"No Hoof, No Horse"

By Melyni Worth PhD. PAS.



Hope you are enjoying the Spring weather.

Here in Virginia we are having a wet Spring which is wonderful for grass growth (watch out all of you with IR or Cushings horses) but is causing problems with retaining shoes. Wet feet tend to be soft and don't hold well onto nails! Which brings me to this month's topic, it's all about how to grow those feet.

'No foot, No Horse' a very well known phrase which still holds true today. How many otherwise good horses have been rendered unusable because their feet cannot retain shoes, bruise easily and are generally weak. While horn quality is strongly affected by genetics, (parents with strong feet generally have offspring with strong feet and vice versa), it is possible within limits to help improve the quality of horn growth.

It helps to understand how the hoof grows. The horn of the walls of the foot is all produced by the coronary band where a special layer of cells called the coronary corium produce horn continuously. Hoof consists of the same keratin protein from which hair is made. As the horn cells in the the coronary band produce the keratin the horn moves down the grooves of the laminae of the pedal bone towards the ground. The hoof wall derives moisture from the cells of the sensitive laminae. It takes 4-6 months for the horn at the top of the foot to grow down to the base where it holds the nails.

A layer of natural varnish, the periople grows from the perioplic corium to cover the surface of the horn and minimizes moisture loss from the hoof. This periople is rasped away by the farrier when he trims the foot for shoeing.

Since all the horn grows down from the top of the hoof, horn that is already in place cannot be much affected by nutrition. The only effect one can have on it is to keep it sufficiently moist to retain its integrity and strength. All the hoof dressings in the world can only help retain existing strength, they cannot improve on what is already there. There are a few materials which can act as a varnish to impede loss of moisture from the top (replacing the periople). You cannot increase the tensile strength beyond that which the horn started out with. Too much dressing will cause weakening of the glue between the keratin strands and hence weaken the wall.
The best bet to improve the quality of the horn is a two pronged attack;

1) Regular shoeing by a good farrier, every 4-6 weeks for most horses.

2) Proper nutrition; will supply the reproducing horn cells with raw materials they need for horn growth. If the cells don't have what they need, when they need it, the horn will be of poorer quality than if all the ingredients are present.

The main ingredients needed for horn growth are:
Good quality Protein which will supply the amino-acid METHIONINE. Methionine provides the Oglue¹ which holds the keratin strands together.

BIOTIN a B vitamin which is an integral part of the enzyme chain which produces the keratin in the cells. If biotin is limiting, hoof growth proceeds very slowly, even if enough methionine is present.

A co-enzyme, ZINC, which is an essential part of the enzyme system.

A good supply of FATTY-ACIDS which provide much of the raw material of the horn.

The important ingredient in the methionine is sulfur which is part of the molecular Oglue¹, sulfur can also be supplied in the supplement MSM.

In short if your horse has weak shelly, or crumbly feet that have problems holding nails, you need to feed supplements which contain the following ingredients, biotin, methionine, zinc, fatty-acids, and sometimes sulfur in its organic form, MSM. You may have to buy more than one supplement to obtain all these, to know what a supplement contains read the label where it states the ingredients the supplement contains. If there is no label ask the manufacturer, or don't buy it.

The key to good hoof growth is:
1) Buy horses of bloodlines or of a breed where sound feet have been selected for!

2) Get a good farrier and have him come regularly, not once a while but every 4-6 weeks.

3) Feed good quality supplement(s) which contain all of the key ingredients in combination, (not just one or two of them).

An important thing to remember is that it takes 4-6 months for the new horn to grow down to the point where the nails go through it, so you need to keep feeding a supplement for a minimum of 16 weeks to see any benefit. If you give up before then you won't know, although you will see the change in the horn of the upper part of the foot as early as 6-8 weeks.

Happy Trails to all, may you always ride good horses.
 

For further information, contact DR Melyni Worth at melyni@intelos.net or call 540-942-4500.

Dr. Melyni Worth Ph.D. - 2006 (c)

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