Oakum packing in wet conditions

[Mareish]

Hi! I’d love to crowdsource a question that has come up recently between my vet/farrier/trainer team (I am just the ammy owner/rider!) given the wealth of knowledge on this board.

Has anyone had issues with oakum packing under full pads balling up or otherwise creating pressure points particularly in wet or muddy conditions? I’m specifically thinking of oakum with magic cushion under full plastic pads with aluminum eggbar shoes, to the extent the particulars are important.

If anyone has other packing suggestions for a horse who has found equipak pour-ins, frog support pads, and impression material under full pads to be too much but rim pads not enough — I’d love to hear them!

Thanks in advance!!

[Sansena]

At the periphery of my knowledge here… but are you using leather pads with the oakum?

The equipours, IME should not need any additional pads. Once cured, it should stay in the foot on its own. Does that cause discomfort?

[Mareish]

@Sansena

At the periphery of my knowledge here… but are you using leather pads with the oakum?

The equipours, IME should not need any additional pads. Once cured, it should stay in the foot on its own. Does that cause discomfort?

We haven’t actually tried oakum yet and also haven’t tried leather pads — we’ve just been strategizing options for my very sensitive mare. My trainer and farrier both raised the possibility of oakum balling up and creating uneven pressure given the wet winter weather we have in Virginia, so I was hoping to hear if others have seen that. Does oakum generally work better with leather pads vs plastic?

And we did use the equipak pour-ins without other pads. They were a definite no go for my mare — we had to cut them out within a few days.

[RedHorses]

When I had full pads with oakum my farrier used pine tar - which nicely resisted the moisture. Never had any oakum shifting issues. The pads were the standard synthetic pads.

[Zu_Zu]

Leather pads with treated oakum will need to be kept dry Ӣ

• should not cause too much sole pressure/ nor any shifting problems if farrier ‘cups’ out the foot and knows how to use the treated oakum with some pine tar.

I have had several farriers try full plastic pads with pour-in and the shoes and pads had to be removed within 36 hours …too much sole pressure … mares could not walk !

Sole pressure is serious …can cause so much pain that laminitis can occur quickly.

Be careful please …

[S1969]

My farrier always uses oakum and pine tar together as a packing under pads for my mare and we’ve never had any issues. She wears a variety of types of pads depending on the season - right now she has plastic snowball pads on with oakum packing. She has worn leather many times with no issues, but I agree it would be more ideal for summer conditions when it is expected to be mostly dry (of course they can get wet, but might not be the best choice for very wet conditions.) The basic rubber/synthetic pads work well…not really sure what they are made of - they are flexible and can be cut with a hoof knife…?

Why magic cushion? Is that to just to mix in, or is it chosen for some other therapeutic reason?

[kande04]

i have oakum stuffed under full snowball pads right now. My horses came into the winter barefoot so have well developed bare hooves, but if they were thin soled/weak hooved the advantage to oakum would be that I could pull it out to see if it was what was causing the problems, and then restuff it.

If I had a horse who was so thin soled/weak hooved that he was still sore in pads I’d be 1) looking for other causes, and/or 2) getting him out of shoes and pads and onto soft ground/mats so his hooves could heal.

[Mareish]

@S1969

Why magic cushion? Is that to just to mix in, or is it chosen for some other therapeutic reason?

I’m not positive why magic cushion has been discussed. While her shoes have been open with rim pads, we’ve packed occasionally with magic cushion, without any, well, magical results. My farrier mentioned that pine tar can be softening for feet, which is not necessarily what we need, so it may be an alternative to lessen that effect?

As to why we’re still looking for different pad setups, we’ve done rads and MRIs and nerve blocks — there are no other causes of the soreness. We’ve also worked with multiple farriers, including the journeyman farrier at a research hospital She is a very, very sensitive horse, and the theory is that the materials we’ve used so far have caused too much pressure on her soles or frogs, so we’ve been discussing more alternatives. It’s sounding like oakum may be worth a try! Thanks for all the responses so far!

[walktrot]

My 25 y.o. Paint gelding has a 2 degree plastic frog pad and we use it year-round. The farrier started him in Avanti shoes last spring. She uses a regular medicated packing material. She adds powdered copper sulfate and oakum and kneads it together. A small amount always squeezes out through the cleft in his heel the first couple of days. He rarely has a problem with a bit of thrush. She ran out of regular packing a few months ago so she used the pour-in stuff. I didn’t particularly like it partly because so much squeezed out.

The pads he has are fine for winter. I keep a hammer handy for snowballs. I love the Avanti shoes. He goes so much better because they ease the breakover without changing it. He also is on biotin and the walls and soles are thicker and stronger…

[mountainbells]

This year I transitioned to leather pads and now wish I had done it years ago. I also use Hoof Armor under the pads and like the results. Since starting the Hoof Armor, I haven’t used packing ( have used both Oakum and Magic cushion in the past). Hoof Armor is a polymer sealant with Kevlar in it. A VERY thin layer is applied. http://www.hoofarmor.com/faq/ I get my leather for the pads from a local saddle maker and pay for it by the pound. Cheaper than plastic pads.

[buck22]

To answer your question about balling, the real Buck wore oakum packed under plastic pads for many years, his turnout was a mud pit 8 months out of the year. Nary an issue with balling.

[PNWjumper]

My TB lives in wedge pads with oakum and “something” (sometimes magic cushion, sometimes pine tar, sometimes ichthammol - depends on who put the shoe on…or puts the shoe back on if it comes off) 24/7 for the last 10 or so years. I’ve never had any issues with oakum shifting or moving around, and my guys lives out in muddy and wet conditions 9 months of the year. My farrier (or I, if I have to put a shoe back on) feathers out the oakum pretty well and lays it over the top of the pine tar/packing material. I don’t think there’s any mechanism under which it could ball itself back up.

On that note, we tried many other packing materials under his pads over the years and he is absolutely intolerant of ANY other packing. Even the super soft dental impression-type material was too much for him. But oakum and something keeps him happy. And he shows at a high level in the jumper ring, so he definitely “puts it to the test” so to speak.

[Haylter]

try researching LUWEX AIRRIDE MEMORY FOAM hoof packing…it is softer than other packings. My vet recommended it for my mare with Navicular

[PNWjumper]

@Haylter

try researching LUWEX AIRRIDE MEMORY FOAM hoof packing…it is softer than other packings. My vet recommended it for my mare with Navicular

I think some horses cannot tolerate any pressure in the foot under a pad and I think it’s related to the shape of the foot and how the foot expands as they grow. I think that oakum and a liquid-y/non-solid binder allow everything to move as the foot grows, but none of the [insert product name here - memory foam/dental impression/silicone/etc] do not because they remain relatively in place once inserted into the pad. For my guy, he’s a pretty stereotypical flat footed/no heel TB, and I think that when he grows foot he grows a lot of toe and kind of gets a bit wonky as he hits the mid point to the end of his cycle. So with [literally every] “fancy” hoof packing material he’d go like a million bucks for 2-3 weeks and then hit about the 3 week point and go to SORE SORE SORE. But he stays perfectly happy through his entire cycle with oakum.

YMMV, of course, but in my experience, a horse that cannot tolerate a packing material won’t tolerate any packing material (by “packing material” I mean anything that forms a semi-solid or attached layer…so that does not include products like magic cushion, pine tar, ichthammol, venice turpentine, etc).