Trimming Draft Horses
Draft horses require some good halter training, before you are going to have much success handling their feet. This is true of all horses but especially draft horses simply because they are like the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Where does he sit? Anywhere they want to unless of course they have had some good halter training. Do yourself a favor and spend a lot of time working with your horse so that you can move his feet any direction forward, reverse, left, right, up and down. Make sure your draft horse will readily give their foot to you when you run your hand down the leg and squeeze the tendon on the back of their cannon bone. If I have trouble getting them to lift their feet, I try squeezing the tendon harder, digging my fingernail in on the side of the cannon bone, squeezing their chestnut, lightly tapping the cannon bone with the wooden handle of my hoof knife. Don’t go overboard, you do not want to get them upset you just want them to try, reward even a slight shift of weight.
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Best Way to Trim Your Pony
Trimming ponies is a little more difficult than trimming horses, simply because you need to modify your normal trimming methods. With the smaller hoof size your margins for error are very small, meaning you can mess up a pony real easy. If you have had ponies for very long you will realize that getting a competent farrier to come trim your ponies can be difficult if not impossible. Many farrier’s will not work on ponies at all. When I was working as a professional farrier I considered it just good diversification of my farrier practice.
It is always a fine line between, is this a pony, or is this a small horse on one end of the scale and small miniatures on the other end of the scale. I know that purists among you have miniature horses, but for hoof trimming purposes we will call them all ponies. In my opinion, you need to modify how you handle ponies, the first thing I never do put the pony hoof between my knees, I stand to the side and work from that position or I actually often get down on my knees and work on the ponies hooves. I do this to prevent straining the ponies joints and making them uncomfortable, and an uncomfortable pony is a non-cooperating pony, you do not want one of those.
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Correct Hoof Angles for a Horse
I have avoided writing about hoof angles, because there is not a simple answer that I can give you. I am going to talk about the angle of the hoof wall at the front of the hoof. The angle of the hoof should be the same as the angle of the shoulder and hip. This usually means the back hoof wall has 2° more angle than the front hoof wall.
Every breed type will have different conformation so the angle to their hooves will be different. You’ll want to visually adjust your horses hoof angles, but that can be difficult so I will hazard to give you some ballpark figures. A working quarter horse style will usually be 53° in front and 55° behind, those are the most common horses in my area so that’s what I saw the most. Now remember some quarter horses, like the English style, are for all intents and purposes a thoroughbred with a more sloping shoulder, therefore they typically run 50° in front and 52° behind. The Arabian horse will have a steep shoulder, most Arabians I have seen have pretty steep angles on their hooves when matched to their shoulder and hip, like 55° in front, and 57° in back. Some Arabians even go even steeper.
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What is the Best Hoof Trimming Schedule?
There are many factors that affect hoof growth, the season of the year, the environment, the diet of the horse, how active the horse is, even the weather. Your hoof trimming schedule should be adjusted for all these variable factors.
In Northwest Washington, horse hooves tend to have a surge in hoof growth in the spring, especially in April and May. Your part of the world may be different, I also see a slight increase in hoof growth during late summer and early fall. What causes this accelerated hoof growth, no one I ever talked to knows for sure, however I suspect it has something to do with more sunlight and richer pasture. The main thing is just to be aware of it so you don’t let your horses hooves get too long.
Feeding your horse a good nutritional diet will foster healthy hoof growth, adding a hoof supplement can improve the quality of the hoof, but be aware it will probably take a year to show up, remember it takes one year for the hoof to completely grow out so any new growth will basically take a year to reach the end of the hoof.
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Training Horses for the Farrier
Training your horse to have its hooves trimmed is very much like halter training them, with a few twists and turns. The horse should be willing to stand completely still, lift its feet when commanded to do so, and let you work on that foot until you put down.
You would be surprised how many horses simply don’t stand still, this is a sure sign of incomplete halter training. You will want your horse to be able to move backward, forward, left or right, move the front quarters, move the back quarters, all on your command signal. The command signals that you choose to use, may be moving the lead rope, applying pressure with your hand on the part you want move, or on a more advanced level just using your energy to move the horse. Once you’ve taught your horse to move on your signal, you then teach them not to move until you give them the signal to do so.
