Except for the point about checking load bearing, I think it’s great.
I would have loved it for my oldsters, for whom standing on three legs was an issue.
If every horse were taught to lie down, like they are taught to lead on a halter it wouldn’t be an issue.
Done lying down has nothing to do with the farriers quality or speed, that’s dependent on the farrier. Generally though I think the sooner done, the happier the horse is about the experience.
I watched the horses breathing, it was pretty even and slow.
Couldnt get through the whole video though, it kept stopping.
A sling is much more practical and less frightening for working on older horses. This setup is purely for the convenience of the shoer.
Not even going to bother calling these guys farriers because that implies they might care about things like balance, load bearing, and the horse’s comfort. No, they are just slapping on shoes assembly-line style.
No pearls required. Just plain old lazy horsemanship.
We had one beloved mare who suffered a nerve damaging injury (pasture mate kicked her) … the last two years of her life the only way we could trim her feet was to get her to lay down… our farrier was a trooper, never complained and always took great care
We wished we had a table like the one these farrier were using.
If they only have one table due to $$$ I can having two guys work so that you can get the horse on and off as fast as possible, table time is the limiting factor.
I could even see the BLM using this on large herds of feral mustangs who are not foot trained and have badly overgrown hooves. But that is a ‘desperation scenario’.
I do some trimming and I’ve actually trimmed ponies who were lying down. One was newly bought,not yet foot or farrier tool trained, and still zonked from gelding drugs. The other was a seriously wild baby with overgrown feet who would not stand safely, so we had to lie her down and pin her so we could cut the overgrowth. Again, desperation scenario from lack of handling.
Both cases, I felt I couldn’t do a good job balancing because I couldn’t work in different planes, especially in the plane front-back that the horse uses their hoofs in. No chance to check and correct the balance either. I foot trained the gelding and trim him normally (on bute to deal with joint issues) and I eventually took in the youngster for awhile to tame and train her so that I could trim her correctly.
If you hand these guys a 50 horse string of poorly trained horses I can see them saying ‘this or nothing for safety’s sake’. I’m sure these guys are better than I am at rasping evenly despite working from one plane at 90 degrees from normal. BUT I note they did a minimal job of cleaning out feet or checking sole plane. Just a cursory look as they did the grinding. That could be enough for an experienced person but you have to check to ensure sole plane truly is as opposed to where it would seem to be, and I didn’t see how they could do that well.
I also noticed the right front, lateral side, seemed a bit distorted and the guy in the red shirt didn’t seem to be checking that carefully. He certainly didn’t get down and LOOK at the right sides of all 4 feet as he was grinding, just going by a very quick feel and that isn’t enough if the horse is developing an issue. He didn’t seem to get that right front lateral side well addressed before he locked in his trim with a shoe. I know he had the foot in hand and I didn’t but I have trouble believing that foot was truly correct afterwards.
I can’t believe you get a good read on traditional pastern angle when gravity is pulling the pastern somewhat to one side. And then locking in the trim with a shoe before checking the angles while standing normally locks in any imbalance caused by that before the horse can weight the foot and tell you about it.
As an ammy trimmer who’s tried trimming a lying down horse, I can’t see how this would work well as the every time go-to method, I would want to find a normal trimmer. Esp. for any horse with lower limb arthritis which tends to be laterally imbalanced to begin with!
