Trimming - essentials

I've put up a new blog page, called Hoofcare Essentials.  Its a collection of previous posts on feeding, hoof balance and movement.  Obviously each of these is a huge topic so the posts are just reminders of key points.

The one topic I haven't covered yet is trimming, so that's today's post - I am only covering bullet points but, as many of you know, I posted lots last year on the blog about trimming; you can find more detail on the "Key blog posts" page under the section called "Trimming and celery".  Here then are what, for me, should be the golden rules.

• Every horse should be treated as the ultimate expert on his own hooves.  There are lots of different theories about hooves and trimming and any number of professionals who will give you their opinion on how a hoof should be trimmed.  That's absolutely fine, as long as whoever is trimming listens to the horse first, last, and everywhere in between and modifies what they do according to the feedback they get from the horse (and owner).  

• No horse should be less comfortable after a trim than he was before. See rule 1 - improved soundness must be the objective so if a horse is less comfortable, something went wrong.  Listen to the horse - that trim should not be repeated. I must say that awareness of this seems to have improved a lot over the last year, both among trimmers and owners, which has to be a good thing. 

• Many horses who are in regular, consistent work on varied surfaces (including roadwork) will develop hooves which are self-maintaining and will rarely, if ever, need trimming. A good farrier or trimmer should recognise and encourage this. Horses - perhaps surprisingly - can manage their feet perfectly well without us, given the right workload, environment and nutrition :-)

• If you have a horse who is regularly trimmed and has never quite got to the stage of being perfectly happy on rough, uneven ground despite being on a good diet then it may be worth holding off trimming for a few cycles and seeing how that affects his performance.  Some sensitive horses seem to benefit from being allowed to grow asymmetric hooves and removing these  apparent "flares" at every trim can make them less capable on tough surfaces.  

• Finally, don't forget that trimming is only beneficial where there is excess which needs to be removed from a hoof - for instance where a horse has excessive hoof wall growth  due to lack of work.  If structures of the hoof are weak and need to be strengthened or developed, trimming is unlikely to be the best means of achieving this.