A Good Farrier will Save Your Horses

Neal McChristy and Mac

Our farrier, Doug, is pretty agile despite the back and knee problems that plague all farriers. He has literally hopped across a field holding a foal while trying to trim its hooves. Doug has even shoed horses on Sunday. Doug is in his late 50s, once rode rodeo and is "old school," but in many ways he is one of the most progressive people I know.

I was skeptical the first time he told me that oakum (hemp soaked in pine tar) is the best packing for an abscess. I swear by the stuff now. It helped heal one young horse with a severe abscess and an older horse with laminitis and so many abscesses he was about to lose the hoof. Shedding a hoof in our area of the Midwest means the horse has to be euthanized.

There are no hospitals nearby to care for such an ailment. Pea, a five-year-old filly of ours, developed an abscess in 2010. The image below shows Pea’s hoof being held up with the abscess.

An abscess on the hoof of a 5-year-old filly I can attest the oakum soaked in pine tar worked just like an antiseptic, which is what Doug said it would do, healing from the inside out. Doug cleaned the abscess, put antiseptic, oakum, a soft pad on the hoof and some Duct Tape.

In a few weeks, the filly was as good as new. A more serious ailment occurred in 2012. Mac, a 15-year-old horse, gets laminitis from eating very green grass in the spring. Fructans, or grass sugars, in the upper grass aren’t digested properly in the hindgut in some horses. That causes inflammation of the laminae, a blood-filled cushion in the hoof for the coffin bone, or lower hoof bone.

In April, 2012, Mac became sicker than in the past, hanging around the corral away from the other horses -- the first symptom of a sick horse. Mac’s hooves were very hot and he would only move when he had to. The hooves were tender on the upper part of the “V” or frog, of the front hooves below the coffin bone. He had a very hard, throbbing pulse in the pastern area above the hooves. It was the beginning of an extremely long convalescence.

Hair growing through the horn of a hoof while healing from laminitis The vet anesthetized Mac so Doug could work on him. Doug rinsed the front hooves out and used antiseptic, oakum and pads and shoes. Hair grew out of the hoof at one time while it was healing (see illustration). Mac took a high-biotin supplement and also magnesium in a mineral block (supplements are in a future column).

It took over a year for Mac to regain his full health. Now Mac gets only hay from March to July and is confined to the corral. A good farrier can be like a member of your family, like Doug is. Farriers save hooves, but more importantly, they save the lives of horses. Find someone who knows about hooves. Mostly find someone who cares about you and your horses. For your own medicine chest of supplies, check out Jeffers Equine's full line of hoof care products.

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Neal McChristy is a freelance writer with over 25 years journalism experience in magazine, newspaper and Web-based work. He has been contributing editor for a magazine column in the wide-format industry for seven years. He also has over 16 years’ experience as reporter and editor in the printing and imaging area. He and his wife have three horses.

They were "green," knowing little about horses when they began to acquire them in 1998. They learned about them through training lessons by Pat Parelli, John Lyons and others in the field of "gentle training" and "natural horsemanship". Neal lives in Pittsburg, Kansas, and currently writes action-adventure novels, which he has done for over 10 years. You are welcome to contact him at freelance9@cox.net