Favorite Video: Horse Owners Beware of Seasonal Weight Gain Over Winter Months

by Fran Jurga | 2 December 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com

Most horses and ponies are not as overtly obese as this pony. The videos posted for you today explain the subtleties of weight gain in horses and their not-so-subtle effects on a horse's health. Chris Pollitt photo. (thanks!)

The red line on the thermometer is dropping. The blankets are out. The feed bucket gets an extra half a scoop. Soon it will be an extra whole scoop. Or two. In the deluxe barns, the heat comes on. "Can you bring the horses in early tonight? It's awfully cold...and make sure Bilbo has both his blankets on, ok?"

As countless horse owners continue to struggle with low-grade chronic laminitis and its more serious counterparts, we still seem to have as many overweight horses standing guard in winter paddocks as we did last winter. In spite of all the diet grain mixes, horse owners still love to feed their horses, just as they love to dress them in blankets. It's a visible sign that the owner cares, and is providing the best possible conditions for the horse. (Isn't it?) When the weather gets cold, adding more grain to the feed tub seems like a sensible, caring thing to do. (Isn't it?)

And when laminitis strikes, horse owners run through a gamut of emotions, from grief to guilt to an outpouring of excessive care and nursing. When, in most cases, it could have been avoided.

In this post you will find a three-part video from World Horse Welfare (formerly the International League for the Protection of Horses), a British-based charity that puts laminitis very high on its list of educational priorities.

World Horse Welfare horse care team leader Samantha Lewis shares good practical information with a horse owner in this video. She talks about the risks of laminitis, winter grazing, blanketing, weight taping, and a lot of other key concepts for horse owners.

She had my attention from the very first sentence: 80 percent of horses in Great Britain are overweight. How can that be? When she examines horses of different sizes and conformations, I start to understand that weight is a very deceptive variable in horses. And I may have been guilty of misjudging some horses in the past, according to Samanta's system.

I hope the regular readers of this blog will refer horse owners to this post to learn about the relationship of weight to laminitis and other health problems. If you're a vet or farrier, please recommend these video clips to your clients.

NOTE: In the shaded portion at the end of this blog article, you will see a small icon that looks like an envelope. If you click on it, you can forward this article (or any article in the entire archive of the Hoof Blog) to anyone you'd like to have this information. I think that the email icon shows up in some browsers and not others; sorry for this inconsistency.

This video set might make a great Christmas present instead of a bag of horse cookies.

Thanks to WHW for making these clips available. There's lots more information about obesity in horses on their website. For information about laminitis, please visit Dr. Chris Pollitt's laminitis research web site.

Here's Part 1:

 

 Here's Part 2:

 

 Here's Part 3: 

 

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. All images and text protected to full extent of law. Permissions for use in other media or elsewhere on the web can be easily arranged. Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online or received via a daily email through an automated delivery service. To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness, please visit our 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. Comments to individual posts are welcome; please click on the comment icon at the bottom of the post.

Take a Peek at the Perfect Gift Book: EQUUS by Tim Flach

As the holiday season dawns, please take a look at a few sample images from our featured gift book for 2008. EQUUS by Tim Flach is a deceptively simple name for an extraordinary collection of images of the horse. Just the horse. Not always the whole horse. And a collection like you have never seen before.

This will be the feature book in the Hoofcare booth at the AAEP convention in San Diego next week. If you can't be there to order one, reserve your copy now.

Specifications: Hardcover with heavyweight jacket, 14.3 x 11.3 x 1.5", (huge!), 300 thick pages of new ways to look at a horse.

Cost: $60 per book. $12 shipping in USA. No overseas orders as this book is too heavy for air mail.

To order: Fax orders to 978 283 8775. Phone orders to 978 281 3222 (office closed 12/5 to 12/12 for AAEP convention). Mail orders to Hoofcare Books, 19 Harbor Loop, Gloucester MA 01930.

Payment: Checks payable to Hoofcare Books in US funds only. Visa or Mastercard accepted (need account number and expiry date).

Fulfilment subject to availability.

Click here for fax/mail order form.

All orders subject to the schedules, delays and whims inherent in the US postal system.


EQUUS is stunning, thought-provoking and inspirational, without any text to get in the way of your own reactions. (Although there is text elsewhere in the book, should you care to read more.) This book has no connection to the magazine by the same name.

This book will never grow old. You will, but this book will grow with you. You'll see it again for the first time, every time you open it.

And you'll know horses as you never have before.

