Update of my horse who has soft hooves
Hello! First of all, I would like to thank everyone who gave me support and advice in my previous post here. You are a big help and I felt much better after reading your comments.
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It makes me a bit sad to know that he will never ever be completely healthy and sound. I mean, he shows no sign of lameness or uneven when I ride him but I will always get the thought that there's something wrong with my horse in my mind all the time. I heard that once the horse has laminitis, he will carry that for the rest of his life, but since he doesn't seem to have any severe symptom to me, I kinda...hope that the coffin bone will one day go back to its place... Silly thought, I know. :(
So, from now on, I will be very careful with his diet. He gets 4 kg./ day of Vet Plus's Cool Feed at the moment. The vet said it's okay for the horse at his size. He doesn't have access to glass pasture anyway so I may not be worry too much about him getting rich glass. We give him some cut glasses here. He was quite fat when he first arrived 2 months ago and now he starts to lose some weight. I think the big neck and butt are partly fat and partly his conformation, since his sire and grandsire also have this particular built.
And, one more thing, when I first got him and had a chance to talk to the owner, he said that because this horse has a small hooves, I must put olive oil on his hooves, wrap them up with tape, and leave it for 4-5 hours to keep them healthy. And I should be doing this 3-4 times / week. Does this have anything to do with laminitis? I didn't do this since a couple of days later after I got him, his hooves wall start to come out and became very oily, as I described in my previous post ( link to that post is above ). Many people suggested that I stop putting oil on the hooves and wrap them up. :O
Anyway, thanks again for your help! I knew I come to the right place.
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As far as the oil and tape (OMG!) is concerned - NO! JUST NO! Also, you shouldn't need to wrap the hooves. Here is how two very, very top notch blacksmiths explained it to me. The hoof is kind of like wood, it reacts not only to actual liquid moisture, but also to humidity in the air (think about how wood swells in humid weather). Therefore, unless you live in an arid or semi-arid region, your horse's hooves are probably not too dry.
That said, the breaking up that we see is due more too changes in moisture level and (like that wood I mentioned) concurrent expansion and contraction. For example, you give your horse a bath, or turn him out on dew covered grass, and his hooves absorb moisture, then you bring him in and put him in a clean stall full of kiln dried shavings or other dry bedding, and they dry out again. Wash, rinse, and repeat ... daily. This is what causes hooves to fall apart. Also a culprit is when wet, soft hooves are pounded on hard ground - something that happens often where I live since the summers are very humid but it doesn't rain all that much so the ground is dry and hard.
Anyway, the goal is to minimize the fluctuation of the moisture content of the hoof, so what is more in order is something that will work as a sealer and can be applied to prevent the hoof from absorbing excess moisture as well as from drying back out too quickly. They make plenty of products for this but my favorite is one I mix up myself from a recipe a great, old blacksmith gave me. It has always toughened up any hooves I have used it on.
To make it you need 1 jar venice turpentine, 1 pint regular turpentine (like for paint), and a wax toilet bowl ring (the thing that seals your toilet to the floor - you can get it at a hardware store). Then you need some empty bottles to put it in (preferably the ones made for hoof products with a paint brush in the top). You also need an electric teapot or a hotplate and and old pot because you don't want to make this up in your house because it will smell FOREVER.
Dump (scrape) the whole pint jar of venice turpentine into the pot, then use that empty container to measure out an equal amount of regular turpentine and add that. Take about 1/2 the wax ring and dump it into the mix. Then heat it all up and stir occasionally until the wax melts and it all combines together. Pour it out into your containers and close them up (makes about 3 pints which will last forever).
Paint this mix on the bottoms of your horse's hooves (not the frog but don't worry if some gets on there, it won't hurt anything) and about 2/3 of the way up the outsides, making sure to get it into any nail holes well. Don't put it on the coronary band since it will irritate that. Do this in the stall while the feet are dry and clean (I use the stall because if you get this stuff on the floor, it will never come off). Shavings and stuff will stick at first so this isn't a beauty treatment but eventually it sinks in and the feet look fine. At first I use it every day but after about a 5 days or a week, you only need to do it 3 times a week or so.
Basically, the venice turpentine toughens the hoof, and the wax seals it (the regular turpentine is just there to make things liquid). I've had this mix work miracles.
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I will try to find the ingredients you mentioned but I'm not sure I can find everything. It's quite difficult to find horse stuffs here. :) Thank you so so much again for your help. I'll probably update about him again in the future.
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