fractures of his cannon bone in one hind leg. He was fitted with a cast, but hated it, and kicked his stall's wall, making the fracture worse. A more involved cast with metal rods extending under the foot was built for him.

Swaps was insured for $1 million, so there was a lot at stake. A sling was rigged in his stall and Swaps was hung from the ceiling for six weeks. Oddly enough, the sling was loaned to Tenney by his arch-rival, Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, the trainer of Nashua. Probably thanks in large part to Tenney's hands-on care and companionship, Swaps never suffered any ill effects from being nonweightbearing for so long. He walked out of the sling and was shipped home to California, where he began his stud career.

Thanks to the annals of Sports Illustrated and The Blood-Horse, which were used in compiling this hoof-centric account of Swaps' career. Both photos are from Life Magazine's coverage of the 1955 Kentucky Derby.

© 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). 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.

Another Word About Toe Grabs

Unless you are embedded in the world of horseshoes, you might not know what a toe grab is. It is cleat, basically, that protrudes from the toe area of a horse shoe. Many people believe that horses need something to push off from, particularly when leaving the gate, and the toe grab was designed to do that.

Toe grabs come in many lengths. The most extreme are Louisiana and Quarter horse toe grabs. Most racehorses wear regular or low-toe shoes if they have toe grabs, and most of them are on the hind feet.

Toe grabs are an adaptation of toe calks used on draft and driving horses that had to go over ice and snow in the old days. Part of a horse's maintenance in the winter included sharpening the calks. One of the major advances in horseshoeing in the late 19th century was the invention of the removable heel calk, which caused such a stir in American industry that federal intervention was needed! (But that's another story...)

Shoes are available with traction devices on the heels and they can also be added to the shoes if the track is slick or wet. Calks can also be forged or the tip of the heel of a race plate can be bent at an angle.

It is often said that the United States is the only country that allows toe grabs, and that is untrue. First of all, most racing around the world is on grass courses, especially Europe and Australia. Horsemen and horseshoers in those country are pretty horrified by the idea of toe grabs, but they also do not race on dirt.

Dave Erb of Victory Racing Plates shared with me a good rule of thumb. I asked him what countries allowed toe grabs. He said, "Anyplace with the word 'America' in it: North America, South America, Central America."

I've never forgotten that.

I think that the shoe manufacturers are a wealth of information about what works and what doesn't. I hope they will get involved in these discussions about shoeing rule changes and join us in Saratoga next month.

Note: "Hoofcare@Saratoga" will host two sessions specifically on racehorse shoes in the news. On August 5th, members of the Grayson Jockey Club Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit's Shoeing Committee will present new research and answer questions from 7 p.m. on at the Parting Pub in Saratoga Springs, NY. On August 12, a double session at both the National Museum of Racing (in the afternoon) and the Parting Glass (in the evening) will cover racing surfaces and hoof injuries.

Please see these other posts for more on toe grab rules; please note that most of the activity has occurred within 30 days of the recommendation from the Jockey Club:

(today)Hoofcare@Saratoga Event Series topics, week by week by 2008

(yesterday)Keeneland and Turfway ban toe grabs and traction on front and hind shoes

(July 16, 2008)Penn National Gaming Tracks to Ban Toe Grabs and Traction on Front Shoes

(July 14, 2008)Kentucky Horse Racing Commission Announces Plan to Ban Traction and Grabs on Front Shoes

(June 18, 2008) Jockey Club Calls for States for Nationwide Ban on Grabs and Traction on Front Shoes

(June 4, 2008) ESPN video clip with Belmont shoer Tim Shortell on basic racetrack shoeing and shoes

(April 30, 2008) Kentucky Derby: Shoewear of the Fast and Famous

(March 13, 2008) Shoes and Surfaces at the Grayson Jockey Club Foundation's 2008 Welfare and Safety Summit

(February 21, 2008) California Reports on Horses Since Toe Grab Ban, Switch to Artificial Tracks

(June 2007) Indiana Bans Toe Grabs in Response to GJC WSS Recommendation
(June 2007) 2007 Grayson Jockey Club Foundation Welfare and Safety Summit Shoeing
Committee

(May 2007) State Racing Commissioners Encouraged to Ban Toe Grabs