Diet

I cannot stress how important diet is when it comes to achieving sound healthy hooves capable of delivering the goods. Getting the diet right is essential.
Even with the best trim if the diet is too rich then achieving sound trouble free hooves will be a challenge.

Remember "naturally healthy hooves are the result of the horse living a natural liestyle".
Diet is the root to natural living.
 Through out evolution the horses diet has been provided soley by their immediate environment.They are grazers specialising in low nutrient high fibre seasonal grasses and browse. And ocassionally on vegetables or legumes. However these "treats" would be available seasonally with competition for them from other herbivors. Legumes (such as alfalfa) and vegetables can be highly nutritious making them unsuitable as a long term diet for the horses fibre specialist digestive system.Horses have ALWAYS eaten local organic seasonal raw food!As horses have always eaten raw food they are more accustomed to sprouting vegetation than cooked vegatation.

As nomads searching for a healthy balanced diet, they move on in search of pastures new.
The search for food stimulates movement.
The area a herd of horses can cover in search of all the nurtients needed for a blanaced diet can be truly vast. As grazers horses are designed to eat little and often and to eat on the move.

As prey animals digesting a large meal would be a hinderance as energy is taken up digesting the load. Carrying excess weight slows a fleeing animal down. For this reason horses eat after an event to replace callories burnt up in the chase rather than building them selves up prior to the event such as human athletes do.

Do's and Dont's
 Avoid man made additives such as molasses and sugar by products . There is NO place for these in a natural diet.Feed a fibre based diet. Predominantly dry grasses (hay).Try and source locally grown forage that is indigenous to your country. Feed it little and often.Feed to replace used callories, not to make them fat.Avoid nutrient rich forage such as alfalfa and clover.

For further reading on specific horse food ingredients click here

Laminitis

Click here for further explanation on laminitis.

Laminitis is the plague of the barefoot world. If not in the sterio-typical acute "attack" then in the sneekier "subclinical" form that can so easily go unnoticed, hindering the horses advance into total soundness.
All forms of white line breakdown indicate that the lamina are compromised in some way and by far the easiest first port of call is to take a serious look at the diet.
Look at diet if your horse has any of the following:Whiteline DiseaseWhiteline StretchFlat solesAbscessesSeedy ToeThrushHoof splits
In the event of your horse already living on a 100% hay and "nothing else" consider doing a detox. Toxins already in your horses system can still cause havock even if you have the diet now sorted.

Warning Signs.All of the above. Excessive weight, fat patches, cresty neck etc. (toxins locked away in fat stores)Pottery or stiff movement.Slow improvement / transition.Any sign of break down in the lamina / white line or stress rings decending from the coronary band should be considered as signs of laminitis and treated as such. ie SERIOUS!Leaving this unattended to WILL lead to the progression of more painful symptoms.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  
  Event Lines
 
 
  Stretched Whiteline