Here’s a handful of photos of some of the Frank Ringel knives that just arrived in stock. We’re proud to be the exclusive NZ distributor for Frank Ringel knives
Frank Ringel loop knife
Frank Ringel drop blade knife with elk handle
Q: My question is about break-over and concussion. Where I live, we have had a long and very dry spring, summer and early autumn, so the ground has been rock hard for months and lots of horses (including mine) have jarred up and become sore. A friend of mine has a new farrier, though, and he has told her that the whole ‘hard ground causing horses to jar up’ thing is a bit of a myth, as horses have evolved to run for miles over hard ground. He says that so-called concussion issues are actually breakover issues; in soft ground the toe digs in a little but when the ground is hard this cannot happen and the horse starts tripping and must use its shoulder in a different way. Therefore it’s incorrect shoeing causing a mechanical issue rather than the hard ground in itself causing a problem.
It seems to me that trotters/pacers work hard, fast and frequently on hard surfaces, and they don’t seem to have the soundness issues that sport horses do.
Can you please give me your opinion on this?
DM, Auckland
A: Sorry to hear that your horse is sore. Jarring up can be a very real problem and is most certainly closely associated with prolonged working on hard ground and the related concussion effect.
Getting the breakover right is vital for the optimal performance of a sport horse and should be taken very seriously. It will also play an important role in reducing the likelihood of injury, certain lamenesses and to a certain extent, jarring up. However, if the breakover is correct then more focus should be put on the hard ground and how to reduce the effect that it is having on your horse.
I don’t always entirely accept comparisons to wild horses and their ability to do this, that or the other. Whilst it is very useful to study and attempt to understanding of the wild horse, there are significant differences to the horses we have in the paddock and ride. Because some horses survive in the wild doesn’t mean horses in our care should not experience certain conditions.
There are a number of things that can be considered when attempting to reduce concussion. I’d recommend talking to your existing farrier about what he thinks are worth trying.
The hoof capsule has evolved and has certain structures which have highly effective shock absorbing functionality. This includes the digital cushion (encapsulated within the hoof), the ability of the horny hoof to expand at the heels upon loading, the horny frog and so on. To ensure these structures are functioning satisfactorily then correct hoof balance is important. Specifically and in particular something that is overlooked or misunderstood is the importance of a hoof size which allows the hoof to function. In recent years, there has been a desire from some owners and farriers to make the feet as small as possible. Having a hoof that is too small for the horse can have a very negative effect on the shock absorbing ability of the hoof in the long-term. An abnormally small hoof will usually have a lesser surface area on the solar surface than a horse with an ideal hoof size. A smaller surface area for the hoof will mean less area for the horse to spread the forces around. As a result, a smaller area will likely limit the ability for the hoof to expand compared to a suitably sized hoof.
Similarly, a hoof that has been over-dressed and too small is likely to be more upright. This will impact on the amount of concussion that is placed on the foot (and transferred higher up).
Trotters and pacers work on various surfaces (not always hard) but also the fact they are standardbreds means they can possibly handle more than certain other breeds. Horses begin racing at an early age, most have finished their careers within a small number of years (often before any lameness issues are observed) and those that don’t handle the workload, don’t stay at the trainers long. In comparison, those of us who jump, event or compete in dressage often have variously bred horses and are worked for a number of years – some developing conditions related to concussion. Generally speaking (although not exclusively), more care is taken with the breeding of racehorses. Conformational abnormalities in racehorses can have a dramatic effect on the sale price whilst we too often turn a blind eye to many imperfections in our sport horses.
If your horse is jarring up when the ground gets hard then I’d be looking at ways to reduce the concussion. This might include shock absorbing options (pads for example), the options for working on less hard surfaces as well as hoof size/balance. The Equithane range of hoof materials produces some worthy results for many horses on hard ground in NZ – talk to your farrier about these.
David Hankin Dip.WCF
This question and answer first appeared in NZ Horse & Pony magazine May 2010
I’m really stoked to have been appointed the New Zealand distributor for the NAF range of horse care products.
We’re going to initially import a handful of the most popular products in the range and build up over the coming years
At the moment, I’d be keen to hear from anybody who has used any of the NAF range in the UK (or elsewhere), what their favourites are and how well they worked for your horses.
More info to come about the NAF products we’re launching here in NZ firstly and some of the benefits.
