03/20/2022
A little bit about diet. I have this talk with every owner at some point. Something I cannot stress enough and sometimes I catch myself repeating over and over to my clients. So here it goes again…what your horse eats shows in their hooves. Just like with humans. We are what we eat. Trimming is only a part of it. Nutrition and environment are the other parts that make the hooves healthy and strong. Species appropriate healthy diet can make or break a hoof! So many times I come to trim and I can tell right away whether the horse is on a healthy, balanced, correct diet or whether an owner cheated and gave their horse something they shouldn’t have. Hooves don’t lie. They tell the whole story.
While I’m still on strict orders not to do anything more strenuous than look at horses, cool hoof pics are out for a little while longer… so let’s talk about diet instead!!
I’d love to say that my trimming and shoeing techniques are the magic touch that fixes every horse I work on - but the reality is that even the best hoof care provider in the world can only work with the foot in front of them. It’s up to owners to help their horses grow the strongest foot possible - and all the horses in my care who have come the furthest have all made the biggest leaps by adjusting their diet!
I recommend the same basic diet for all of my clients: plenty of hay (starting at 1.5%-2% of body weight), a high quality mineral balancer, and calories added as-needed via timothy cubes/pellets, flax, and molasses free beet pulp. Zero added iron, and keeping sugar and starch low (specifically, ESC + starch under 10% with starch under 4%). If any metabolic issues are suspected, add hay testing to the list to ensure it has appropriately low levels of sugar and starch.
It might sound lazy to recommend the same thing horse to horse. And I spend a lot of time gently trying to get folks to let go of the 73 supplements they use and the grain that their “hard keeper” (usually code for thoroughbred 😂) really NEEDS.
But here is the secret… even with all the nuances and idiosyncrasies and unique things about all our horses. They are, at the end of the day… horses! Feeding a forage-based, mineral-balanced diet isn’t about being “more natural” and it doesn’t only work for easy-keeper types. Not much that we do with horses is “natural” - but we can strive to be as species-appropriate as possible! When it comes to diet that means respecting how a horse’s digestive system has spent millions of years adapting to work.
If your horse is having hoof problems of any kind - sensitivity, persistent thrush, a tendency to shelly, brittle walls, white line separation… the list goes on! The first place to look is what’s going into growing those hooves.
And as for those hard keepers (yes, EVEN the TBs and TBXs!), here’s my gigantic 5/8 TB lad: zero grain for the last 2 years, and officially declared “a little chunky” at his annual check up this year 😱😂
