Preventing & Treating Hoof Cracks, Chips and Weak Walls
by Marius Cloete
Bad hooves don’t just happen - they’re made. Through ignorance, poor farm management, and out-dated advice, many horse owners contribute to the conditions that can lead to thin, weak walls and cracked, chipped hooves. While experts disagree on whether genetics is a factor in weak-hooved horses, they do agree that for a large percentage of horses, these problems don’t have to happen. Here’s how to avoid these maladies - and how to treat them if they occur.
Moisture
The hoof is designed to be moist on the inside and to have a hard, dry wall on the outside. Although it was once thought that external moisture enhanced hoof quality, that thinking is now reversed: too much external moisture actually softens and weakens hoof walls.
The most common sources of excess moisture are urine in the stall; mud baths, muddy areas around the water trough in the pasture or paddock, and standing for hours in dewy pastures.
Urine exposure is the worst, as ammonia can dissolve the hoof wall. This is completely avoidable, however, by air-drying the stall daily. Those who board should check for puddles and moisture beneath the bedding; if the surface is damp use a stall mat to get the horse up and off the wet floor.
Mud baths, once considered therapeutic for problem soften hoof walls, it can also lead to flares and sometimes bacterial wall infections. The same can be said for muddy water that puddles around the water bucket or water trough.
In addition, dry, desert areas, where a horse exposes himself to a cycle of excessive moisture and dryness, creates an environment that can cause vertical cracks in the hooves and shoes to loosen and pull off. Keep horses out of the mud by building up the low areas where puddles form, or by digging run-off trenches to drain turnout areas.
As for the daily-washed horses and those in dewy pastures, let common sense prevail. Cut back on the bathing; give your horse a good grooming and/or wipe him down with a damp sponge instead, while avoiding soaking his hooves. Arrange turnouts later in the day when the dew has burned off.
For horses whose hooves have already softened because of excessive moisture, a few days of dry footing should produce improvement. In addition, some experts recommend using hoof dressings, turpentine, or hoof hardeners on the sole to prevent excessive moisture from getting into the hoof.
Excessive Dryness
Some of the best hooves are found on desert horses. However, too much dryness, especially when combined with the rock-hard ground that extreme heat sometimes produces, can cause hooves to become overly dry. When this happens, the hoof gets hard, can get brittle and develop quarter cracks and can break or shatter when trimmed during the shoeing process.
To ease the effects of excessive heat and dryness, seal the wall with a hoof toughening product, paint the coronary band with a lanolin-based product, or have the horse wear a bit of sheepskin and a lanolin-based product beneath a bell boot.
Don’t use petroleum-based products, motor oil, or bacon grease; they can trap horn-digesting bacteria in the hoof wall.
For those who can afford it, a misting system in the barn to raise the humidity slightly can be really helpful; note that the mist is sprayed into the air, not onto the horse or its feet.
Nutrition and Supplements
Studies show that a well-balanced diet with sufficient amounts of vitamins (especially vitamin A), minerals, and amino acids is essential for strong, healthy hooves.
Often, good pasturage and hay contains all the necessary elements a horse needs. But when they don’t, a vitamin supplement can replace the deficiencies.
In some parts of the country, selenium is lacking in pasturage, and this, too, can contribute to poor hooves; the frog can turn yellow. Again, the solution is supplementation of the selenium. Be careful, though, before putting a horse on supplements: seek the advice of your veterinarian or nutritionist first, as too much selenium can actually cause a horse to slough a hoof while excess vitamin A can lead to brittle hooves.
Although the use of gelatin as a nutritional/hoof supplement was once considered beneficial, a study done by Dr. Doug Butler, farrier and former instructor at Colorado State University, found that gelatin does not help hooves at all. In fact, in great amounts, can actually have an adverse effect on hoof quality.
Additionally, while the benefits of biotin and DL-methionine are highly touted, most horses are not deficient in either. In fact, researchers studying the effects of biotin supplementation found that horses made their own biotin in such sufficient quality that the researchers couldn’t even make the horses biotin-deficient. However, for those few horses that are deficient, supplementation does help.
Farrier Care
Probably the biggest cause of weak hooves is irregular and infrequent shoeing. For most normal horses, shoeing intervals should never stretch beyond six or eight weeks. At lengthier intervals, the toe lengths become too long and the shoes slide up underneath, with the result that the heels no longer have proper support. This produces abnormal stresses on the walls, which can cause cracks, breakage and loss of the shoe.