If you’re as excited as we are about having the NAF brand in NZ then drop me an email and let me know 
david@farrier.co.nz
Q. My four year old OTTB has got a huge chunk missing out of the side of her hoof and my farrier says he might not be able to get a shoe on that foot next time. Can I bog it up and is there one that will stay in longer than others?
Sally, Taumarunui
A: Thanks for your question. We’re very lucky these days that farriers have some pretty useful materials in their tool boxes for rebuilding and repairing hooves.
Some of the modern hoof repair materials are easily applied to the hoof and can rebuild areas of hoof wall that is missing – from a relatively small chunk to a large area that has either been lost or removed in the treatment of disease.
There are a few different options for repair materials that are popular in NZ. The advantages of these are their strength, their ability to bond strongly to the surrounding healthy hoof and the fact they have some flexibility when set which allows for some give with the natural movements of the hoof wall under loading. Many of the hoof repair materials can be nailed into and through almost like regular hoof wall and this gives the shoe a better chance of staying on and the nails can also help to keep the rebuild material securely in place as an added bonus.
Something your farrier will be watching out for is any sensitive areas. Most adhesives heat up slightly when they’re going off (setting) so there’s always the danger of scalding if the hoof wall has been torn away to sensitive horn and the glue is applied too close to it.
I would never recommend using a filler that isn’t specifically developed for use on hooves – something you get from a hardware shop isn’t likely going to cut the mustard when it comes to staying in place and enduring all the things that horses’ hooves experience.
The market leaders in the farrier industry are the Vettec range of products and Equilox. There are a handful of others which are similar in quality and are sold under other brand names. The Vettec products (Adhere or Superfast) are usually applied using a special applicator gun and mixing nozzles whilst Equilox can be used from a gun or mixed in pots by hand depending on which type you’ve got.
Depending on the preference of your farrier and what he thinks might be best for your horse, one of these products might do the trick for your horse and if applied correctly, will stay in place for a number of weeks. Hope this helps.
David Hankin Dip.WCF
This question and answer first appeared in the March 2012 issue of NZ Horse & Pony magazine
What tools are need to remove a horseshoe?
To remove a horseshoe safely you’ll need most importantly, the knowledge and some skill.
It’s probably best to have a farrier to do any work on the feet but in an emergency, having some tools at hand can be useful:
Here’s a reproduction from Absolute Horse magazine posted by Trelawne Equine in the UK.
Simon Curtis’ angle on barefoot trimming:
Stud hole tapping machine
These are great for farriers who do lots of stud holes. I know how much time and energy tapping stud holes can take at “that time of year” when it seems all your clients want double stud holes in every shoe!
The HMS stud hole tapping machine makes tapping the holes a breeze. Pop the shoe in place and turn the handle. Then Bob’s your uncle and Fanny’s your aunt – job done
Made in the UK, we have the 3/8″ HMS stud hole tapping machine available to buy online and yes, we ship worldwide
We welcome guest posts. Thanks to David Bartley from Tasmania for this guest post.
SURFACE DRESSING / FITTING AND OUTLINE FITTING HORSESHOES
The art of farriery is not the preparation of the foot to take a steel wear plate. And it is most definitely not trimming the foot in a particular manner so one can apply a shoe type that is in vogue at the present time.
The true art of farriery
Surface dressing is the true art of farriery it is the preparation of a foot to maintain or improve the quality, health and function of the hoof capsule. And you achieve this by the adding or relieving pressure from various parts of the foots ground surface to maintain this balance. The one thing every farrier knows is that the horses foot has one very bad design flaw and that is it is designed to destroy itself unless measures are taken to control its growth on a regular basis. When we talk about surface dressing we are only talking about the ground surface or bottom diameter keeping in mind the way you dress this surface plays an important part in the health of the top diameter, which is our future weight-bearing surface. All experienced farriers know that the dressing of a foot plays a very important role in the horse’s life from standing comfortably to performing.
To prove this very simply, to the horse being too high in the heels is the same as being to low in the toe and he will stand under himself, too low in the heels is the same as too much toe as he will stand forward, too high on the outside and the foot points outwards too high on the inside the foot will point inward so you can see one can change the stance of a horse simply by how the foot is dressed.
