HoofHeal Equine Services

08/08/2023

Some of you may have noticed that a few months back, The Humble Hoof podcast swapped to a new podcast platform (Captivate). When switching over, direct links to episodes became harder to find - so I spent this rainy Tuesday updating my podcast blog on my website with episodes from 2019 and 2020 to complete all the direct links on my site.

Now at this link, you can find all The Humble Hoof episodes, from 2019 through 2023. We have a new episode publishing Friday, so now is a good time to catch up on some past ones! You can scroll through the blog titles to see 4 years of topics!

There are episodes on laminitis, navicular, nutrition and the hoof, thrush, metabolic issues (IR/PPID), soft tissue injuries in the hoof, dental issues and hoof wear, and so much more.

thehumblehoof.com/blog

08/08/2023

Exercise vastly improves insulin sensitivity, but the acutely laminitic horse cannot tolerate exercise. However, with recovery, exercise is to be encouraged as long as the horse tolerates it. As the horse's condition improves, the level of exercise should increase. The importance of exercise in the EMS-prone equine cannot be understated. EMS/IR can be avoided completely with adequate exercise and diet management. Additional important details here: http://bit.ly/34xa60X

08/08/2023

Track systems are great for utilizing small turnout spaces.

06/09/2022

This is a must read for all horse owners!

LAMINITIS

Spring is upon us, and for some areas, that means an uptick in laminitis cases. Dr. Alicia Nolfi said in one of The Humble Hoof podcast episodes that we should assume hoof-based lameness is laminitis until proven otherwise. Why? Because treating lameness as laminitis doesn't hurt if it isn't laminitis, but if it IS, waiting and not doing anything can lead to further laminae damage, or worse or catastrophic rotation or distal descent.

So how can we identify laminitis and work to get the horse comfortable?

Laminitis in horses can have less-than-obvious symptoms:

🔴Moving more "gingerly" over harder surfaces, especially if they were previously comfortable on them. This is still concerning even if they seem to be moving perfectly fine on soft surfaces!
🔴Trotting instead of their usual canter in the paddock. Walking instead of their usual trotting. Seeming more "sluggish" than normal.
🔴Recurring abscesses
🔴Thin soles- possible symptom of weakened laminae connection causing poor suspension of P3 in the hoof capsule
🔴Heat in the hoof or increased digital pulses
🔴Moving more stiff throughout their body
🔴A "new" sensitivity or soreness after a conservative trim - damaged laminae can become suddenly more painful even with minute changes to the "status quo" the horse was using to compensate.
🔴In extreme cases, rocking back onto hind feet

I know I've said it many times before, but I never view hoof sensitivity, thin soles, abscesses etc as "normal" - to me this is a weak hoof that requires further investigation into diet and metabolic status. A horse with "chronically weak feet" may already be dealing with some chronic laminitic symptoms.

So what do you do if your horse is experiencing laminitis?
🔵Call your vet, and consider getting bloodwork for insulin and ACTH levels, as 90% of laminitis is endocrinopathic. Let your farrier know what is going on.
🔵Remove all access to grain and grass (even w**ds or "grazed down to nothing" paddocks - short grass is stressed grass and sugars can spike!)
🔵Implement the ECIR emergency diet to remove any dietary triggers to allow the horse to become more comfortable - see link below
🔵I prefer to utilize therapy boots like Easycare Cloud Boots with their therapeutic pad inside, to relieve weightbearing on the laminae and prevent distal descent. Many horses become significantly more comfortable immediately in therapy boots. Using boots for rehab allows frequent small changes to the trim to help realign the bony column and hoof capsule. Shorter trim cycles can mitigate the need for drastic trims that can be more painful for the horse.

Once the trigger is found and removed, the horse should become more comfortable. If the horse is still uncomfortable - keep investigating to find a possible trigger!

