Kerry’s Holistic Hoofcare

17/10/2025

Xrays of Beaus front feet.

17/10/2025

Been a while since I've posted any of my own work. Here are progress xrays of a 21 year old metabolic pony. Beau had a laminitic episode in January this year ( previous episode was 18 months prior) xrays were taken and we started 2 weekly trims for the first 8 weeks then back to 4 weekly trims. We've had good steady progress by lowering heels and bringing the toes in. Xrays were redone in August.
Top pics are January xrays, bottom pics are August xrays, these pics are the hinds and were the worst affected. As you can see there was little sole depth under where P3 was rotated but we have built quite a good depth, we have a better connection with P3 and laminae growing down and also bone column alignment.
We still have a little way to go but its very promising and Beau is more comfortable.
Its always a challenging with metabolic ponies and horses but with careful management it is possible for a full recovery.

06/09/2025

Explore the concept of self-trimming hoof care inspired by the movement of wild horses in diverse terrains.

30/08/2025

Great explanation

26/08/2025

🌱 𝗔 𝗟𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜𝗻 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽

🐴 Spring is quite literally just around the corner, and with the change of season often comes a change in pasture growth and the nutrient requirements of horses.

🌾 If you have a harder keeper, you’ll probably welcome the warmer temperatures and increased forage quality with open arms as it will likely take some pressure off of the supplementary feeds of hay and concentrates you’re having to provide.

🍬 If you have an easy keeper (I am looking at all of the ponies who resemble marshmallows right now), spring can be one of the most challenging times of year because the increased calories, sugar, and starch in pasture often mean a widened waistline and unfortunately an increased predisposition to metabolic issues and laminitis.

⚖️ An overweight horse is not what you want at the end of winter, as they are likely to gain even more weight if their pasture intake and diet is not managed carefully. Horses are metabolically programmed to drop off in condition during colder months, and increase in condition when the weather warms and pasture nutritive values improve. This is what helps them to regulate their body condition and metabolism over an annual period. Domestication has seen humans over-feed and under-work equines and subsequently increase the occurrence of obesity, metabolic issues, and laminitis as a result.

🗓️ So, with spring not too far away, what measures can you put in place to prevent health issues in our equine friends?

✅ Remember that as pasture availability increases, so does your horse’s digestible energy (calorie), protein, sugar, and starch intake. You may find your horse needs less supplementary feeds to ensure their energy intake isn’t exceeding their energy output.

✅ The vitamins, minerals, and essential amino acids provided by your horse’s forage intake will likely change which may mean you need to make adjustments to any other vitamin, mineral, and amino acid sources in the diet to ensure that toxicities, deficiencies, or imbalances don’t occur. Some of my clients prefer to engage in Review Consultations for their horses based on seasonal changes.

✅ Mycotoxins are likely to have a party when pasture begins actively growing and increasing in sugar. The symptoms of Mycotoxicosis can include reactive behaviour, photosensitivity, greasy heel, mud fever, rain scald, respiratory distress, and poor skin and coat quality among other issues. A toxin binder can make all of the difference in the diet of a horse grazing pasture or hay that has been infected by Mycotoxins.

✅ Actively growing pasture = increased sugar levels. Spring is well-known for producing hot, excitable, crazy, reactive behaviours in horses but there is always a reason why. It is also worth noting that short, stressed, or overgrazed pasture is likely to be higher in sugar than longer, mature pasture is. Please don’t put obese horses and ponies in an overgrazed paddock and assume spring won’t negatively impact them.

✅ Restricted grazing times, track systems, grazing muzzles, and substitutional feeds of lower quality/calorie hay and straw are often necessary for obese or metabolically-challenged horses and ponies. Pasture sugar levels are generally lowest between 3am-10am, although if there has been a frost, the grass will have stored sugar which makes it unsafe for horses who require careful management.

✅ Regularly check your horse’s digital pulse! Heat and a digital pulse in the hooves and lower limbs can be an early warning sign of a pending laminitic episode.