We therefore have to consider the following before any surface dressing of the foot:
(1) The way the horse stands (forward, under, in, out )
(2) The coronet (level or not, lumps and bumps, swellings, etc)
(3) The basic hoof shape (round, oval or pointed, club, coonfooted )
(4) The condition of the wall. (solid, shelly, dorsal dip, cracks. large amounts missing etc)
(5) Any injury to the lower legs ( over reaching, scalping, brushing etc)
(6) Pastern and wall angles
And underneath you have
(1) Frog size to foot size ratio
(2) Widest point of the foot location
(3) Contraction
(4) Corns, bruises
(5) Bars
(6) White line diseases and outlines of the white line any deviations in it.
(7) Unsymmetrical in any of the 8 point of a farriers compass
(8) Sole presentation e.g. flat, dropped,arched, cracks. etc
(9) Forward and aft lengths from your datum point
(10) Under-run heels
(11) Basil shadow length
(12) How the last set of shoes wore (even, or one side more than the other etc etc )
We have to consider all this and more to get an overall picture of what and how we are going to achieve the outcome we want and the method of dressing the foot before we start. So ok, we have dressed the foot not much stands out other than the white line seems a bit sticky and wide around the toe area but everything else seems fine but then we notice that if we super impose the top diameter onto the bottom diameter the foot has a definite excess of toe of say around 8mm our wall thickness is even all the way round what’s going on?? now that you have noticed it is standing out more and more to you. Well lucky the horse’s hoof is a cone shape so one can bevel off from underneath the area that is displaced from where it should be until a more symmetrical white line can be seen, by rechecking the top to bottom diameters you should have a foot that will grow to a more normal shape, because you have taken away the cause of the problem which was too much pressure at the toe.
Case study surface dressing a lame pony. This is the case study of a 7yo 14hh buckskin pony who had only ever had very limited riding and work load the owner noticed a slight lameness that became more noticeable during the summer months and had 2 vets look at the horse with 2 different diagnosis from sesamoiditis to laminitis .The distraught owner rang me to ask if there was anything that farriery could offer. On inspection of the horse the first thing I noticed was that he had small boxy feet slightly contracted but the main outstanding problem was that both inside toe area of the coronets there were swollen with hard lumps around the size of a bean the foot looked symmetrical in shape but the wall length from the lumps to the ground surface was 15mm longer in that area my conclusion was that as the horse was very slightly pigeon-toed instead of the wall growing down to form an inside toe excess, due to the rock hard condition of this horses feet the wall had pushed upward causing inflammation and thus the lameness.i trimmed this pony relieving a 8/10mm gap under the foot that corresponded to were the uploading would of been, the pony was kept in a water logged yard for a week, 2 weeks after the first trim the lumps had halved in size the pony was no longer lame he went back into his paddock with water boots on, 6 weeks after the first trim he was shod for the show with standard hack shoes (O’Dwyer) that was 3 years ago now and the only time he shows any lameness is when the relieved part of the wall starts pushing the wall upward again. I guess what iam saying is don’t be afraid to allow room between the shoe and the hoof to allow any rises in the coronet to settle downward or lower either side of a point to allow that point to add an upward force on a low coronet area.
Surface fitting
Surface fitting a shoe in an ideal world would mean equal distribution of pressure all the way around the perimeter of the wall from heel to heel this is not practical in the real world as each horse has a unique foot pathology that may require modification from the standard.
Some may require simple modifications like rolled toe shoes, others may require more pressure to counteract contraction problem. others still may have bleeding in the white line that requires pressure relief, some may require pads ect therefore whenever you change a foot surface of a shoe to apply or relieve pressure for any reason you are surface fitting a shoe.
Case study of a horse with a dorsal dip, white line separation high heels. This horse was an ex racehorse of around 14 yrs old he wore one of the more coarser nail pattern shoes on the market today, he had a 25mm dip in the front feet (both) and stood under himself by about 8 inches give or take, his heels were thickened and stiff, the frog was 30mm of the ground, the shed on his feet was dry and thick he had sand cracks 4 in each front foot, his back feet had extra long toes and no heel probably from standing under himself to take off the weight from his front feet. as the owner didn’t care whether she could ride this horse at present she couldn’t anyway because it was lame it gave us the opportunity to really do something hard fast and quick. all the extra shed was cut out from the foot this gave us around 20mm of extra heel we could cut back which was done and the frog came within 4/5 mm from the heel level now that should be enough to bring the foot forward about 7 or 8 inches or where it should be and it did. Next I sighted down the front wall and rasped off all the dip and bevelling the under side as well, I put a standard flat hack shoe on with no clip and used the last two nail holes in the shoes.