I will try to post more images from this amazing book but these are among my favorites that feature the hoof.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. Images are the property of the photographer, who kindly loaned them.

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.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Kentucky-Based FPD Expands Role in Horseshoe Distribution with Exclusive Import of Kerckhaert Shoes and Raceplates

by Fran Jurga | 29 November 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com

WinStar Farms' Colonel John wore Kerckhaert raceplates when he won the Travers Stakes at Saratoga in August. (Photo of Colonel John's hoof before the Kentucky Derby by Dan Burke)

Beginning in 2009, Farrier Product Distribution (FPD) of Shelbyville, Kentucky will assume exclusive import and distribution rights of the popular Kerckhaert horseshoes and raceplates in North America.

Steel and aluminum shoes made by the Kerckhaert Horseshoe Company, based in The Netherlands, have been sold by FPD for many years but will now be distributed exclusively from FPD’s Kentucky warehouse. The shoes are sold in farrier supply stores throughout North America.

A letter signed by Rudy, Michiel and Martin Kerckhaert was sent to store owners last week, notifying them of the change to a single importer for the shoes.

Kerckhaert has manufactured horseshoes since 1906, but the shoes have only been widely sold in North America since the mid-1980s. Kerckhaert steel shoes back then were turned, rather than drop-forged like most American keg shoes, and were (to the best of my knowledge) the first clipped shoes sold here. Kerckhaert now makes both turned and drop-forged shoes, according to Dan Burke, president of FPD.

In recent years, Kerckhaert expanded its aluminum racing shoes with the addition of Fast Break XT, Synergy XT and other designs developed to enhance breakover and/or minimize stress on the upper limb.

Kerckhaert can claim that three of the biggest races of 2008 were won by horses wearing their shoes on three different surfaces: Ravens Pass wore Kerckhaert race plates when he won the Breeders Cup Classic at Santa Anita in October 2008 on the new Pro Ride synthetic surface there. On grass, the great French filly Zarkava wore Kerckhaert plates when she won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe on turf in Paris in October, and WinStar Farms' Colonel John wore Kerckhaert plates when winning the Travers Stakes on dirt at Saratoga in August.

FPD President Dan Burke will represent his company at the 2008 American Association of Equine Practitioners Convention in San Diego, California December 6-11. Visit FPD in Booth 1635.


© 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.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

What I Was Going to Write About Today

Nonchalent carriage horse on Marine Drive in Mumbai, with the Taj Mahal in the background; photo by Bernard Duvernay.

For the past few weeks I have been following the course of a strain of Equine Influenza in India. It has been traveling from the high mountains of Kashmir down through the western side of the country. Recently, the racetracks in Mumbai were closed.

The disease was hitting working horses and racing horses and polo ponies. It has shut down racing in the country just as it did in Australia last year. But because it is India, we are not hearing so much about it.

When I heard that it had hit the carriage horses that are lined up outside the Taj Mahal in Mumbai, I thought of this photo, one of my favorite images by the great globetrotting farrier Bernard Duvernay of Geneva, Switzerland, aka "The Flying Anvil". He is also a superb photographer whose photos show that he cares as much for people as he does for horses' feet.

His fascination and affection for India are contagious.

Click here to read an interview with Bernard Duvernay about the state of farriery in India for the burgeoning Thoroughbred breeding and racing industry. (Remember that English is not Bernard's native language.)

I hunted down this image from my files and had it ready to go. Then I heard the news on Wednesday that the area around the Taj Mahal and other sites in the great teeming city had been attacked. I wondered if I should publish this photo or not.

The lastest count is 125 people dead and more than 300 wounded.

I can't imagine how the police have handled this situation. Mumbai is probably the largest single city on earth. More people life in that one city than on the entire continent of Australia. The streets aren't just crowded, they are full.

I know a lot of veterinarians and farriers who have gone to Mumbai and the outlying stud farms or to Pune to work on valuable horses with quarter cracks or laminitis. Bernard is the one who goes there to teach the local farriers and to help upgrade their skills. He convinces the stud owners that their future lies in the farriers they have, not in the farriers who come through the airport.

Non-equine footprint in a farrier shop in India, where farriers work in bare feet. (Bernard Duvernay photo)

How ironic that Danny Coyle's great (I hear) new film "Slumdog Millionaire" has just opened. It is about Mumbai. The old Mumbai. The one before this happened. I was going to see it this weekend. Mumbai in technicolor. Mumbai in action. People told me that the city was the star of the movie.