Please note, the other 10% of laminitis cases include SIRS (Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, think high fever, colitis, illness, retained placenta, ingestion of a toxic w**d, etc) and Supporting Limb Laminitis due to lack of perfusion in an overweighted limb in an acute injury case. These cases will not respond to diet change or metabolic bloodwork management. Winter laminitis is a subset of metabolic laminitis but also doesn't respond to diet change etc, as it is often due to AVA shunt damage in the hoof causing lack of proper circulation in the winter - it might be similar to the painful feeling that people with Raynaud's may experience in cold weather.

If your horse is experiencing acute laminitis, please join the ECIR forum online at ecirhorse.org - they are a volunteer non-profit group that has over 20 years of experience helping owners to troubleshoot management and recovery of laminitis, and getting horses back to soundness and even productive, happy lives.

12/21/2021

This article shares fabulous information! A must read for any horse owner. Thank you Humble Hoof ❤️ Alicia Harlov

I know many of us horse owners and hoofcare providers have seen the conversations about iron in a horse's diet, and the potential effect on hooves. Before we get too into the nitty gritty of diet and the hoof, I want to back up and look at a horse’s needs, based on the NRC Requirements. Hooves are so often a reflection of the health of the animal, and to make sure a horse can grow the healthiest hoof possible, we need to make sure they are meeting all their nutrient and mineral requirements. Thank you to Dr. Gustafson for helping me understand this a bit better myself!

MINERALS IN FORAGE- are they sufficient?
From Dr. Gustafson’s database of hay testing, she found that out of 250+ samples of forages tested, 97.8% were deficient in zinc, 95.2% were deficient in copper, 12% were deficient in manganese, and 0% were deficient in iron. That means that just from hay, a horse could consume the daily requirement for iron, or sometimes far exceed it. On the other hand, horses rarely if ever meet their requirements for copper and zinc from their forage. That alone is a problem - one that grains and feeds rarely correct well, since so many horses can't handle or aren't fed the recommended daily amount of grains, often due to lower calorie needs or hoof issues preventing owners from feeding grains with sugar and starch above 10% combined. So horses are often walking around with frank deficiencies of minor minerals- copper and zinc to be exact.
But, many feed companies make a ration balancer to handle the caloric issue and they have a much more concentrated nutrients at a much lower feeding rate, you say! Sounds great, right? But here’s the catch: they often add iron, and sometimes a lot of it. We will talk about the issue with this in a second.

IRON AFFECTING COPPER AND ZINC ABSORPTION
On top of the fact that horses are walking around with copper and zinc deficiencies, the frank deficiency is worsened with a relative deficiency from iron - since we know that iron inhibits the uptake of copper and zinc. Dr. Piper Klemm has studied iron chelation extensively for her dissertation, and actually chatted with me on her podcast about why excess iron inhibits the uptake of copper and zinc in the body, and the horse has no natural way to chelate iron (other than bloodletting). Iron competes with copper and zinc absorption in the body, and copper and zinc are needed for healthy hooves.

BUT IS IRON REALLY ABSORBED?
Now, there are some groups that tend to say that iron isn't absorbed well or isn't bioavailable in various forms. While this would be wonderful- it just doesn't seem to work out well in practice. Aside from the fact that many hoofcare providers can show bloodwork on personal or client horses with high serum iron, TIBC, and ferritin, and have horses with diagnosed iron overload, article after article online shows how horses rarely if ever have an iron deficiency (in fact, iron deficiency anemia is almost unheard of in horses). So they are clearly getting their dietary iron from somewhere. One study linked below shows 22 equines on a property with high iron in the water, and each horse was found to have excessive iron stores and liver issues.

BUT ISN'T IRON REGULATED IN THE BODY?
Yes, hepcidin does regulate iron in the body, but unfortunately this can go awry if it is overwhelmed with excessive iron supply (Equine Applied and Clinical Nutrition, 2013). Couple that with the fact that horses with metabolic issues may also have problems with hepcidin and iron regulation, we can assume that not all horses are regulating iron properly.

