tender after trimming

Don,



My horses have been going barefoot for several months now. They seems to be handling it well, but they are always extremely tender after they have been trimmed. Is this normal? Is there anything that can help prevent the soreness that follows the trim?



-Christopher

This is one of the great problems with being barefoot. Some horses are fine right after a trim, others need to rebuild or re-grow their sole, kinda like being barefoot yourself if you are always in shoes.

Speaking for myself, what I do in general for my bare/footers is; I leave as much sole on the foot as possible when doing a trim, keeping in mind that this horse will be barefoot. I have also just started to use a Vettec product called Sole Guard and I am super pleased with the first 4 results. It is only intended to stay on the hoof for about 3 weeks, after that it just falls off and the horse has grown enough natural sole to continue until the next trim schedule. All the feedback thus far has been nothing less than positive. This is what I am going to start recommending to my clients who seem to have problems with tenderness after a trim. For the horse, that is, not the client….. Mention this to your farrier before your next scheduled trim.
Don

Your horses should not be tender after every trim. Especially after 6 months.
Is your farrier/trimmer using a knife on the soles. In a barefoot trim the sole as a general rule should not be trimmed and the frog only "tidied" up not trimmed. If the trimmer is removing any "live" sole the horse will be sore.


Karla

Hey Karla. I had the same problem. There wasn't much heel on the hooves and if the farrier didn't trim the frog, the horse walked on the frog. I finally had to put shoes back on. I hated it for him!