Until a week ago I couldn't have found Mumbai on a map. I didn't know if it was on the coast (or which coast) and I probably wasn't sure how to spell it. Now I can't get it off my mind.

==================================

© 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.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

Turkey Shoes: Something to Talk About on Thanksgiving When Conversation Lags

Shoeing the Goose misericord carving photographed by Giles C. Watson

For our non-USA readers: Today is Thanksgiving Day in the USA. The traditional meal stars a roast turkey. And that's just the beginning.

If the conversation lags around the dinner table today, pick up a drumstick and say nonchalently, "They used to shoe turkeys, you know."

All eyes will turn to you. In-laws will be impressed. Children will hold you in high esteem. Any corgis and border collies lying under the table waiting for a handout will say, "Oh yes, I remember my ancestors telling this tale..."

And the carving above, from a medieval church, proves it, even though that is a goose carved into a misericord, a sort of jump-seat ledge in church pews. (I highly recommend following the link to Giles Watson's site. A wealth of information about these relief carvings has been documented and Giles' photos are fantastic.) Double-click on the photo to enlarge it; the goose looks to be stabilized in a stocks and the farrier is hammering on its webbed foot.

Before railroads, the only way for turkeys and geese to get to market was for them to be herded along country roads to city markets. Drovers would purchase or consign them from multiple farmers and move great flocks toward the cities so they could be sold for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners.

You would hear the poultry flocks, and see the dust clouds, long before they passed through your town. The poultry could eat among the stubble of harvested fields as Thanksgiving approached. The drover didn't hurry them too much, since fatter birds meant higher prices for him. New England writers like Hawthorne and Emerson wrote complaining comments about the huge flocks of turkeys clogging up the roads and impeding the post or the stagecoach.

The problem was that the birds' feet and claws weren't cut out to march a few hundred miles. Turkeys were famous for just refusing to move, or they would roost up in trees and not come down. Geese apparently were much more lame than turkeys because of their webbed feet.

Cattle, too, had a hard time marching to market, and were often shod along the way. In fact, farriers were in great demand to accompany drovers so that the cattle could be shod or attended to as needed along the route. Even pigs and sheep and goats had to be shod occasionally, although pigs preferred woolen socks with a leather sole.

The drover's wagon followed slowly behind the drover, who was often on foot, and his dogs. The wagon picked up strays, or sick or lame birds. They stopped at drovers' inns, and pastured stock in rented or loaned fields overnight.

I don't know how the geese were shod in Europe, but I have read that is was some crafty New Englanders who figured out a simpler way to do it. They developed a series of pits along the route. In the first pit was warm tar; the turkeys and geese were herded into the pen and left for a bit, then moved to the second pen, which was sand. The sand, of course, stuck to the tar and made a gritty set of galoshes for the birds. About the time the tar wore off, they would arrive at the next set of pits.

It gives a new twist to the expression, "tarred and feathered", not to mention a "turkey trot".

In New England, all turkey roads led to Brighton, Massachusetts, which was home to the largest stockyards in America until the railroads (and a Clinton, Massachusetts butcher named Gustavus Swift) made Chicago possible. The 60-acre stockyard started as a slaughterhouse to provide meat for Washington's Army, which was camped nearby during the Revolution. By the Civil War era, the stockyards were surrounded by 61 slaughterhouses and drovers came to Boston from as far as Ohio. If you go to Brighton, you can still see the huge industrial plate drains in the streets along the Charles River where the stockyards stood. They were not draining just rainwater into that river.

Brighton was the end of the road for the sore-footed turkeys. And it may explain why we don't eat their feet.

Giles reminds us of an ancient Reynard the Fox ditty:

"It’s easier to revive a corpse
Robbed from a hangman’s noose
Than to stoop with iron nails
And shoe your grandma’s goose.

Bend your back, you farrier,
The goose foot on your knee,
And watch the locals gather round
And chortle for to see.

It’s easier to make sure a tooth
That’s grey and hanging loose
Than to stoop with iron nails
And shoe your grandma’s goose.

And if the goose should give a honk
As you are a-nailing
You’ll never make a goose’s smith –
‘Tis a sign that you are failing.

You’ll tear your hair out, feathers fly,
It won’t be any use,
For I’d rather shoe my grandma
Than shoe my grandma’s goose."

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm very thankful for the people who read this blog and support Hoofcare Publishing and are my friends, even if we have never met. Thank you, most of all, for helping the horses.

