CC’s Hoofcare

18/09/2025

🌱🐴 Spring Hoof Care & Growth Alert

With spring in full swing 🌸☀️, many of us are seeing those hooves 🦶 growing faster than they did over winter ❄️ — and there’s a reason for it!

In colder months, hooves average 6–8mm of growth per month 📏, but once the days get longer ⏰ and pasture improves 🌿🌾, growth can jump to 10–12mm per month. That’s why some horses on 5-week cycles may need to shift to 4 weeks ⏳, and horses already on 4-week cycles may need trims as often as 3 weeks ✂️🐴.

But it’s not just faster growth we need to watch for 👀…
Spring grasses are high in non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs) — sugars and starches 🍭🌱 that spike when grass is lush, stressed, or growing rapidly. Too much sugar can upset the gut 💥 and increase the risk of laminitic episodes 🚨.

👉 If your horse is showing signs of being overweight ⚖️, insulin resistant 💉, or prone to metabolic issues 🌾, it’s extra important to be diligent and have a management plan in place ✅.

Keeping hooves balanced and on a tighter trimming cycle this season not only stays ahead of the rapid growth 📈, but also reduces strain if your horse is dealing with metabolic pressure from the spring grasses 🌱💪.

Stay proactive ✅, keep an eye on those paddocks 👀🌿, and let’s give our horses the best chance for healthy, happy hooves this spring ❤️🐴✨.

13/09/2025

09/09/2025

PROFESSIONAL LONELINESS IN HOOF CARE (THE PART WE DON’T SAY OUT LOUD)

We don’t mean the quiet miles between yards.
We mean the isolation that comes from carrying responsibility that can’t really be shared.

A distorted hoof. A laminitic slide. A navicular spiral.
You stand under a horse and make a call that has consequences.

If it goes well, the horse “came right.”
If it goes badly, your trim, your shoeing package, your advice gets named.

That asymmetry is the job.
It is also the loneliness.

WHERE THE ISOLATION COMES FROM
Most of us work alone, geographically scattered, time-poor, physically tired. We triage in real time with imperfect information: pain history thin, radiographs outdated, nutrition unknown, turnout politics complex.

Confidentiality keeps us quiet when cases are messy.
Social media rewards certainty and spectacle; the day-to-day ambiguity of real rehab doesn’t play.

Add in tribal noise — farrier vs. trimmer vs. vet — and it gets easier to stop talking altogether.

HOW IT SHOWS UP
Not melodrama, just human cost.
The late-night case reviews in your head.
The extra drive to check a foot no one asked you to check.
The body that hurts sooner each season.

The cognitive load of risk: how fast can we back the toe without destabilising; how much frog to leave in a sheared heel; when a laminitic really needs box rest, not bravado.

There’s a line between burnout (chronic workload, eroded efficacy) and compassion fatigue (the emotional wear of suffering you can’t fix). Hoof care can deliver both.

WHAT MAKES IT WORSE
The hero narrative.
Being “the last hope” flatters and traps.
The pressure to say yes to everything.
Owner hope that resists realistic exit criteria.
Professional factions that punish nuance.
A credential culture that mistakes paper for competence and volume for quality.

And the algorithm: immaculate before/after photos, no twelve-month follow-up, no disclosure of the three plans that failed before the one that worked.

WHAT ACTUALLY HELPS (PRACTICAL, UNGLAMOROUS, PROTECTIVE)
– CLEAR SCOPE AND EXIT CRITERIA → Define what success looks like, what “plateau” means, and when to trigger referral or a welfare conversation.
– STRUCTURED COLLABORATION → Micro-teams (vet–farrier/trimmer–owner), short regular case huddles, radiographs tied to trim cycles.
– DELIBERATE DEBRIEF → Five minutes in the truck after hard visits: what you saw, what you changed, what to review next time. Paper trail reduces rumination.
– PEER SUPERVISION → A small, trusted circle for case discussion and boundary setting. Not a Facebook pile-on; two to four colleagues with rules and respect.

FOR OWNERS WHO WANT TO HELP THE HELPER
Pay on time.
Provide history (photos, dates, radiographs, diet).
Allow conservative pacing when tissue health demands it.
Accept that “pasture sound and content” can be a legitimate, humane endpoint.

Celebrate the small, boring wins: fewer abscesses, cleaner frogs, steadier pulses.
Ask for evidence, not theatre — it protects your horse and the person under it.

FOR THE INDUSTRY
Normalise reflective practice as professional, not self-doubt.
Put ethics, communication, fatigue, and consent into CPD alongside biomechanics.
Encourage long-term case reporting (six and twelve months), not just curated reveals.

Stop rewarding certainty where uncertainty is the honest state.
Make room for people to say “I don’t know yet,” and to change course without losing face.
Welfare improves when humility is safe.

A QUIET TRUTH
You can love this craft and admit it hurts.
You can be good at it and still feel alone with the weight of decisions.

