I finally saw what a year of proper hoof trimming does to a foundered pony

I've been trimming this little Shetland named Peanut out near Lancaster for about 14 months now. When I first got him his coffin bone rotation was bad, toes way too long, heels underrun. The owner was doing the bare minimum before. After a year of consistent 5-week trims and balancing the heels first, his hoof angle went from 50 degrees to a solid 58. Has anyone else seen that big a shift just from getting the trim schedule right?

3 comments

3 Comments

wyatt_green311mo ago

Well shoot, that's a pretty big change in angle for sure. But I gotta wonder if the initial measurements were off or if the pony was standing funny the first time. In my experience, coffin bone rotation doesn't just magically reverse that much from trims alone, so maybe it was a combination of proper diet and shoeing too.

danielr941mo ago

Wait, is that right though? I don't think diet really changes the angle of the coffin bone itself, @wyatt_green31. From what I've seen, diet helps with inflammation and laminae health, but the actual rotation is about mechanical forces and the hoof capsule. You can correct rotation with aggressive trims and proper shoeing if there's enough hoof wall to work with, but it's a slow process and you're really just changing the relationship between the bone and the hoof wall, not moving the bone back to where it was. The pony might have had a severe flare that was trimmed off, or the first set of x-rays were taken with the foot in a bad position. That happens more than people want to admit.

miles9461mo ago

Buddy of mine had the same thing happen with his QH mare. First set of x-rays looked scary, rotation like 8 degrees. Vet said she was a goner. Farrier came out, did a good trim, got her on pads and wedges. Six months later new x-rays showed way less rotation. Not zero, but close to normal. We figured out later the first set was taken wrong. Mare was dead lame that day and couldn't stand square. Plus the trim before the x-rays was bad - left too much heel. Once they got the hoof capsule balanced and the trim fixed, the bone looked a lot better. Diet helped too, she was on soaked hay to drop sugar. But the angle change was mostly about the hoof capsule, not the bone itself moving back.