Talk to me about thrush

[fivestrideline]

@JB

Boots can be used with wedge pads, which can be used part time, or even full time for a while as long as you make some considerations like using something like Gold Bond Medicated Powder to help keep things drier, especially a concern with thrush.

I am looking into this. He’s on 24/7 turnout, and I live an hour away. However, I’m pretty confident the BO would switch his boots out if I bought 2 sets, to let the others dry. I’m looking at the EasyBoot Clouds with the wedge pads. Still, wedged boots sounds like the easiest solution vs hauling to a specialist farrier. The horse is retired, unless something changes dramatically with his condition.

[kaya842]

Progress can definitely be made barefoot, and with my personal hot mess hooved horse she progressed better/ faster with boots / barefoot than shoes. Like JB said, the biggest advantage of barefoot is doing trims more frequently. For my horse, we did once a week for months, then every other, and now are at every 3 which is probably where she will stay.

For boots, I bought French clay and zinc powder on Amazon (less than $10 each for a larger bag of each) and mixed equal parts into a little shaker that I used to dust the boots every time they went on the horse. No rubs and kept the funk down considerably. I would also spray the boots with a listerine/ chlorehexidine/ water mix every so often, and sprayed the hooves with the same mix daily during her boot-free time in the stall to let everything breathe.

I use the listerine mix for thrush too and will pack the hoof with home made “Hoof Stuff” (by RedHorse) - pulled apart cotton balls, zinc diaper cream, and honey. Sometimes I packed the hoof daily, sometimes I’d leave the pack in until it fell out on its own, and sometimes I honestly forgot. I took about 4 months of the above + good trims every 3 weeks for this hoof to improve (horse had been in open heeled steel shoes most, if not all, if it’s 18 years of life).

As to if every horse has thrush, no not every but I think a lot more have it than their owners realize. The above horse was in excellent care when I bought her, I really believe if the owner thought she had thrush (or could otherwise improve the hoof) she would have. The hoof didn’t smell or have the standard black nastiness, just this deep, right crack which I recognized as a sign of thrush (and caudal failure but that’s another thing) and treated it. As to if thrush is part of the pain issue - for my horse I’m not sure. She was big time sore on her feet but she had retained sole, high bars, and extremely weak digital cushion. Not all of that is 100% fixed yet, but lots of improvement overall has made her not sore anymore.