Naming that isn’t weakness.
It’s how we keep horses — and the people who serve them — well.

If this resonates, add your piece below:
👉 What has actually reduced your load, and what do you wish we’d stop pretending about?

05/09/2025

Can officially confirm… hoofcare clients have built-in GPS. 📍🐴 Even on holidays they still manage to sniff me out for a “quick consultation.”

Lucky for me, I absolutely love my old Townsville clients 💕🌴

02/09/2025

It’s that time of year again when we start to see laminitis flaring up in ponies and horses on Spring grasses 🌾

The image above shows the rotation that can happen of the pedal bone within the hoof capsule when a horse or pony is exposed to a high sugar diet (ie. lush spring grasses). In this case the pony was diagnosed with Equine Metabolic Syndrome and Laminitis.

Please monitor your equine friends closely, keep them on a regular trim cycle with your farrier, and give us a call if they look like they are becoming foot sore as we come into Spring 🌸

31/08/2025

Calling all hoof care professionals! 🐴

We're inviting farriers, barefoot trimmers, and other hoof care practitioners across Australia to take part in an important research survey exploring the realities of our careers and the impacts on horse welfare.

This research is being conducted by one of our association members Sarah from Innovative Hoof Care Australia - with Sarah Kuyken

The anonymous survey takes around 25 minutes and asks about your experiences, challenges, and beliefs around hoof care and horse welfare. It’s open to all Australian hoof care practitioners - whether you’re qualified or not, full time, part time, or trimming as a side hustle. If you’re over 18 and receive financial compensation for hoof care services, your voice is welcome.

📌 Take the survey here: https://s.pointerpro.com/hcpsurvey2025/

✅ Ethics Approval: University of Melbourne, Project ID 32733

📝 A Plain Language Statement is included on the landing page so you can read all the details before deciding to participate.

👀 Some of you may find this survey familiar - it was initially released a few years ago, but following a pause while Sarah was on maternity leave and has since having a restructure of the research project the survey is now being re-issued. Your input is just as valuable now as it was then!

🙌 Horse owners, you can help too! Please tag your farrier or trimmer in the comments or share this post with them to spread the word.

Thank you for supporting scientific research in our profession - the more responses we gather, the more meaningful the findings will be. 💬

29/08/2025

THE UNOFFICIAL HCP SURVIVAL KIT: HOW TO KEEP YOUR HOOF CARE PROVIDER ALIVE (BARELY)

(Because apparently rasping 1,200kg of metabolic ambiguity every week takes a toll.)

Your hoof care provider is a resilient species. They operate in silence, kneel in mud, and absorb more equine dysfunction than your average field vet and therapist combined. But even they have limits. Here's how to keep yours from quietly dissolving behind the wheel of their van.

1. Snacks. Always Snacks.
Hoof care providers are powered by caffeine, pocket lint, and sheer will. If you’ve got a flapjack, hand it over. If not, offer haylage or fence post bark — they’ll understand.

2. Clean, Dry Horses.
Nothing says “I respect your spine” like a horse that isn’t caked in five layers of damp archaeology. Bonus points if they’re caught before the trimmer arrives. Double if they don’t bolt.

3. The Sacred Square Surface.
Your HCP has trimmed on gravel driveways, sloped patios, soft bog, and once — by necessity — a trampoline base. A flat surface is not a luxury. It’s a form of love.

4. Don’t Say “While You’re Here…”
They came for one horse. You’ve now released a herd of seven, all overdue and two of them unhandled since 2020. This isn’t a surprise party. It’s a slow-motion ambush.

5. Tea. But Not Too Much.
Yes, a hot drink is divine. But too many offers and you’ve created an obligation loop. Now they’re trimming with one hand, holding a mug with the other, and quietly resenting your hospitality.

6. Speaking of Backs — They’re Broken.
Your HCP currently has:

One shoulder held together by kinesiology tape

Two knees on extended notice

A hip that speaks Latin when it rotates
They will never admit it. Just assume they’re in discomfort. Offer ibuprofen. Or a qualified osteopath who makes house calls.

7. Don’t Ask “Is This Normal?” Unless You Want the Truth.
The white line shouldn’t be black. The frog shouldn’t smell like compost. If you’re not ready for the answer, offer biscuits and a subject change.

8. Eye Contact and Emotional Containment.
Try not to lock eyes during a difficult hind. They’ve seen things. Let them focus on the hoof and mentally detach as needed.

9. Say Thank You.
Just once. No need for a parade. But after the horse has stood like a swaying giraffe on cobbles for 45 minutes, a quick “Thanks, I don’t know how you do it” can keep an HCP emotionally upright for up to 6 weeks.

BONUS TIP:
Never refer to their job as “just a trim.” That phrase alone has driven six of them into full-time goat rescue.