DOES IRON CAUSE METABOLIC ISSUES?
In short- we can't claim that. And no one is trying to claim that. Let me explain.
Dr. Kellon and Dr. Gustafson published a study last year of hyperinsulinemia and hyperferritinemia in horses. They found that every single horse in their study, all hyperinsulemic horses, had serum ferritin that exceeded the reference range. They did NOT say that iron causes metabolic issues, or laminitis, though.
There is a CORRELATION between high iron and hyperinsulemic horses. I want to be clear that correlation does not mean causation so I’m not saying that high iron CAUSES metabolic issues, but it seems that metabolic horses may sequester iron, which can lead to a host of issues.
Another study in 2012 using horses (actually hoping to compare to rhinos) found the same correlation - high ferritin levels at peak insulin concentrations after dextrose administration. They even mention captive rhino diets are higher in iron, that the captive rhinos have more fat stores, and they are moving less. I’d say that is similar in domesticated horses compared to feral/wild. The issue here is hay is often high in iron, or at least not deficient in iron as Dr. Gustafson’s database mentioned, and some places also have high iron water, and then people will sometimes feed iron supplements or grain that has iron added. There is no "shortage" of iron in the equine diet. And we know that iron inhibits the uptake of copper and zinc, which is needed for healthy hooves.

SO WHAT CAN DO ABOUT THIS?
So what do we do for horses to ensure that they are getting all the minerals they need for a healthy hoof? Well, we know that feeding at least the NRC amounts of minerals is important for whole horse health and therefore hoof health, and often it can be a minefield, since feeding an excess of one mineral can affect absorption of another mineral. Dr. Kellon has a running field study (over 2 decades now) cataloguing owners practicing tight mineral balancing on metabolic horses, tracked on the ECIR online database of case histories. From there, we have seen that this mineral balancing over time, for example keeping an iron:copper:zinc:manganese ratio of 4:1:3:3, helps to balance for possible dietary iron excesses or at least meet mineral deficiencies, observed through hoof changes, bloodwork, and comfort over time. Many of us have seen a direct result of healthier feet, tighter white line, increased comfort, when doing this. I’m sure many of us could talk for hours about the improvements we have seen in feet when mineral balancing- anecdotally of course! And interestingly enough, there was a study in 1999 that even suggested that supplementing copper and zinc can help with the susceptibility to white line disease (Pollitt quoted this study in 2005).

Since the safe upper tolerable limits of copper and zinc are much higher than we would ever supplement, and since some hays almost hit the safe upper limits for iron, I'd say it's fairly cheap, easy, and safe to avoid added dietary iron and try testing hay (I use EquiAnalytical), and balancing copper and zinc in the diet. You just might be surprised at the results you see in the body, coat, and feet 😊

A few things to explore:

Iron issues in metabolic horses: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32042647/

The rhino study, using an equine model: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23156707/

Iron overload in horses: https://forageplustalk.co.uk/iron-overload-in-horses-by-dr-kellon/

Iron issues in water and liver issues:
https://beva.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/evj.13029

Balancing copper and zinc to iron: https://www.hoofrehab.com/Diet.html

Podcast episode where Piper Klemm and I discuss iron and copper and zinc here: https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2021/10/22/plaidcast-252-michael-tokaruk-alicia-harlov-by-taylor-harris-insurance-services/

Podcast episode with nutritionist Scott Cieslar discussing iron and mineral balancing here: https://madbarn.com/videos/mad-about-hooves-scott-cieslar-on-nutrition-for-hoof-health-the-humble-hoof/

Podcast episode with Sally Hugg here, for more basic information: https://thehumblehoof.com/2023/08/08/nutrition-and-the-hoof/

I also have a webinar which spends 40 min on nutrition and the hoof here: https://youtu.be/RUKjGgoKnyw

This webinar includes case studies/pictures.

06/04/2021

Awesome tips to help you stay the course when you are rehabbing your horse. Thank you Alicia!

