Hoof do you like in the Derby? Shoewear of the Fast and Famous

A feet-first introduction: Meet Visionaire, trained by Michael Matz. He's wearing a Kerckhaert aluminum race plate, imported from Holland. Visionaire's farrier is Todd Boston.

One shoe is worth a thousand words for Kentucky's Colonel: Look at this shoe shape. It's the "Fast Break" raceplate from Kerckhaert, also imported from Holland. Notice how broad the toe bend is. Colonel John is owned by WinStar Farm and trained by Irishman Eoin Harty. His farrier is Steve Norman.

Blog readers must wonder if there are other horses entered in Saturday's Kentucky Derby besides Pyro and Big Brown. The blog has focused on the special footwear worn by those two...but the other 18 horses have feet and some special shoes, too!

Our friend Dan Burke of Farrier Product Distribution (FPD) must have some sort of a VIP backstage pass at the Derby. He seems to show up at the stakes barn every year and usually has some great photos to share.

Thanks to Dan for sharing these photos. I guess it is no coincidence that these two horses are wearing Kerckhaert plates, as was War Emblem a few years ago. Dan's company imports Kerckhaert shoes to the USA. Thanks, Dan!

PS For all the racing people checking in to this blog, especially the ones referred by the New York Times (thank you!): Look at these feet and you will see why we put so much store in the size, shape, and fine points of a horse's hooves. You can easily see that the frog (triangular tissue protruding on base of foot) is very different in each horse, as is the shape of the foot. There are always differences between front and hind shapes, and often between left and right, on the same horse, but the difference from horse to horse may not be obvious until you see two photos together, as we are showing you here. Unfortunately, the horse with the best feet is often not the fastest, or else we'd have cleaned up at the betting window years ago. However, the horses with better feet stand a chance of racing longer and staying sounder. If you are going to race a gelding, you want him to have great feet!

Big Brown: The Most Famous Feet in Derby History!

Big Brown's left front foot has a raceplate glued on with a PMMA epoxy type adhesive that is custom selected. The specs used are Lord 403 with a #19 accelerator. You can see a copper "clip" embedded in the glue; it is riveted to the shoe and is used only as a receptor for additional glue. The horse had wall separations on both front feet that required repair.

Racing fans, rejoice! I have finally obtained actual close-up photos of the feet of Kentucky Derby favorite Big Brown. The following photos were taken on or about April 11, 2008, when the horse's feet were re-glued and re-shod by farrier Tom Curl of Florida, who has been working on the colt since he shipped south for the winter. 

There has been some confusion and misinformation in the press so to clarify: the colt was originally worked on by Ian McKinlay in New York, and the horse benefited from his new Yasha shoe technology and heel resection technique. Ian has been supplying photos and videos of the technique and system. 

But the horse subsequently was worked on by Tom Curl, an associate of Ian's. Tom did the work on the second foot. What you see is a collaborative effort of two experts using a new technology that has been helping a lot of horses over the past few months.

 

This is the bottom of the foot, showing the placement of the clips. The shoe has a rubber-like gasket rim pad on the inside that is half the web of the shoe. Adhesive is under the other half of the web. This is a unique modification of the "direct glue" technique used by farriers.

This foot shows the repair situation on the inside heel of the first foot, which was done by McKinlay in New York. You can see that the new heel wall is growing down.

Here's the foot worked on in Florida by Curl, showing the heel repair on the right side of the photo. The glue on the left side is just for reinforcing the shoe.

Here are both of Big Brown's feet as he looked on April 11.

Now for an update: Tom Curl told me today that he checked Big Brown's feet the day he left Florida and headed to Churchill Downs. He watched the horse gallop with trainer Rick Dutrow. 

Tom said that he used more glue than McKinlay because he knows the Derby will fall three weeks after the horse was done, and the glue can be stressed over time, so he was pro-active.

HoofTech's Custom Engineering: The Shape of Things to Come?

There's plenty new under the sun these days. Consider a new line of 3-d hoof appliances (dare we call them mere "horseshoes"?) from HoofTech, a computerized-design lab for horseshoe applications in California. The metallurgy specialty for this company is application of high-tech aircraft-grade aluminum alloys for support shoes, especially exaggerated wedges, like a thick, curvy 5-degree aluminum wedge shoe, or this four-cornered heart bar.

HoofTech encourages customers to place orders for custom shoes, made to specification in pairs. You could call this service "custom engineering" of your own line of nailable or glueable shoes. Who knows? Maybe that 4.25-degree wedge with a 3-d bar and rolled toe you've been drawing on napkins will soon be on its way to you...by the case!

High-tech HoofTech shoes are in use on the West Coast and headed your way this spring. According to the company, they've had terrific success with Quarter horses and have already notched their belt with a championship.

I'm looking forward to seeing these shoes on a horse! I didn't ask if they can be made with a belly, but it seems like computerized milling stations can create almost anything.

Maybe someday instead of forging contests, farriers will have milling station design challenge contests.

These shoes could also become support bases for hoof boots to make an elevated appliance for a tendon injury or post-surgery, for instance, instead of a patten bar.

Has anyone out there tried these?

Favorite Photo: Got Legs?

DSC_0951kopie, originally uploaded by Ton van der Weerden.