Buying the Thanksgiving turkey, circa 1910; double-click to enlarge and see detail. Library of Congress image.

© 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.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.

The Environmental Hoof: Will Wild Horse Feet Adapt to a Sudden Change in Climate and Terrain? Australian Researchers Switch Brumbies, Observe Hooves

By Fran Jurga and Brian Hampson | November 25, 2008 | www.hoofcare.blogspot.com

Herding horses out of the bush in Australia; photo by Dr. Chris Pollitt

One of the challenges to the paradigm of the wild horse foot as a model for domestic horses has been the criticism that most studies have been done on horses running on arid terrain in the US west. Skeptics have pointed to the platter feet of sand dune horses on the east coast of the USA and variations in herds like the Sable Island ponies that have been limited in genetic input.

Dr. Chris Pollitt was scratching his beard over that one when he launched his Wild Horse Research Project at the University of Queensland in Australia last year. Would it be enough to study generic brumby hooves in the wilds of Queensland? Or would he need to hoof it further afield?

For the past six months, Pollitt and his lead researcher, hoof science PhD candidate Brian Hampson, have indeed been hoofing it, to the wilds of the far Australian outback.

“The aim of this project is to determine if the typical shape of the feral horses’ feet from soft sandy country will develop into the typical shape of feet of the rocky country feral horses when placed on hard rocky country for six months,” writes Hampson. “The reverse case will also be tested.”

“There is currently no evidence that horses’ feet can adapt to suit the terrain they are moving over. If the foot type of the feral horse can change by changing the substrate, then domestic horse’s feet, too, can be presumed to respond to a change in environment. We will demonstrate that sub-optimal foot conformation can be rehabilitated by movement over the right terrain.

“It has been confirmed during the first 12 months of this project that feral horses living on soft sandy country have long and often splayed hooves. Feral horses living on hard rocky country have short, rolled hooves. We will swap six horses from each of these environments for six months to test the effect of the environment on the foot type," he writes.

This foot collected during previous studies from the Waterloo Station bush camp is from a horse that lives on dry rocky ground. (Chris Pollitt research series photo)

This hind foot is typical of the brumby feet from the sandy environments of Australia. (Chris Pollitt research series photo)

He continues: “It is hypothesized that the foot type of the subject horses will switch from the sand model to rocky model and vice versa. We hypothesize that it is the environment that shapes the horse’s foot rather than predetermined genetic factors. It is currently believed that certain breed types are predisposed to certain foot types. By exposing the same horse to two different substrate conditions, the breed factor will be controlled.

“We will use this information to devise a better housing model for the domestic horse. The housing model may include hard substrate and movement stimulation. Our aim is to improve the foot health of the domestic horse.”

Pollitt and Hampson plan to pen an important publication from the study; the results will be presented at scientific conferences in Australia and the USA, and publicized to farriers and horse people during an Australian tour.

You know there had to be some drama and poetry in this study, as you will find if you look beneath the surface of most of Dr. Pollitt’s research. In this case, Pollitt and Hampson will saddle up and ride into the back country. No helicopters for them! They will not only capture their chosen brumbies, but gentle them and then lead them out of the bush.

The chosen environments are the sandy beaches of the Gulf of Carpentaria on the north coast of Queensland, and the rocky desert of Central Australia, 400km southwest of Alice Springs, if you have a map handy. Both locations have feral horse populations in excess of 10,000 horses and have been well studied by Pollitt’s team.

Horses will wear a GPS tracking collar for the six months of their release and a VHF beacon for relocation. Horses' feet will be photographed, radiographed, and their loading pressures and pattern will be assessed using an RS scan pressure plate, both before and after the swap. They will also measure hoof wall growth rate over the six month release period.

The Australian Wild Horse Research Project is unique in that the researchers include not only scientists and students but private citizens who are interested in wild horses or hoof physiology. Donors to the projects are eligible for consideration as mates on the trail, presuming you can brew a decent Billy Tea and waltz beside the billabong. Australia has more wild horses than any other place on earth; in excess of 500,000 horses roam freely, according to Hampson, but he notes that they are subject to periodic sustained drought and culls by "government bodies and private graziers".

Visit wildhorseresearch.com for more information about how you can support the research…or possibly be part of it. We will all certainly benefit from this Outback experiment.

PS I thought this post would be appropriate since today is the premiere of the film Australia in the USA.

© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing for the Wild Horse Research Project and Dr. Chris Pollitt. No use without permission. Permissions for use elsewhere can be arranged.

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.

Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.