Hoof impaled by stick

[eightpondfarm]

i got the horses all in to take two to lesson and my mare was a limping mare. Hoofpicked and there were these feathery things i couldn’t pull out with my fingers so i got a pair of pliers and pulled out a ‘stick’ (actually i do believe it to have been the stubble from little-bluestem that got hayed) that had gone into her foot right at the edge of her frog. The stick just slid out followed by about 3 drops of liquid infection. And, there was a dime-size pus wound on her heel and her pastern and fetlock were swollen and warm. I called my farrier, he said get out the vet, you need radiographs! So i took her into vet and this is what he found. Second photo shows where the stick went in (only about 1 1/2 inch) and the pathway the infection took to get out because frog swelling around stick…where it came out her heel.

Vet cut away on the bottom of her foot, stuck a thingy through and opened up the hole then shot medication through. Then packed it with a poultice (sp?) iodine and epsom salt. i am to soak her 15min/day, repack and bandage and give her a gram of banamine for about a week and she should be fine and dandy. Think we dodged-a bullet on this one…

[Scribbler]

Ouch. It was clearly in there for a while to brew an infection.

[JB]

I have one who impaled a 1.25" long, pinky-width stick, into the back of his frog. It was high enough that a lateral xray was really freaky as it seemed to go right into the coffin bone area, but the other angles proved it didn’t go anywhere to cause real damage.

We had the same pus-y frog, including an oozing hole in the middle

Mine started as a “normal” abscess, whole leg swelled which made me freak out about a suspensory injury, but despite the warmth and swelling, there was not reaction to any sort of palpation. Vet was out a few days later anyway for vaccines, so she xrayed, and nothing was found, and she ruled out ligaments/tendons as well, and she said abscess.

I packed and wrapped (didn’t bother soaking, that’s old school and not really needed), and things got a lot better.

Until one day he was really lame again, and like you, there was this weirdness sticking out a little, and I pulled out that stick.

Vet came back, squirted in barium, re-did xrays to see the path, cut away more dead/dying frog, and I just treated it like the wound it was - medicated, packed, wrapped, until it all grew back.

I wish I’d snapped pics of the xrays!

[eightpondfarm]

whoa! that was a thick little stick. poor baby…
i tell you, it’s a wonder how some horses can walk through a pasture and nary a thing EVER happens, and then you’ve got that one…

[JB]

All those horses kept in skimpy barbed wire fences with all sorts of farm equipment and trash, with zero vet bills, and then these who go out of their way, HARD, to find trouble, right in the horse-appropriate pasture

[eightpondfarm]

it’s sooooo true! and just so happens that it’s my most talented horse too…

[JB]

oh yeah, this one too

[eightpondfarm]

i feel your pain

[NancyM]

I had a stick in a hoof too.
Horse presented substantially lame, front foot. Saw what looked like scab from a burst abscess on the coronary band. I put the horse in a stall (he was out on rough pasture). Next day, no better. He was not broke, nor had a lot of training, but I had to get him to my barn and cross tie area (separate from the stall he was in), which was a bit of a hike, away from his herd. He came with me OK, hopped in front the whole way rather than use the injured leg. I have limited access to veterinarians, being remote. I tranquilized the horse, and probed the scab. Found out that it was NOT a scab, but wood. Grabbed hold of it, and pulled it out. It was about 2 1/2 inches long, heading down into the hoof from the coronary band, straight down towards the toe of the coffin bone, under the wall of the foot. It was a small broken off branch from a semi buried spruce log, somewhere in the bush, which he had not cleared fully as he stepped or jumped over it, and that protruding half rotten branch had hit his coronary band at exactly the “right” angle to impale right into the hoof and break off. I was ill just looking at it, bleeding. Rinsed it off, bandaged it all up with betadine, started the penicillin and bute. Not much point in getting it xrayed, it was what it was and seeing a picture of it wasn’t gonna make it any better. Hoped that all the stick had come out. Did the daily soaking in epsom salts, poulticing, etc, and it puked out all sorts of crap. He was walking better than he had been. More muck was expelled over the following month or so, he was getting around OK, still lame but better. Eventually, he was turned out for winter into the snow filled hay field. The foot continued to expel muck out the top, but things started to grow out. The hoof broke off below the injury that winter (no farrier here- I have to trim my own), and I took the heels down, but the breakover was a bit scary with no toe. But we perservered. Eventually, it all grew out. He had a crack there, but it was surprisingly superficial. He was sound the next year, and I broke him and rode him. He had GREAT feet before this happened to him, and I’m always surprised about how well he recovered from this injury, has never had another problem with it. You can still see the crack, the flaw that grows down his hoof, and the scar on the coronary band, but it’s surprisingly solid. He’s never been shod in his life. TB gelding.

