What is this??? Been battling it with topical antibiotics for a couple months. Waxes and wanes. Worse on front where non irritating bell boots are but present on hinds too.
Anybody dealt with this before?
Yes, caused by morning dew on grass. Worse with bell boots because moisture collects under there. Is this horse out at night? Does this go away after they have been in dry stall / dry paddock for 10-12 hrs?
yes looks overly wet and well ummm zippin my lip
UM. Your horses hooves look very unhealthy. The waves are not a good sign and looks like the hoof is being crushed around bottom.
IMHO I would start on a supplement and start drying the hooves daily with some sort of sealant to lock out moisture and toweling or drying them with a fan. Defiantly have a vet/farrier look at them.
Thank you. I am very, very aware of the condition of his feet. That was not my question and was hesitant to post a picture but I was at wits end trying to manage it while on just pasture. Clearly 24 hour turnout is not agreeing with him very well and will have to start coming in at night. He is on double strength farriers formula and I just started applying keratex daily. He is on a 4 week shoeing schedule. He wasn’t quite sure what was going on with his coronet band either. I am a 3rd year vet student and pretty knowledgeable about feet. My 2 other horses feet do not resemble this guy’s. I’ve had this horse for 13 years and he’s never had gorgeous feet, but also never this bad. My lovely normal farrier is 3 hours from me and can’t do him anymore. It is pretty frustrating.
Plan: shorten turnout time and ask bell boots to be taken off or flipped up during stall time.
His feet/legs have been too wet for too long. You need to get it dry and keep it dry. Maybe keep him in unless it’s completely dry out.
Are you talking specifically about the black spot? I may not be looking at the right thing.
I’m sorry if i offended you. What kind of diet is he on? When did you notice the changes in his hooves?
If you want to really dry them out then he should be on bagged shavings too.
I’m talking about the inflammation and hyperemia around the entire coronary band and lack or normal membrane there. He eats purina ultimo and free choice hay when stalled.
Already spoke to barn owner, he is switching to day turnout and stalled at night with fluffy shavings.
He’s never had great feet, but I don’t remember them ever getting to this point, with or without the weird wet thing. He’s been on a hoof supplement for probably 10 years. The only real change is that he’s not normally on pasture only, and I don’t believe his feet are drying out like they should. Im the picture I had just hosed off his feet bc they were caked with mud. He lives in the southeast.
have you ruled out lack of circulation around cornet band? like for whatever the blood isn’t flowing normally. you could try massaging the area to increase blood flow.
has he always worn the bell boots? does he NEED them on?
Yup, feet staying to wet. It’s the equivalent of wrinkled toes when you soak in a tub too long.
For what it’s worth, I really don’t like how the nails are placed in that shoe.
It seems strange to be giving a vet student and farrier advice. You seem to be in a catch 22. Bad feet that need bell boots and bell boots causing bad feet.
Dew and antibiotics and bell boots keeping the coronet and hooves wet.
If your bell boots are black they are not good to have on all day as the sun heats them up, especially in Sumner and you know that heat is bad and one of the conditions of laminitis.
Take the bell boots off. If he hits his heels, having them on will make him lazy about it.
The rings as you should know mean sudden feed changes and the rules with horses is little and often.
More than one ring means more than one sudden change so you are probably lucky he didn’t founder … or they are rings from foundering.
If you have to travel the horse to find a good farrier then that is what you do. Not persevere with a farrier who could not answer your question and did not find the answer to a question he did not know.
I do not know, but I presume, as a 3rd year vet student that you have been taught about hooves and how to shoe yourself. You should also know that antibiotics will not do anything if there is no infection or not the type of infection that that antibiotic fights.
I would also think that your teachers would have access to good farriers and would have been able to help you with this horse in person.
Do you have an Instructor? What do they say?
You seem to be a caring and diligent horse owner and have been let down by the people around you.
I did some Googling. There’s something called coronary band dystrophy, which appears (from my very brief skimming) to be kind of a catch all phrase for disorders of the coronary band. You could do a Google image search and see if any look similar. Apparently a biopsy can help determine the cause and sometimes it’s an autoimmune reaction.
There’s also something called coronitis, which is a form of pemphigus (whatever the hell that is).
Anyways, that gives you a couple of search terms anyways. Some of the photos look quite similar to yours.
[QUOTE=SuzieQNutter;8288218]
It seems strange to be giving a vet student and farrier advice. You seem to be in a catch 22. Bad feet that need bell boots and bell boots causing bad feet.
Dew and antibiotics and bell boots keeping the coronet and hooves wet.
If your bell boots are black they are not good to have on all day as the sun heats them up, especially in Sumner and you know that heat is bad and one of the conditions of laminitis.
Take the bell boots off. If he hits his heels, having them on will make him lazy about it.
The rings as you should know mean sudden feed changes and the rules with horses is little and often.
More than one ring means more than one sudden change so you are probably lucky he didn’t founder … or they are rings from foundering.
If you have to travel the horse to find a good farrier then that is what you do. Not persevere with a farrier who could not answer your question and did not find the answer to a question he did not know.
I do not know, but I presume, as a 3rd year vet student that you have been taught about hooves and how to shoe yourself. You should also know that antibiotics will not do anything if there is no infection or not the type of infection that that antibiotic fights.