Hoof rehab is hard. It can be emotionally and mentally exhausting to deal with a horse with hoof or soundness issues. Next week, I will be publishing a podcast episode on mindset during rehab, and in preparation here are 5 tips for dealing with the ups and downs throughout the journey:

1️⃣ Set small, attainable goals to focus on.

Rehab can feel daunting, so instead of putting extra pressure on your horse or yourself, set easily attainable weekly goals that will allow instant success. This can be as simple as something like, "offer forward stretches daily of both front feet," or "treat the frogs for thrush 4 times this week," or even "get my horse to eat one more pinch of his new mineral supplement." Don't set something too lofty, as that will put extra stress on you and bog you down during the process, or make you feel like a failure if you don't complete it. Little successes will add up to bigger successes over time.

2️⃣ Be optimistic around your horse.

This might feel incredibly difficult, especially when your horse is experiencing a setback, but it is very important. Horses are acutely aware of our emotions and as prey animals, they feed off of our energy when around them. When you're with your horse, don't focus on their soundness or obsess about every little thing about their foot - soon, they might think they have to obsess about their feet as well! Instead, push all that out of your mind and for lack of a better word, be happy. You don't have to lie to yourself and say everything is fine when it isn't, but focus on something else entirely - like how much you enjoy being outside this time of year, or how satisfying it is to shed out the last of your horse's winter coat. You will be less stressed, and your horse will be too.

3️⃣ Stay the course.

It is tempting during rehab to flip flop to various approaches whenever something isn't instantly working. The truth is, it took a lot of time for your horse's hoof and soundness issues to get to where they are, and it takes a lot of time for that to get better and heal. Every time we shift the treatment plan, the hoof and internal structures have to adapt and regroup. Sometimes, this can actually cause setbacks due to the constant adjustments the soft tissue needs to make with every change we do.
Does this mean we never change course? Of course not! But be sure to trust the process a bit, and observe how your horse responds (without projecting your fear/worry/anxiety on them!) and have a little patience.

4️⃣ Find a group for support.

Whether this is an online community, or barn friends who can be a listening ear, make sure you surround yourself with others who can allow you to discuss progress/vent about setbacks/celebrate successes. Don't be scared to include your professionals in this, too, and keep the lines of communication open. When it comes to the pros in your life, don't be scared to reach out and ask questions, but be careful not to constantly challenge or criticize the approaches taken. We as professionals care about your horse and their soundness too, and we are just trying to help!

5️⃣ Focus on the positives more than the negatives.

As a society, it's easy to get stuck focusing constantly on the negatives around us in general. I would even say it's almost against human nature to focus on the positives around us. It's even easy to forget something good that has happened the second we see a minor issue. Use this rehab process as a time to pick out at least one good thing per day that you can focus on. Keep a journal and even write the positives down. Mentally make your positives "weigh more" than anything else. Whether that is that you can see a healthier frog healing from thrush, or that your horse's landings have improved. When times are really tough, maybe it can be just as simple as the fact that this horse is still in your life and that tomorrow is another day, or that your horse is teaching you so much and it will allow you to help others in the future. Don't allow the negatives to bog you down, even when it feels overwhelming.

Hopefully some of these tips are helpful as you go through your rehab journey! Stay tuned for a more in depth discussion about this next Friday on the podcast. ❤️

03/19/2021

Like many issues in equine nutrition, there are strong opinions both pro and con regarding alfalfa. There is also much misinformation. One thing everyone can agree upon is that horses love alfalfa…

03/19/2021

PPID is a disease. EMS/IR is a metabolic type. Learn more here: https://bit.ly/2LqGEjO

09/06/2020

A must read to understand feeding your horse

The very best hoof care can only go so far. We must properly feed our hooves if we want the best out of the horse and we must properly feed our horse if we want the best out of our hooves. Over the years I noticed that no shoeing or trim mechanics could grow healthy walls, laminae, soles or frogs on...