Hoof Trim

Today was Trim Day. I'd been putting it off for a few days (OMG, the effort!), but when I pulled Cherry out of her paddock today, I was like "those feet have got to go!" It's amazing how long hooves can look with just a little overgrowth.

Last trim was four weeks ago, so it seems like 3 to 3.5 weeks between trims in the winter is ideal. Every 2 weeks in summer, every 3-4 weeks in winter.

Considering how long her feet looked, I took a surprisingly small amount of hoof off. Mainly just rasped her heels down and re-newed the mustang roll. For the past few months I haven't had to take off any sole. I scratch at it a bit with the hoof knife, but mostly I leave it the hell alone.

One thing I did do today was bring back her toe. Cherry's feet have a propensity to elongate with the toe pulling the whole hoof capsule forward. So I busted out the nippers (so much easier to use in wet weather!) and backed up the toe almost to the white line. Since I'm a scaredy cat about taking off too much wall with the nippers, I finished it off with the rasp.

Cherry was being rather irritating during the trim. Normally she stands still and lets me fuss, but today she was shifting her weight around, tossing her head, and generally acting impatient. It's hard to nip off just the right amount of hoof wall when the horse is rocking around on you. As I was finishing up the front feet I was done with that behavior, so I whapped her on the chest with the rasp and told her to knock it off. She did and I trimmed her hind feet in peace.

I've had to get creative with the hind feet. Cherry can't hold them up for too long and she can't comfortably put them up on the hoof stand for the finishing touches. I gave up on using the stand awhile ago and just held the hoof up with one hand and rasped away quickly with the other. Not the ideal situation, rather awkward and my hand came perilously close to being trod on a few times. Today I decided just to finish them from the bottom. As I held her hoof on my leg (a la picking out feet), I ran the fine side of the rasp over the edge of the mustang roll to smooth it out. I had to bend over quite a bit to see how I was doing, making it even and all that, but it worked out a lot better than trying to hold her hoof under her belly (like it was on the stand). I think this is how we'll be doing the hind feet from now on.