I would also think that your teachers would have access to good farriers and would have been able to help you with this horse in person.
Do you have an Instructor? What do they say?
You seem to be a caring and diligent horse owner and have been let down by the people around you.[/QUOTE]
He is on a topical antibiotic due to a bacterial dermatitis presumably also caused by the constant wet conditions. Both the coronet band issues and dermatitis are on back hooves also, which look much healthier and (obviously) have no bell boots on either.
He has worn bell boots for 10 years…never had a problem with them. I am aware of his quality of hoof. It is very concerning to me. There have been no feed changes and while I have done no radiographs on his feet lately, assuming no p3 rotation due to soundness. He did have a wicked abscess this may, and is not accustomed to being out all of the time in the elements.
Clearly I would not be putting an antibiotic on unless he had bacterial dermatitis, which he has cranial to the alopecia. (most likely dermatophilus congolensis) The farrier is a veterinarian.
I have many instructors - he was one of them back in first year.
Remember that even veterinarians occasionally see things they haven’t seen before. As a student, even more so. I could have gone down to equine to ask questions, but figured I would ask here considering we have all collectively seen just about about everything when our experiences are combined.
And whoever commented on the nail placement…I agree. Way too low. Frustrating.
OK - forgetting diet change.
Switched from equine senior to ultium this spring due to needing more calories. Forgot about that.
I would remove bell boots and keep them off asap
We are dealing with this! It is Coronitis/Pemphigus
Jumping in here… We have a 15 year old warmblood mare who presented almost a year ago with this same condition on all four feet. (Interestingly, she was on Purina feed as well.) After almost 6 months of going through the motions with just about every vet and farrier in the county, applying topicals, drying and keeping the area clipped and bare, soaking and keeping the area bandaged, nothing worked. The particular problem with drying the feet out is that then the bands become thick and crusty, and they are then VERY painful to the horse to touch. We also noticed rings appearing on the hoof wall as the coronet band progressively grew worse and eventually the connective tissue that “fastens” the band to the horn separated. A Google search led to a PDF article on the autoimmune disorder called Pemphigus. There are different grades of the disease, with coronitis/coronary band dystrophy being the version that attacks the coronet bands but doesn’t go any higher (other variations attack the chestnuts and soft tissue membranes around nose/eyes/etc).
The frightening fact is that according to the article, there is no treatment; only management until eventually the horse is too lame to salvage. Out of desperation we scoured the internet excessively and came across a university vet who claimed to have a treatment for the disease. In essence, it is a formula that gives the body a new immune system, helping to combat the attack on itself. It is called Transfer Factor. Look it up, or PM me and I will send you his contact info. He sent us a box at no charge to get the horse started, and to see if we got a positive response (indicating that it is indeed pemphigus), and within a few days we watched the swelling go down and the bands begin to smooth out. Depending on how soon you catch it, you may have better results. We are still treating this horse, as we were not fortunate enough to find this vet until the horse had suffered for over 6 months with the mystery condition. We also dealt with vets and farriers who wanted to shove a Canker diagnosis down our throats and cut the horse’s feet open ($$$$) only because the disease is so rare, it’s the closest thing they can relate it to.
Getting back to the Purina feed, while we wanted to slowly remove things from her diet to see if we could pinpoint something that perhaps set off this condition, she was going downhill so fast that we pulled her off everything but hay during the initial course of treatment. The improvement in her feet was tremendous. As her lameness improved and we began testing her in light work, we of course began adding some Ultium back in. Within 48 hours the swelling had returned. Needless to say, we did a complete feed overhaul with the help of a nutritionist from Biostar EQ, who has designed whole food feed programs for some of the top hunter and jumper barns in the country, and we are watching the mare thrive. While we are still working on the aesthetics and healing of her feet themselves, she is now 100% sound and back in regular work, and off all supplements. As a precaution, we do continue to wash her feet routinely with – believe it or not – original blue Dawn dish soap. Oddly enough, there is something about it that seems to soothe the band tissue, keep it just dry enough, yet just soft enough to allow the tissue to breathe and attempt to heal as best as it can.
A final note… since learning so much about this disease, it’s become very alarming to me just how many of these cases have popped up over the year’s time I’ve spent learning about it. Really makes one wonder if this is a widespread feed or environmental problem, since up until recently, this disease was extremely rare.
Keep the hair clipped, and yes, do leave the bells off! If there is ANYTHING I can offer in the way of advice, info, or support, PLEASE do not hesitate! I was at my rope’s end with our mare, preparing for the worst and watching her decline, and I do truly believe this vet and his treatment saved her.
ETA: Here is a photo of her feet for comparison during our “wet/topical/wrapped feet” phase. http://tinypic.com/r/2m7fdqf/8
Thank you so much for posting. Losgelassenheit.
I love that it is so easy for us to learn something everyday so easily. That will go into my memory banks now.
There is also a yahoo group on Pemphigus. It has a very large number of cases and histories.
Second vote for Transfer Factor, and Biostar EQ.
We had good luck with several different detoxes.
The OP would do well to show her farrier the photos of Losgelassenheit’s mare’s shoeing. The contrast is really something.
I believe it’s actually the perioplic ring not the coronary band, that gets whitish and swollen looking in wet conditions (like cuticles).
