Quarter Crack Repair: The Lost History of Hoof Patches

This story was updated in 2022

This is an example of a quarter crack repair by lacing technique, using stainless steel sutures threaded through tiny and shallow guide holes drilled with a very fine drill bit. The idea is not to shut the crack but to hold it open and stabilize it so that any infection or "heat" can dissipate before a patch is applied. Quarter cracks have varying risks for infection and may or may not be associated with an abscess somewhere else under the hoof wall. The new complete hoof wall grows down from the hairline, much as you grow a new fingernail. (Ian McKinlay photo)

Did you know it’s been more than 50 years since the “invention” of the modern quarter crack patch?

Farriers have been stitching and clamping quarter cracks together for well over 100 years now, but a unique “modern” quarter crack patch was patented in 1964 by an enterprising Los Angeles racetrack horseshoer named William R. Bane. 

At first, Bane offered to patch horses for free, just to get the word out.  Bane's first patch was on the Thoroughbred Destructor, trained by John Nerud.

A horseshoer based at southern California tracks, Bane enjoyed early success with a champion Thoroughbred aptly named "Prove It." Once patched, Prove It won six stakes races in a row, including the Hollywood Gold Cup.

In January of 1964, the US Patent Office awarded him patent number 3118449, to protect his secret method for repairing cracked hooves of Thoroughbred and Standardbreds so they could race again--and win.

It was enough of a big deal to be written up as a headline story in the New York Times.

Bane’s plan had been to train others at racetracks around the country, much like a franchise, but he ended up spending a lot of time on airplanes because owners and trainers wanted him to personally patch their horses. 

Bane’s patented secret turned out to be to cover the cleaned crack with a synthetic rubber called Neolite, a material very popular in the early 1960s for rubber-soled shoes, which were quite a sensation at the time. 

In 1962, Bane was called east to work on Su Mac Lad, who at that time was the world’s all-time high-money winning trotter. It took Bane eight hours to patch that crack for trainer Stanley Dancer, but Su Mac Lad was training the next day and raced a week later. He went on to be United States Harness Horse of the Year, with a patched hoof. He raced an impressive 151 times in his life; Bane patched him six times. The 1960s were the heyday of harness racing in the United States, and Su Mac Lad is still revered for his racing record.

Bane charged $250 for his patches in 1962, plus his travel expenses.

The steps listed for Su Mac Lad’s eight-hour ordeal were:

1. remove some of the wall behind the crack
2. reshoe the horse;
3. apply the rubber;
4. apply plastic cement;
5. wrap with tape;
6. heat treatment for an unspecified time;
7. remove the tape;
8. finish the patch to conform to hoof wall contour.

Fiberglas eventually gained popularity over Bane's rubbery patch, and then in the 1990s, two-part polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) adhesives came along for rebuilding walls, shoring up weak heels, and covering cracks after they were dry.

According to newspaper reports of the day, Bane was also called in to patch Northern Dancer, who won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness while wearing a Bane patch.

But no horse is more associated with Bane--and with quarter cracks in general-- than the great Buckpasser, who sat out the 1966 Kentucky Derby and Preakness while newspapers chronicled his crack woes, and what Bill Bane thought and did. Or didn't do.

Eventually, Buckpasser came back to racing and won just about everything, with 15 consecutive victories, setting track records and earnings records as he went, in spite of a recurring crack.

Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner
Big Brown in 2008; his cracks had cracks.
(© Ian McKinlay  photo)

I should mention that 13 (by my count) of those victories where in the second half of 1966 alone. Many horses today may not have that many starts in a lifetime, let alone do it on a cracked foot.

Buckpasser was never actually patched by Bane. He did fly from California to Florida to examine the horse days after the crack was noticed following the colt's victory in the Flamingo in March. Bane determined that the crack was infected and should not be patched right away. He stayed and checked the foot repeatedly, waiting for it dry up. He refused to patch it until he deemed it free of infection.

Bane also told the press that the crack was far back in the heel area, a difficult area to work on. Without a patch, the horse couldn't train.

A week later, a New York paper announced that the trainer admitted that Bane had not patched the horse, perhaps because of the unfortunate location or perhaps because of the persistent infection--or both. The world waited to see the great horse return to racing.

Newsday (New York) headline

Bane went back to California. Buckpasser ended up eventually being "patched" by Louis Grasso, an auto-body mechanic and sometimes harness horseshoer from The Bronx, who had some success patching Standardbreds. 