It is much easier to get the horse to lift its foot if it is standing in a balanced position, don’t ask him to pick up his foot if most of his weight is on that foot, it’s just not going to happen. You want the horse to be able pickup it’s foot without falling on top you, so be very aware if your horse is standing balanced are not.
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Horse Hoof Rasp Selection Care and Use
Selecting the right hoof rasp will make the rasping part of trimming your horse easier. You are looking for a 14 inch long rasp with a coarse side and a finer site. There are lots of brands I have used a couple brands that worked well for me, my favorite is the Simonds Black Master rasp. I have used the Belotta rasp when the Simmons was not available. Some of the farrier’s I know like the Save Edge Rasp, they certainly are sharp but personally I cut my fingers or my hands using them, something about their cutting design vacuums in my flesh. I use a rasp normally with two hands so while one hand is on back of the cutting-edge, the other is on the handle.
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Reasons to Use a Farrier’s Hoof Stand
The quick answer is to save your body from wear and tear or possible injury. When I finished farrier school in 1988, I purchased a lot of my farrier tools from an old farrier named John, he was 65 years old and still shoeing, and get this, he started when he was 16 years of age. John told me he credited his long farrier career of almost 50 years to the advice he shared with me.
“Get yourself a farrier’s hoof stand and use it.” Need I say more?
I bought a hoof stand from John and used it till I wore it out over the course of about 18 years, I have two newer ones I presently use. So what is exactly does a hoof stand do for you? First of all it provides a stable platform to place the horse’s hoof on during the majority of your work time. I use it whenever I bring the feet forward to rasp the hoof wall, as well as clinch my nails and smooth the clinches whenever I shoe a horse.
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Farriers Hoof Knife
Proper use and care of the farrier’s hoof knife means success when it comes to trimming your horse’s hooves. Hoof knives come in both left and right handed models, when you hold the knife in hand that you preferred to use, with the hook at the end of the hoof knife upward, the sharpened blade will be pointing towards your body. When I first started doing my own horses, I wasn’t sure which was which, so I got one of each and that worked okay, eventually I found out which one worked best and sure enough I needed a right-handed hoof knife.
Through the years, I’ve used up several dozen hoof knives, of almost every brand out there,, and found that the cheaper ones work just as well as the more expensive deluxe hoof knives. Don’t get one made of stainless steel, they seem hard to put a good edge on.
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Trim Your Own Horses Hooves
There are a number of good reasons to trim your own horse’s hooves, I will cover the top three reasons you should consider learning how to trim your horses hooves. Let me start out by saying if you’re horse is calm while being trimmed, never has lameness problems, and you can afford to hire a competent farrier who shows up when scheduled, read no farther. However if any of the mentioned items sound familiar to you, read on.
Is your horse comfortable and calm while being trimmed by your farrier? Some horses are some horses are not comfortable with strangers being near them, this can be caused by a number of reasons here are just a few. At some time in the horses past they have encountered a bad experience while their feet have been worked on, the reasons for a bad experience can vary from, a lack of good halter training, to distractions occurring while the horse is being trimmed.
In my 19 years of working as a professional farrier, I never once had a problem with the horse that had been halter trained properly. The horse knows how to stand still, relax, and is easy to control on the ground. If any thing occurs out of the ordinary, the horse has a thinking portion in their brain not just a reactive portion. Horses must be taught to think, they naturally react, so this reaction shows up sometimes in the hoof trimming process but really has nothing to do with trimming, it has to do with adequate training.
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Hoof Trimming Tools
If you are considering doing your own hoof trimming, make sure you accumulate the right tools, or you’ll give up even before you get started. I know I start trimming my own horses hooves when I was about eight years old, never had the right tools, but I hung in there and got the job done only because I had no alternative.
As I got older and had the funds I hired a farrier to trim my horses, then about the third time I had a no-show farrier, I went to town and bought some better tools. I soon discovered they still weren’t the right tools, so I set about getting the best tools I could and that made all the difference.
The first thing you need to do is find yourself a box to put all your tools and preferably one with a handle on, the plastic tote trays work real well for this. This box will keep your tools from getting lost and also from being exposed to mud or water.
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