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Brittle white hooves

4K views 19 replies 8 participants last post by  Jierda 
#1 ·
#7 ·
Topicals won't help.

Put her on a good hoof supplement and make sure she's getting enough exercise. Proper trims will also keep the cracking down. She may need to get trimmed more often depending on her.

But the hoof supplement will kick in around 6 months+ so maybe look at her diet and see if all bases are covered.
 
#9 ·
Diet & nutrition are huge factors & so is environment - if the horse is living in too wet environment for eg. and infection(seedy toe/thrush) may be a factor. The way they're trimmed & the confo of the horse for eg. may be why the backs are being effected more. I don't believe pigment/colour has any bearing. Topicals don't help, but have the potential to make matters worse.
 
#14 ·
Here are some photos; I hope they are ok

The white hooves are the backs and the black hooves are the fronts.

Turns out i made a bit of a mistake, her fronts are actually worse at the moment.

I have also attatched a photo of her so you can have an idea of her weight.

What other information do you need?
 

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#19 ·
Her feet don't look so bad at all to me, from what can be told of those pics, just she looks overdue for a trim & needs the flaring & bit of imbalance addressed. After 3 weeks from the trim, there's not usually quite that much excess growth, but there could be, depending on other factors. It is uneven & the flares & such *may* not have been addressed adequately. But we also don't know what the feet were like before that trim, how long between, etc, etc, so I couldn't say whether it was good or bad. Be interested to see pics after next trim.
 
#20 ·
For a fact, that white hooves would be not as strong as black hooves is total nonsense. The only different is the pigment, which doesn't change how a hoof is made up (from a protein called keratin).

As people have said, she looks like she has major flare which can contribute to a lot of chipping. The sole looks like there's a lot of build-up of sole that's long ready to come off. Something that would be great for that is to make an area in her paddock/pasture with (pea) gravel that she will regularly walk over. This will help the hooves to wear off the sole healthily and might even improve her hoof growth thanks to a different kind of pressure.

As for the diet, biotin (one of the B vitamins), copper, zinc and a good ratio of omega-3 and 6 fatty acids are essential for good feet (and an overdose of readily digestible carbohydrates is detrimental to them, and can even contribute to the development of laminitis as most people probably know). As I've read somewhere once, the feet are the mirror of the horse's health. A horse that feels great and is fed all the right nutrients will have great feet (provided no outside factor, like environment or farrier, messes them up).
 
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