Grasso's high-tech materials were actually variations of auto body repair materials, which he described as more of a coating than a patch, when applied to a cracked hoof. He called his material "Nu-Hoof".

Ultimately, the crack bothered the horse enough to warrant his retirement after one of the most successful US racing careers in history, including setting track records, in spite of the crack. His jockey, Braulio Baeza, told the trainer that the horse had had enough and was running on heart alone, not hooves.

Penn Vet farrier Rob Sigafoos pioneered

multiple applications for polymers on the hoof.

In the 1980s, the great Standardbred Nihilator raced with quarter cracks that were patched by farrier Joey Carroll. His heel was basically removed, and he wore a z-bar shoe. 

In 1992, Carroll was in the news again, putting a patch on A.P. Indy before the Belmont Stakes that year, after the great horse sat out the Derby and Preakness, much like Buckpasser, while his foot healed. 

Before the 1992 Belmont, the New York Racing Association had to issue a press release denying that A.P. Indy was lame. Conspiracy theories sprang up when he was secretly vanned to a different racetrack to train without an audience. When Joey removed A.P. Indy's bar shoe before the race, and replaced it with a regular plate, it was news. (And he won.)

Buckpasser's quarter crack experience in the mid-1960s came at the same time that researchers Jenny and Evans at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center were publishing papers in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association on their experiments with acrylics for hoof repair. 

Twenty years later, Penn Vet farrier Rob Sigafoos continued their research with acrylics and polymers to not only patch hooves: Sigafoos had the first widely-recognized success with glueing cuffed shoes to the foot by using the hoof wall as the attachment site instead of the bottom of the foot.

Professor Bill Moyer (file photo)

Penn Vet's Dr Bill Moyer claimed to have worked on 74 different cases of quarter cracks in one year. That would average out to more than six per month. He said that most were Standardbreds; Moyer received funding from Standardbred leader Billy Haughton to study crack repair. He loaded feet in a vise and found that the crack closed when the horse was weightbearing, and sometimes even overlapped, which would pinch tissue and cause a horse a lot of pain.

Sigafoos and Moyer even collaborated on an instructional book.

The study of the hoof wall received a major boost in 1980, with the publication of Doug Leach's doctoral thesis at the University of Saskatchewan. "The structure and function of equine hoof wall" Importantly, in 1987, Canadian researchers Bertram and Gosline at the University of British Columbia delved into the structural properties of the hoof wall, as well as of keratin and the effects of moisture on wall strength.

Quarter crack repair is still a task best left to the experts. Done incorrectly, a well-meaning lacing and/or patching job done at the wrong stage of crack therapy can seal in infection so that a major problem erupts. 

Or, it could impede normal growth from the coronet, causing a hoof deformity or a growth defect in that area. The goal of repair is a clean, dry crack growing out under the protective patch so that the horse is sound and pain-free.

Today, equine podiatry has advanced to the placement of drainage tubes under patches, as well as antibiotic-impregnated hoof repair materials. We still need a way to evaluate weightbearing in field and clinic conditions, before and after patching and during the rehabilitation period, to prevent subtle gait changes or imbalances that will affect healthy wall growth around the entire circumference of the coronet.

I am fortunate to have a great library of new and old books, as well as files that bulge with notes and proceedings from the hundreds of meetings I've attended, and (most of all) input from farriers and vets who generously share their cases, experiences, videos, and photos. 

How different things were in Bill Bane's day. But one thing has not changed: Quarter cracks are still a challenge to a horse and everyone who tries to help.

In spite of the availability of skilled practitioners, in spite of advances in technology, and in spite of advanced medications and therapeutics, quarter crack recovery is still compromised by owners and trainers who fail to act quickly to intervene and who fail to appreciate the need for continued care and monitoring.  A quarter crack is not a "fix it and forget it" problem for a horse; it can be a bump in the road for an equine athlete or a prolonged, painful lameness issue that limits a horse's career, value, and welfare. 

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Big Brown's Owner Says Loose Hind Shoe "Not An Issue"

The Blood-Horse is quoting one of Big Brown's owners, Michael Iavarone of IEAH, this morning:

"His feet are ice cold, quarter crack not an issue. He had a very loose hind left shoe, but that’s not an issue."