✅ If you are unsure of what you should be feeding your horse, employ the services of someone who is qualified to assist you. The cost of an Equine Nutrition Consultation often pays itself off very quickly and the added bonus is you know you won’t be feeding anything unnecessary, unhealthy, or counter-productive.

🫶🏼 Please share!

16/08/2025

🐴 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗨𝗹𝗰𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗕𝘂𝘆

💸 We as human beings definitely love to overcomplicate the way we feed and manage our horses. While yes, there are certainly instances where some horses do require ulcer preventatives, there are several management tools we can implement that are much cheaper than most medications, treatments, or supplements and yet are continuously overlooked when we suspect our horses may have ulcers.

🌾 𝐀𝐝𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐚𝐠𝐞 is management tool #1 and is arguably the most important fixture in any horse’s diet regardless of their susceptibility to developing ulcers.

👉🏼 The equine species is physiologically designed to be ingesting and digesting roughage on an almost continuous basis.

👉🏼 Horses only produce saliva (a natural gastric acid buffer) while physically masticating (chewing) their food but will continuously produce gastric acid regardless of whether there is food entering and exiting their stomach.

👉🏼 Long-stemmed roughage acts as a fibrous mat that sits in the bottom portion of the stomach and helps to prevent acid splash from damaging the non-glandular (upper portion) of the stomach.

👉🏼 A horse who is grazing on overgrazed, short, leafy grass shoots with no length or fibrous material may not be receiving enough roughage to prevent gastric ulcers if they are not supplemented with hay.

🐎 𝐇𝐚𝐲 𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐄𝐱𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐞 is management tool #2 and is one of the absolute best pre-ride ulcer preventions money can buy. It is much more effective than chaff, and lucerne hay is often more effective than grass hay.

👉🏼 In comparison to chaff, hay takes longer to masticate (chew) which results in increased saliva production which is full of bicarbonate (a natural gastric acid buffer).

👉🏼 There is some evidence that suggests the rough cut edges and short lengths of chaff paired with reduced chewing/grinding in the mouth may actually aggravate gastric ulcers if they are present. Hay tends to have more stalk and leaf, softer edges, and longer lengths which requires a little more time in the mouth to grind down prior to swallowing.

👉🏼 Lucerne is an excellent source of bioavailable calcium which acts as a natural buffer against gastric acid and may help to reduce the acidity of the stomach. While any hay type is better than none at all, this is why lucerne is often more effective from an ulcer prevention standpoint.

🌽 𝐍𝐨𝐧-𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐨𝐡𝐲𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 is management tool #3 and a factor that so many people are uncomfortable with because of how easy it is for feed manufacturers to skew, or not disclose at all, sugar and starch values and ingredient profiles.

👉🏼 Unless the horse in question is working intensely, it is unlikely that quick-release energy ingredients such as grain are necessary in the diet.

👉🏼 Where the horse is at risk of gastric ulcers, every attempt should be made to substitute cereal grains for alternative ingredients that have a lower non-structural carbohydrate content. Fun fact: beet pulp provides roughly the same digestible energy (calorie) content that oats do, but in the form of digestible/soluble fibre rather than sugar and starch.

👉🏼 Feeding an ulcer supplement (which are rarely effective anyway unless they have undergone clinical trials, are APVMA approved, and have proven efficacy of ingredients), in my opinion, is pointless and a waste of money if you are going to continue feeding grain-based premixed feeds that are low in fibre and require little chewing because they are pelletised or cubed.

✅ While not a strict list, some of my favourite feed ingredients for all horses, regardless of ulcer susceptibility, include hay (so underrated!), lucerne, lupins, lupin hulls, soy hulls, beet pulp, and copra meal.

02/08/2025

🐴 𝗟𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗺𝘀 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗟𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘀

🌱 It is almost spring in Australia and therefore almost peak laminitis season. Despite all of the science and meticulously researched information we have available on how to best support an equine recovering from laminitis, there is still so much dangerous advice circulating and I’m a bit fed up about it.

🐴 Myth #1: White chaff and hay is what you should feed a laminitic horse.