Something about this photo just spoke to me. Hint: it wasn't the flies. Thanks to Ton van der Weerden for seeing things from my point of view!

Note: If you click (or double-click, as your browser prefers) you can see the entire photo. For some reason, the blog window is cropping off the righthand portion of the photo.

Derby Update: Video of Thoroughbred Wall Separation, Shoe Procedure

Ok, racing fans! Things are coming together now! Unless this video crashes the blog once and for all, here is a complete video showing Ian McKinlay's procedure for reconstructing a blown heel quarter / subsolar abscess in a Thoroughbred racehorse. This is very similar to the procedure he used on Big Brown, Richard Dutrow's colt favored in next week's Kentucky Derby.

The second part of this video shows a top Standarbred with a similar problem.

You will also see a lot of detail on the shoe and Ian has provided a voiceover to explain what he's trying to do.

Assembling this information has been a work in progress, but this video puts it all together. Previous posts from this week and last week (scroll down the blog to read more) included a video of quarter cracks, the difference between quarter cracks and wall separations, glue-on shoes worn by Kentucky Derby contenders, and the direct rim glue application technique with copper clips and heel cushions.

Thanks again to Ian McKinlay, along with Conny Svensson, Jimmy Takter, and Richard Dutrow, and to Big Brown's owners, IEAH, for working with us to provide this information that may be helpful to other horses.

The end of the video has a link to the Tenderhoof web site, which has not gone live yet, so save that URL for future reference. This video is not an advertisement for any commercial product; Hoofcare and Lameness has no business arrangement with the shoe or the new company.

This is provided for educational purposes and to hear feedback from other professionals.

Disclaimer: Obviously, Ian McKinlay is a highly skilled hoof repair and quarter crack specialist. That is all he does and he works as a consultant to the trainer, supplementing the work of the regular horseshoer and veterinarian.

This is NOT a how-to video. Also, the problems of these racehorses are well documented, as Ian mentions, and very common. You would probably not see these problems in horses competing at other sports, and if you did, the recommended solution might be very different. Those horses might enjoy the luxury of a layup. Racehorses have work to do.

Thanks to all!

All HoofBlog text and images © Hoofcare Publishing 2008 unless otherwise noted. Video courtesy of Ian McKinlay.

To learn more about new research, products, and treatments for the horse's hooves and legs as reported to veterinarians and farriers in the award-winning "Hoofcare & Lameness Journal",
go to http://www.hoofcare.com

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The Serbs Are Coming! Will British Farriery Standards Be Threatened by "Guest" Farriers from Continent?

"The Serbs are coming! The Serbs are coming!"

Today is Patriot's Day here in my state of Massachusetts. I think that the Boston Marathon has a lot to do with why everyone gets the day off (it would be physically impossible to drive from point a to point b because of road closures and chaotic traffic, not to mention runners) but the true meaning of the holiday harkens back to 1775.

On that first Patriot's Day, Paul Revere galloped out of the city (not following the marathon route) to the villages, shouting as he went, "The British are coming! the British are coming!" True to form, the British were marching out of the Boston barracks to destroy a munitions garrison in the little farming village of Concord.

The American colonists stopped the Brits at a tiny bridge over the Concord River and thus was fired "The Shot Heard Round the World" and the American Revolution began. The Redcoats had to high-tail it back to Boston, and the rag-tag colonists chased them.

How appropriate that the headline story in today's Horse and Hound newsmagazine from London should be the gloom and doom of the world's last great traditional system of farrier education and licensing, a.k.a. "British Farriery".

First we saw holes poked in the British farrier system, as documented on this blog, as the British animal welfare authorities recognized barefoot hoof trimmers as a legitimate caregiver, as long as they did not attempt to nail on shoes. According to the new directive it will be ok to give them rasps, give them nippers, give them hoof knives...just don't give them a hammer and tongs. Don't let them play in the fire, whatever you do.

And now today's news. For weeks we have been reading on farrier forums about the specter of Britain opening its doors in compliance with European Union regulations, which state (fairly or unfairly) that "guest" farriers from EU member nations must be allowed to shoe horses on British soil.

For years, the Farrier Registration Council (FRC) has used its regulatory powers to keep the local gypsies from shoeing other than their own horses. Even American farriers and veterinarians had to get a waiver from the FRC to shoe a horse in a competition, for instance. And now it will be open doors.

Will this be the end of Britain's revered system? Most definitely not, is my guess. If the system is all it is cracked up to be, "guest" farriers may come in with their polo ponies or their show jumpers, but they won't be sticking around unless they are prepared to shoe to a standard that owners and trainers expect and demand.

The feared invasion of eastern European farriers may be all an imaginary one.

Headlines like today's make me miss icons like the late Edgar Stern, head of the venerable Kent dynasty of farriers, who died a few years ago. In my vision, Edgar would have stood, feet firmly planted, atop the white cliffs of Dover. "Come on, then!" Edgar would have said. He'd soon be giving English lessons around the teapot in his forge...and signing up some Romanian first-year apprentices.

The challenge for the Brits is not to keep the Euros out, but to export their own knowledge and know-how, if not their regimental system, to the have-nots and the hungry of the farrier world. When that day comes, it will be a better place for horses and all.

Let the reverse migration begin...and someone can shout, "The British are coming!" in a Slavic dialect.