The jockey complained that the horse was not handling the track well. Various reports from the media describe the track as loose and deep and suggest that the track was not watered because of the water pressure problems at the track yesterday (which left almost 100,000 racegoers without toilets).

(CORRECTION: This turned out to not be the case, according to one eye-witness. The track was watered. The grandstand had no water or toilets, but the track did! Other comments suggest that the holding barn did not have water, either.)

Much has been written about Big Brown's problem-packed front feet, but not much about his hinds. He won the Derby with turndowns on his hinds; turndowns are popular at Churchill Downs, according to crack specialist Tom Curl, who worked on Big Brown's right front foot. My guess is that all or most of the runners in the Derby also had them.

A turndown is the practice of turning the heels of the hind raceplate down so they become, in effect, like mud calks. They are believed to help with traction.

Big Brown's hind shoes were pulled after the Derby and he exercised and lived barefoot behind for a couple of days until Todd Boston, a shoer at Churchill, re-did his hinds.

I don't know what he had on behind for the Preakness but I do know that turndowns are illegal in New York. They do allow a small bend, but no sharp angles, that's for sure. Fred Sellerberg is NYRA's man in the paddock; his job is looking at the shoes. The guy has some sort of x-ray vision and seems to be able to spot an illegal shoe before the horse leaves the holding barn. Or at least he says he can. He just nods his head and says, "Believe me, Fran, I can tell". He is roughly my age and does not wear glasses, so I'm impressed.

Fred also would have seen a loose hind shoe. A paddock shoer, in addition to Fred, is on hand for exactly that reason and occasionally a race is held up in the paddock while a shoe is re-nailed.

So a loose shoe was probably a function of another horse stepping on it during the race or the horse stumbling and grabbing, or just normal wear and tear in the course of the race. Big Brown hit serious traffic problems in the first mile of the race and one ABC commentator suggested that he may even have been kicked by Da'Tara as he came up too close and had to be pulled back.

Watch the replay on slow-motion mode; at times it looks like Big Brown is a carousel horse, going up in the air, although still making forward progress.
Even more likely is that it was pulled loose when Big Brown was yanked up by the jockey. There are some dismal photos of the horse in biomechanical disarray as the rest of the horses charge past him. I wonder how his mouth feels today.

Tale of Ekati received a tough gash in the race and has a pretty serious wound on his leg, according to trainer Barclay Tagg.

When Rags to Riches didn't come back after the Belmont last year, she was sent to New Bolton Center for a complete medical and orthopedic analysis, from head to toe. Coolmore (her owners) insisted. They didn't find anything wrong that was ever made public but the filly spent the summer hanging out in her stall.

IEAH is the midst of building a new equine hospital next door to Belmont Park. Let's hope that they put their future staff to work checking out Big Brown so he can run again. If they are going to be in the equine health business this fall anyway, they can get a head start and protect the horse from further injury or illness if there is any doubt.

What Would Mr. Gibbs Say About Big Brown's Feet? Horseshoes Mean Something to New York's New Governor

What would the New York governor's great grandfather think of glueable Yasha shoes?

New York Governor David Paterson has a lot of firsts to his credit. He took over the leadership of the state on March 17, after the resignation of then-governor Spitzer. Paterson is New York's first African-American governor and the state's first blind governor.

What we didn't know until today is that he has piles of horseshoes in his past. While presenting the Belmont Stakes trophy to trainer Nick Zito, Paterson shared his family's horseshoeing connection.

Paterson's great grandfather was horseshoer to the powerhouse breeder/owner H.P. Whitney, owner of Greentree Stud, in the years after World War I in New York. In particular, Mr. Gibbs shod a horse with the apt name of Upset. Upset would hand the great Man 'o War his only defeat, in August 1919 in the Sanford Stakes at Saratoga, with Mr. Gibbs' shoes on his hooves.

Mr. Whitney, who just happened to be one of the wealthiest people in America, rewarded his blacksmith by buying him a house in the Fort Green section of Brooklyn. He also bought homes for some other members of his stable staff.

As Paterson describes it, the new house helped lift his family to a new level of possibility in pursuit of the American dream. Without Whitney's generosity, the house wouldn't have happened. It was the house where Paterson spent his childhood. And it was a house that some very lucky horseshoes built.

Thanks to the Left at the Gate blog and other sources for help in piecing together this story from Governor Paterson's remarks.

