IMNSHE,it does not get worse as a horse gets older. I suspect your problem started with the change of farriers
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It’s a bit chicken-egg though—which came first, cervical spine malformation causing a clubby foot or a clubby foot causing cervical spine malformation? My guy with an almost clubby foot has more developed muscling on that side. It doesn’t hit you over the head, but you can see it if you’re looking for it.
I don’t think causation has been implied, just correlation. More likely a genetic linkage or varying degree of the same skeletal malformation syndrome. With the cervical malformations, the incidence reduces as you move down the spine - so if a horse has a malformation at C6, it has a 50% chance of a C7 malformation, and horses with both have a percentage chance of other vertebral malformations like transitional ribs. It’s hard to imagine the cervical malformations influencing the club foot in utero or vice versa, but it does seem possibly that asymmetrical use of the front legs after birth could be caused by the neck malformations, resulting in differential development of the coffin bones.
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It could get more pronounced if the horse had reason, such as low grade lameness, to not load it as heavily.
It can also look worse if it starts to dish because the heels have been lowered more than the conformation will allow. The toe then takes a disproportionate amount of the load since in these horses the suspensory apparatus keeps the full weight from landing on the too- short heels.
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Well, the article I linked is talking about congenital malformation like missing, incomplete, or transposed transverse processes. So that couldn’t be caused by a high/low situation, but does seem to be correlated with it. Your observation makes sense with respect to cervical arthritis though.
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