I know what some of you will be saying about doing a job like this, and I say to you only do what you or your experience allows you to be comfortable doing. I’ve reshod this horse again 10 weeks later and everything is going well the heels are a lot more supple there’s no dip to speak of and he never missed a day’s show jumping so far
So let’s see if we can workout why this happened to this horse
(1) a course nail pattern shoe was put on a thin-walled racehorse because her friends horse has that type of shoe this in turn made the farrier leave too much toe out the front to accommodate the shoe type.
(2) as the foot shape got away from the farrier he attempted raise the heels to make it look smaller alas raising the heels on a long toe only increases the pressure on the wall and makes it dip further.
(3) because the heels were so high and the frog so far of the ground and with a wide shoe on, the shed could not be released from the foot this lead to the heel area being thickened and not working properly.
So this horse has had 18 months of intermittent lameness because the farrier dressed its feet for a shoe type instead of dressing the feet then selecting a shoe to fit the foot.
Outline fitting
Outline fitting is the procedure used to prepare a shoe that tries to place the centre of the foot in the centre of the leg. Anybody that has put on a shoe that corresponds to the hoof shape is only fitting shoes. To expand on this anyone that has put on a lateral/medial shoe or a toe extension on, has taken this standard shoe fitting up a notch into correct shoe fitting or outline fitting for that particular horse foot.
Conclusion
Even though there is an obvious over lapping between surface dressing of a foot and outline fitting of a shoe to a foot, One should always keep in mind that surface dressing is really keeping the weight-bearing structures of the foot balanced to the pedal bone and its pivot points, where as outline shoe fitting is more about placing the foot in the centre of the leg column and this may or may not work against surface dressing a foot. This has been a very brief outline about this subject a lot more information could have been told. The only piece of advice I can give anyone is only do what you feel at ease doing. Always have a plan in your mind on how and why you are doing something. Learn to read a foot; it holds a lot of secrets it is your job to find them.
Thanks to David Bartley for this guest post – comments as always are welcome
Here’s an interesting read by Claire Brown from Forge & Farrier about the 2012 Olympic farriers for the GB team in the UK:
Q: Hi, I have a 4YO TB who has what my farrier calls “ski jump” front feet. He gets shod every 4-5 weeks and recently I asked him to take more toe off as they really just did not look right and he was always tripping over his own toes!
This has lead to a few problems over the last couple of shoeings; he went lame due to a stone bruise (just being an idiot on the gravel though!) and then for some unknown reason went sore in the other foot, with him being very tender around the frog/heel part of the hoof. This has come right now and he is fine.
He has also over the last four months been throwing shoes left, right and centre, which is very rare for my farrier. We have put this down to having virtually no wall for the shoe to actually stick too. His hoofs are also quite soft.
So my question is, are ski jump feet a horse conformation fault, which can be fixed by corrective shoeing or is it a farrier fault caused by incorrect shoeing?
Would my horse benefit from corrective ‘barefoot’ trimming and is there anything I can feed him to help him grow more wall so I can eventually stick shoes on him without them falling off!
Thanks!
Emma, via email
A: Thanks for your question Emma. Sorry to hear about the “ski-jump” problem! I think the name gives a good indication of how the feet might look.
Unfortunately, thoroughbreds sometimes have a tendency to go this way in certain circumstances. To answer your question to start with, I expect there are a number of factors contributing to the problem but this likely includes the conformation of the horse and his type.
From your question, you raise some of the points that need to be considered to help improve the problem and also some of the classic symptoms of a horse with this type of hoof shape and quality.
The factors that commonly contribute to ski-jump feet can include:
Usually, a combination of some or all of the factors above can encourage the feet to go this way. They’re all very closely linked and it can often be an ongoing battle (for the farrier and the owner) to keep on top of the problem.
Some of the effects/symptoms that are commonly seen include:
It sounds like your farrier is conscientious and doing what he can to encourage some improvements. There is no miracle cure for feet of this type but an on-going process which you must both work together on in order to get anywhere. A hoof supplement may help if your horse has particularly soft hooves but this is only one stage of the process. With better hoof quality, your farrier might be able to do more with the feet which in turn might be the key to longer-term improvement. Regular shoeing is vital and 4-5 weeks sounds like a sensible time-frame although your farrier may adjust if necessary.
David Hankin Dip.WCF
This question and answer first appeared in NZ Horse & Pony magazine March 2010.