28/08/2025

27/08/2025

🌱 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!

25/08/2025

When horses go into training, the focus is often on 🐎 fitness, 🍽️ feeding, and 🎯 skills under saddle… but sometimes their 🦶 hooves get overlooked.

👉 Regular trims (and shoeing if needed) aren’t just about neat feet—they’re the foundation of the whole
horse. Do you remember the saying no hoof no Horse? 

🐴 Unbalanced or overdue hooves can cause discomfort, strain joints & tendons, and hold a horse back from performing at their best.

✨ Whether your horse is in training, rehab, or just enjoying paddock life, consistent hoofcare keeps them:
✔️ Comfortable
✔️ Balanced
✔️ Able to reach their full potential

Training starts from the ground up… and that means healthy hooves! 🦄💪

24/08/2025

✨3 Day Equine Dissection Workshop✨

Borambola Valley Veterinary present Dr. Raquel Butler for a comprehensive, 3-day whole horse dissection workshop. Dr Raquel (BVSc, BSc(Hons), GDABM, GCLTHE, EEBW, EMRT) is an industry leader in equine biomechanic medicine, as well as a university lecturer, teacher of the ABM graduate diploma, Equinology courses, and online equine postural courses just to name a few!

Recommended for veterinarians, equine body workers, professionals in the equine industry and any equine enthusiast. Join us as we deep dive into the anatomy, physiology and biomechanics over an intensive 3 days.

Location: Borambola Valley Veterinary Podiatry Centre
Date: October 7, 8 and 9th 2025
Investment: $600 for the 3 days
Limited positions available.

To secure your spot, message the page or contact Nicole Umback on 0488 597 724, or Heidi McGrath on 0467 681 474.

11/08/2025

FEELY, FOOTY, SORE — OR LAME?
Why sensation in the hoof is not automatically pain

A horse’s hoof is not just horn wrapped around bone. It is a living, weight-bearing sensory organ, richly supplied with nerves, blood vessels, and specialised receptors. These include mechanoreceptors that detect vibration, proprioceptors that monitor limb position, and nociceptors that register potentially harmful pressure or temperature extremes. All of these are constantly feeding information to the central nervous system.

This feedback is essential. It allows a horse to adapt stride length, limb placement, and weight distribution in fractions of a second. Without it, the horse is less able to move safely over uneven ground, avoid overloading a limb, or respond to changes in surface.

Which means: sensation is not only normal — it is necessary.
The presence of sensation does not automatically mean there is pain, injury, or pathology.

Feely

A horse that is feely is responding to increased sensory input. This often happens on surfaces that are unfamiliar, abrasive, or more variable than the horse’s daily environment. They may step more cautiously, shorten stride slightly, or pick a particular line. The movement change is subtle, proportional to the stimulus, and often disappears once the horse adapts. It’s a sign the hoof is doing its job as a sensory interface.

Footy

Footiness usually describes more obvious caution — perhaps intermittent reluctance to load fully, especially on hard, stony, or irregular ground. It may reflect early-stage overload, sole pressure from retained exfoliating material, thin soles, or simply a lack of conditioning to that terrain. Footiness can be transitional and benign, but it can also precede soreness if the cause isn’t addressed. The key is whether the horse returns to baseline comfort with rest, protection, or surface change.

Sore

Soreness indicates a level of discomfort that changes movement on most surfaces and in most contexts. It can arise from over-trimming, bruising, inflammation of the laminae, or other tissue stress. However, mild and short-lived soreness can also occur when previously unloaded structures (e.g., frog, bars, caudal hoof) begin to take load again during rehabilitation — a form of adaptive stimulus. Distinguishing between adaptive soreness and damaging overload requires close observation, history, and context.

Lame

Lameness is a clinical term: a repeatable, measurable asymmetry caused by pain or mechanical restriction. It is more than a response to an uncomfortable surface — it’s a movement change that persists across contexts or gaits. True lameness should always prompt veterinary evaluation to identify and address the cause. However, mislabelling normal sensory caution as “lameness” can lead to unnecessary interventions and may undermine trust between owners and professionals.

Why the distinction matters

If every altered step is seen as pathology, we risk overprotecting the foot, depriving it of the very stimulus it needs to adapt and strengthen. If we ignore clear signs of discomfort, we risk allowing reversible issues to progress to real injury. The hoof’s role as a sensory organ means some change in movement is expected when surfaces, load, or environmental factors change — especially in horses that aren’t fully conditioned for that challenge.

The right question is not simply “Is the horse sound?” but:
– What is the hoof reporting to the brain?
– Is the movement change proportional to the stimulus?
– Does it resolve with rest, protection, or adaptation?
– Is it protective (self-preserving), adaptive (strength-building), or pathological (damage-related)?

When we understand the difference between feeling, protecting, adapting, and true pain, we make better decisions — and give the horse the best chance to keep both its function and its feedback intact.