Old guy decided this year that shoes were no longer his thing and will now find a variety of ways to remove them every two weeks or so. He’s got quite thin soles and he can get a little ouchy on hard uneven surfaces. Now that the ground is frozen with rutted mud and no snow covering I need something to protect his feet. Are there any hoof boots that work for a horse on 24/7 turnout? I don’t particularly want to be looking for lost boots in his ten acre field! He would only wear them until we have a good snow cover but I don’t want boots that would trap moisture.
Any ideas?
Every year I have to pull my horse’s hind shoes in the winter because he’s in a herd setting and I won’t do boriums behind. There’s always an adjustment period for him, probably moreso because the ground gets rutted and hard versus anything else. I wrap the hoof for two weeks then he goes naked behind. I’ve found wrapping his hind hooves with vet-wrap and then using the Easy Boot Original stays on the best. I played around with several different brands and even though this boot is old and not very “technological”, it stayed on the most faithfully. You don’t want something that wraps around the pastern like Scoot boots, as it can twist and asphyxiate the leg.
The vet wrap is really key: having something for the boot to “bite” onto keeps it on for much longer. I would usually pull the boot off every PM to check for gravel/rocks, but only needed to rewrap the vetwrap once a week. I also packed the wrap with Magic Cushion the first wrap, and then Durasole the second.
Now, I will say something that might get your back up OP. As a general rule, I’m against hoofboots being used long term to keep a horse comfortable without shoes in turnout. It may be worth investigating why your farrier couldn’t keep shoes on this horse. I went through something similar about a decade ago and it was the start of a journey of knowledge for me with regards to hoof health and farrier incompetence – the two often going hand in glove. In my guy’s case, he was pulling shoes on a monthly basis because my farrier at the time had let his toes get too long and he started to interfere up front because the breakover was so poor his front feet just weren’t leaving the ground before his hind feet hit dirt. At this time in my life I don’t think I recognized a pathologically unhealthy hoof for what it was, but after some hard questions and some serious studying of my horse’s feet versus what I felt I should be seeing, I fired that farrier and never went back… and interestingly, that chronic shoe-puller stopped pulling shoes once his feet were corrected and his toes set back.
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Thanks for the info!
I honestly believe that he was pulling shoes because he was playing harder than he was used to. He was moved from individual turnout with a stall at night to 10 acres and about 10 friends. He cannot go in the retirees paddock because he is too active! Same farrier but moved to a much larger, more active paddock. But I get what you are saying about the shoeing.