Big Brown Turns Beige, Never Fires in Belmont Stakes; No Triple Crown Winner for 2008

No Triple Crown This Year: Big Brown was eased to finish last after a bumpy, unhappy trip for the first mile or so of the Belmont Stakes. That's assistant trainer Michelle Nevin, his regular rider, who ran out on the track to take charge of the horse. Photo credited to TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images. 

Oh boy. They turned for home in the 2008 Belmont Stakes and there was he was: Big Brown, patched hooves flashing in the summer sun, rolling along on the outside, ready to make his move, just like he always does. Make his move. Make his move. Make his...

Jockey Kent Desormeaux stood up in the irons and pulled back and up. The race was over for his horse. They both knew it, apparently. He pulled up and cantered home last.

In an interview later he is quoted as saying (referring to the patched hooves), “There were no popped tires. He was just out of gas."

Did I miss it or were there no on-air post-race interviews with the IEAH power brokers who own Big Brown? Did they not congratulate the winners? I understand that it is the trainer's responsibility to be with the horse and make decisions about his health and care back at the barn.

Winning trainer Nick Zito, one of New York's most popular and successful trainers, won the race with a long shot who ran an incredible race and just kept going. He deserved to be congratulated.

Also to be congratulated: the Japanese connections of pre-race second favorite, the lightly raced Casino Drive, who is laid up with some sort of bruise on his foot. They chose not to poke holes in their horse's sole to drain the problem area. It probably could have been soaked, poked, and drawn out and then patched or glued. But kudos to them: they didn't take a chance with their horse.

Dutrow took all the chances. His horse has a patch on a patch on one foot, the remnants of a reconstructed heel made out of adhesive material on the other. His horse missed his monthly Winstrol (steroid) injection in the face of criticism over the medication, even though it is legal (whether right or wrong, it is legal). He was running without the turndowns that he sported on his hind feet in the Kentucky Derby (note that the jockey complained that the horse wasn't handling the track well) and he was coming back from rundown injuries on his hind pasterns and heel bulbs suffered in the Preakness.

And it was 93 degrees and humid. And his third race in five weeks.

Big Brown's trainer took all the chances. The jockey chose not to take a chance, not to whip and drive the horse to a middle of the pack finish over the line with possible dire consequences in the final furlong in front of the grandstand. He did not know what was wrong with his horse. He just knew he was out of horse.

Meanwhile, a horse we never heard of ran a great race for a great trainer at their home track in their home town.

Pop the champagne anyway. We've just come off three months of high-profile reporting about horses' hooves, injured hooves, and the people who are trying to help horses get sound and stay sound. Hoof repair specialist Ian McKinlay is still the man of the hour and has made a lot of friends in the media that will benefit the rest of the hoof world.

One more quote, again from the jockey, referring to Thoroughbreds of the past: “I cannot fathom what kind of freaks the Triple Crown champions were.”

So pop the champagne, and I'll do the same. Maybe stay home tonight and watch some archival video footage of Affirmed, Seattle Slew, Secretariat, Citation, Assault, Count Fleet, War Admiral, Gallant Fox, Omaha, Whirlaway and Sir Barton. Enjoy the freak show, it's as close as you're going to get, for now.

ESPN, CBS Hoof It with the Hoof Pros at New York's Belmont Park

ESPN spent a morning with Tim Shortell at Belmont Park this week. Tim, a horseshoer on the New York tracks, explained the difference between low-toes, XTs, mud calks, etc. and shod a horse for the camera. Click here to go to the ESPN site to watch the video; sorry I can't post it here. Tim looks more like Clint Eastwood every day.

Meanwhile, CBS News called Hoofcare and Lameness to track down Ian McKinlay, and once they found him, reporter Dr. Debbye Turner (she's also a veterinarian) did a weekend feature on the quarter crack specialist. They will be posting the video online. It's nice to know that CBS reporters and producers are reading this blog!

Event Wrapup: UPenn Technical Horseshoeing Symposium at New Bolton Center

2008 speakers at the University of Pennsylvania's Technical Horseshoeing Conference: (left to right) Course organizer and UPenn resident farrier Pat Reilly; Dr. Jeff Thomason from University of Guelph, Canada; equine podiatrist Bryan Fraley DVM from Kentucky; hoof repair specialist Ian McKinlay of New Jersey.