By maintaining adequate nutrition, a proper environment, and routine farrier care, you’ll go a long way to making sure your horse’s hooves stay healthy and strong.
New Research: Preventing Hoof Cracks in horses through Computer Modelling
by Anna Tremblay, M.Sc.
The farrier is trimming your horse’s hooves and you both notice the cracks in the hoof wall. You ask your farrier, “What causes these cracks?” and he answers with “It’s too dry this year”, “It’s been wet”, “Aren’t you feeding him that supplement?” or any number of reasons. Now you have to fix the damage. Wouldn’t it be better to know if your horse is at risk of having hoof cracks before it happens? With this ability, you can reduce your worry about lameness and the costs of repairing the damage.
Many different reasons are attributed to causing hoof cracks, making it difficult to correct with any specific treatment. Ideally, matching the treatment to the imbalance in the horse’s lifestyle leading to cracked hooves is the goal of the Horse Hoof Cracks Research Project. Researchers began by developing a modelling method to estimate a horse’s risk level of developing cracks in its hooves under its present living conditions. This management tool could suggest which variables in the horse’s environment and nutrition to adjust. For example, the model might indicate better results if supplements were added to the horse’s diet rather than changing the bedding material in the stall, or perhaps hoof conditioning ointment is the way to go. Thus, the owner can put the money and effort into the product or activity that will best prevent cracks from appearing.
The pilot study for the Horse Hoof Cracks Research Project was based on a comprehensive survey questionnaire asking the owner/manager and the farrier about nutrition, living and exercise areas, activities, medical histories, farrier care and known relatives. The results from one hundred horses were modelled by an innovative method called Artificial Neural Networks. These are computer simulations that, without assuming the cause and effect, can predict what will happen. The model was then tested with similar and “never-seen” data from ten new horses to predict the degree of hoof cracking for those ten.
The following collection of input data have yielded the best results for predicting horse hoof cracks: movement vice (weaving, pawing), time spent in a stall or in a field in summer, bedding type, footing type in exercise/work areas and in fields/paddocks, whether or not hoof conditioner is applied, and specialty feeds (like beet pulp). Their effects are compounded, so it is not known which have a positive influence and which negative. Research is continuing.
This research project has been sponsored by the University of Guelph, with additional support from Henry Equestrian Insurance Brokers, Ltd., Life Data Labs, Inc., Jim Lewis Agri-Nutrition (1984), Inc., Equi-tread, Top Fit Canada Supplementary Feeds, Ltd., W. Charlot Farms, Ltd., W. F. Young, Inc., Enviro-Bed, Inc., and Mill Creek Stables.
The Mysterious Hoof Crack
Hoof cracks can be very complex. They are seen in varying degrees of severity, different locations, depths, lengths and origins. Their effect on the horse can be non-existent to crippling and they can originate from a myriad of sources, some very apparent, and others very obscure. It is important to remember the old saying, “No foot, no horse” when considering hoof cracks because they can seriously affect the usefulness of a horse. Durable, sturdy feet should be a top concern for horse owners and should be considered as important as other conformation standards.
Hoof cracks can be found at the toe, quarter, heel or bar and originate from either the coronary band or at ground level. Superficial cracks are usually not debilitating. However, should the crack penetrate the hoof wall to the sensitive inner structures the damage could be serious, causing severe pain and lameness.
Most hoof cracks are superficial and can be repaired easily through consultation with a farrier and careful care and management. Preventing excess moisture or dryness, and balancing the hoof, is the key to solving most superficial hoof crack problems. More serious afflictions will demand the attention of a farrier to find a method to stop the crack from progressing.
The View of the Hoof.  "Horse hooves are among the most crack-resistant substances in the natural world, about twenty times tougher than bone. As such, they may provide clues to researchers hoping to develop stronger materials for human use. Horse hooves, like human fingernails, are composed of cells housing braided filaments of keratin. From cell to cell, the braids run in the same direction. In hooves, these cells are glued together into horizontal sheets. The sheets are punctuated vertically with thin, hollow tubes, each of which is surrounded by several sleeves of cells. Although cracks may travel horizontally along the sheets, they are generally stopped by the tubes." (Courtesy of the Biomimicry Guild)Horse Hoof (lateral view)
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