[2tempe]

Similar but not hoof: My 7 yr old pulled a shoe one day in the pasture. Maybe 6 people walked this pasture over the next couple days, some multiple times, couldn’t find the shoe. At least a month later said horse comes in from his pristine grass pasture with a small puncture wound about 1/2 way up the hind cannon bone. Thru his turnout boots. Vet ultrasound indicated that he at least dodged a big bullet as the wound missed any important soft tissue. We walked the pasture again, nothing. Fast forward ANOTHER month, and one of the staff, while picking pasture poop find the shoe - one nail sticking out of it and there were a few gray hairs sticking to the nail. Best guess is that he rolled and came down with one leg exactly where that darn shoe was hiding. How do they manage to do this stuff???
Edited to add - it seems I have been told somewhere along the way not to pull stuff out of the foot but to get the vet there post haste to xray first.

[eightpondfarm]

…foul luck there alright.

yeah, that’s what both my farrier and my vet told me. MAYBE i’ll remember that should anything like that ever happen again. Hard not to pull something sticking into you/them out though…

[Gardenhorse]

@2tempe

Edited to add - it seems I have been told somewhere along the way not to pull stuff out of the foot but to get the vet there post haste to xray first.

I learned that after I pulled a 4 inch nail out of my horse’s foot (very luckily it didn’t go in very far and didn’t hit anything important.) The vet put in dye and then x-rayed to see the channel where the nail had gone. After cleaning it out thoroughly, pretty much treated it like an abscess and she recovered fine. With the object still in the foot, the x-rays can much more clearly indicate what structures of the hoof might have been impacted.

OP - hope your horse recovers quickly.

[Libby2563]

April 2020 trail riding injury:

As you can kinda see in the x-ray, I splinted it with a sideways roll of duct tape to keep him from pushing it in farther before the vet could arrive. The nail nicked his DDFT so I did a conservative rehab just to be safe but he was never lame from the tendon damage, just the puncture/abscess, and he recovered 100%. I’d ridden through that same spot once a week for 6 years.

[Gardenhorse]

@Libby2563

As you can kinda see in the x-ray, I splinted it with a sideways roll of duct tape to keep him from pushing it in farther before the vet could arrive.

Your nail looks very similar to mine (although a bit rustier!). I read about the duct tape trick after the fact. Glad it actually worked for you (and that you knew to do it). My nail was in the new-ish (~2 year old) indoor arena, which of course had been gone over with a magnet multiple times after construction. My horse stepped on the nail in the middle of a lesson (we were cantering and I literally thought she had broken her leg as she tried to keep cantering without putting any weight on one hind foot). Neither my trainer nor I knew not to pull it out. I stood and held her foot up while my trainer ran down to the barn to get pliers to remove it.

[eightpondfarm]

Farrier was here on Tuesday, cut back the frog and told me to put iodine and keep her on soft bedding for three days, then turn her out. This morning she was SOOOOO HAPPY…she and her friendly companion ran and ran and ran…took all the others on a merry chase across…oh a hundred acres or so. Snorting and flagging and happy to be alive. She is ‘queen’ of the herd and each and everyone was relieved to have her back amongst. I guess i’ll give her 3 more weeks before riding… By then it might be too cold for my coach to give lessons, or for me to haul an hour and a half each way… So i guess we don’t resume much more than sporadic winter catch-as-you-can training w/coach til spring.