Technical horseshoeing covered a lot of ground at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Kennett Square on Saturday. From biomechanics to anatomy to podiatry and finally to 911-level hoof repair, speakers touched on many aspects of the scientific and practical bodies of information about the horse's hoof. Speakers zoomed in and out of the gray areas like the cars that would be passing me a few hours later on the way back to the Philadelphia airport.

The morning began with introductions and an overview of the new laminitis research center (tentatively called The Laminitis Institute) at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Jim Orsini, associate professor of surgery at New Bolton Center and director of the Institute, explained the exciting new concept to the audience. Click here to read more about the Institute.

Dr. Jeff Thomason lectured on the basics of foot biomechanics and the research undertaken in his laboratory at the University of Guelph in Canada. Included in his research was updated material on the finite element analysis modeling he has been working on, with beautiful graphic images. Later in the day, he spoke on the nuances of functional anatomy and the "design" of the horse's legs, with interesting images and challenges.

Thomason (shown at left, looking at a hoof capsule, in a University of Guelph photo) enlivened his presentations by standing on dinner plates (illustrating that weight alone won't fracture a fragile object), then smashing it with a hammer (showing the effect of force being much more destructive than mere weight). It's not easy keeping an audience awake during a biomechanics lecture, but smashing dinner plates with a rounding hammer definitely set a new standard.

Interestingly, Thomason's biomechanics research on vibrational properties of horseshoes found that unshod feet actually showed an increase in vibrationi over shod feet of about 25 percent, but he felt that it was statistically irrelevant, other than as an anecdote for those who use vibration as a criticism of horseshoes.

Conference leader Pat Reilly, who is now resident farrier at New Bolton Center, reviewed his use of high-tech measuring systems to question the probability factor of correcting what he feels are the universal malady of the horse's foot: underrun heels. According to a study quoted by Pat, as many as 60 percent of horses are affected by low-heel syndrome and he maintained that every foal he has seen has had underrun heels. He defines "underrun" at being as least five degrees lower than the toe angle, as set in stone by Tracy Turner DVM in published papers.

Reilly contends that underrun heels is an irreversible condition in many horses and a variation of normal hoof conformation.

Kentucky farrier Bryan Fraley DVM reviewed a deep file of cases related to puncture wounds, foot infections and cracks. He took the time to delve into the nuances of poulticing the foot, which many people skip right over. A number of his cases fell under the heading of "digital instability"--an apt moniker!

New Bolton Center has one of the best collections of antique horseshoes in the world. They were crafted in the 1800s by resident farrier and "professor of podology" Franz Enge, a German immigrant who was a disciple of the world-renowned Professor Lungwitz. At this end of the display are some modern braces and support devices for orthopedic cases.

On the second day, New Jersey farrier Bruce Daniels shared insights into the lovely antique shoes in the University's secret vault of farrier treasures and New Zealand native farrier Trevor Sutherland worked at the forge with attendees.

Man of the moment: Ian McKinlay (Pat Reilly photo)

Hoof repair specialist Ian McKinlay escaped from the mobs of press at Belmont Park, where he had been working on Triple Crown hopeful Big Brown, to drive down to Pennsylvania and speak at the University of Pennsylvania's Technical Horseshoeing Symposium on Saturday.

Yes, he did show Big Brown's week-old quarter crack, which is sutured (not patched over) in a way I had not seen before. Hopefully, I can post some photos soon.

McKinlay acknowledged that that farrier world "is trying to move forward" but gave evidence of progress on several fronts, such as the loosening of the Belmont track after Big Brown's trainer, Rick Dutrow, complained that it was too hard. "Times slowed down," McKinlay said, "and people were saying, 'Hey, nice cushion'!"

He asked the audience to help him list the disadvantages of glue on shoes and went on to explain more about Big Brown's abscesses and their consequences. He bemoaned the practice of leaving the bars lower than the walls, saying that this led to the prevalence of sore heels in racehorses.

This conference's goal, according to Pat Reilly is "to present scientific information relating to hoofcare"; "to describe techniques for managing hoof-related pathologies"; and to "create an atmosphere of open dialogue between New Bolton Center and the farrier/veterinarian community".

Those are all lofty and worthy goals. As with all such undertakings, the hardest step is the first one. By re-establishing this conference on the worldwide hoof science calendar, the University of Pennsylvania has the potential to add a valuable platter of substance to a table often overloaded with appetizers and desserts.