🌱 Truth #1: White chaff and hay are derived from cereal crops which almost always have a high sugar and starch content. Please, for the love of god, do not feed a laminitic horse wheaten or oaten chaff/hay.

🐴 Myth #2: Bran is a safe feed for laminitic horses as it’s a good source of fibre.

🌱 Truth #2: Bran can be thrown in the same category as white chaffs and hays given it is derived from cereal grains. It is too high in sugar and starch to be considered safe, regardless of the fibre content. It is also high in phosphorus and requires careful balancing with regard to calcium in the diet.

🐴 Myth #3: When soaking hay, the colour of the water indicates how much sugar is being soaked out.

🌱 Truth #3: The dark colouration you see coming from hay that is soaked in water has nothing to do with the sugar content and instead is the tannins and dirt leaching from the hay. Don’t assume clear post-soaking water means that the hay is low in sugar.

🐴 Myth #4: Grain-free premixed feeds are suitable for laminitic horses.

🌱 Truth #4: In my experience, laminitic horses do better on whole food diets rather than premixed feeds. It’s not only the sugar and starch content that is important, but also the protein and fat content. A grain-free feed that is high in protein and fat is still potentially unsuitable.

🐴 Myth #5: Feeds that are labelled as “grain-free” or “laminitis safe” are exactly that.

🌱 Truth #5: I know of several feeds labelled “laminitis safe” that contain cereal by-products such as oaten or wheaten chaff/hay. There are also plenty of feeds that claim to be grain-free that contain by-products such as bran, pollard, or millrun. The manufacturer’s argument is that the feed is “whole” grain-free. There is no regulatory authority that governs how feeds are marketed.

🐎 Read your feed, guys. There are so many feeds that are marketed poorly or deceptively and simply do not support the recovery of our laminitic equines or the prevention of an episode. Stop taking nutritional advice from people who are not up to speed on the latest information regarding feeding the laminitic equine.

30/07/2025

Awesome information based on actual data from horse studies... What do you use to feed your horses hay?

09/07/2025

02/07/2025

Here are the pics of Smokeys right front at the same times as his left one in the below post. Lots of nice changes. It can take years to build a good functioning foot. I'm super happy about the progress of his feet over the last 2.5 years since I got him and started trimming him myself.

02/07/2025

I haven't posted for a while and it's been 2 years since I've taken progress photos of Smokey my Welsh Cobs feet. This is his front left on different angles of the foot, you can see the progress in the early days of when I got him and the 4th pic is yesterday.
1st pic January 2023
2nd pic March 2023
3rd pic June 2023
4th pic July 2025

14/06/2025

🥶 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝘁 𝗜𝗻 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿?

❄️ This is the time of year where we start to see a real change in weather which generally involves temperatures dropping and ugly tracksuit pants being pulled from the back of the closest (or is that just me?).

🐴 What we must keep in the forefront of our minds, is that this colder weather makes our horses less inclined to drink adequate amounts of water. I see plenty of people assume that because it is no longer hot, or because their horse is no longer sweating during the day, they no longer need to supplement salt.

🧂 Why is this a dangerous decision? Because horses need sodium to trigger their thirst reflex. They don’t feel thirsty because they are hot, sweaty, and they especially don’t feel thirsty if it is cold and raining, so we must offer a source of sodium to kick the drive to drink into gear.

🌾 Winter months generally see a decline in pasture quality and a subsequent increase in the amount of hay we are feeding, which is important for digestive health and body temperature regulation, but it also means an increase in dry matter being ingested, and a higher risk of impaction colic if the horse is not drinking enough to keep the digestive tract hydrated and chugging along.

🐎 I prefer adding loose salt to a daily meal so that I know my horses have received their base requirement each day, but it’s also a good idea to leave loose salt out for them to help themselves to. Loose salt is easier to consume and kinder on teeth and tongues than blocks are in my experience.

💧As always, horses should have access to clean, cool (but not freezing!), and fresh drinking water at all times. Make sure water sources are in areas that are frequented often, and make sure the water is not too hot or cold for the horse to consume comfortably.