Dr Marcus Valmadre. Peninsula Equine Veterinarians. Telephone 03 5978 7894

For the best possible performance and long term soundness, the horse’s hoof should be properly balanced and that balance maintained. A hoof that is unbalanced is similar to a car with a poor wheel alignment in that when you drive your car it doesn’t steer well and its tyres prematurely wear out. Comparing this to a horse: ‘Doesn’t steer well’ equates to stumbling and lameness and ‘tyres prematurely wear out’ equates to early onset degenerative joint disease and flexor tendon strains. One of the best features of hoof balance is that it is easy to assess once you are aware of what is normal. By understanding what is normal you are then able to comment on what is abnormal.

HOOF BALANCE IS BASICALLY DIVIDED INTO TWO PARAMETERS: 1. MEDIO LATERAL BALANCE 2. HOOF PASTERN AXIS

To try and give a practical example of hoof balance, I enlisted Mick Verburt, farrier extraordinaire, to help a horse with some balance issues.

MEDIO LATERAL HOOF BALANCE

Medio lateral balance is a term that refers to the symmetry of the hoof when you run a line between the heels to the point of the toe. See Figure A

To examine a horse for medio lateral balance, the easiest way is to pick the hoof up and look down through the heels comparing the length of the inside wall to the length of the outside wall. See Image 1

As can be seen this hoof has a longer inside (top) wall by approximately 1.5 cm. Once the shoe was removed and the hoof trimmed, the length disparity became much smaller. There is still some imbalance that will need to be corrected with the next farrier visit. See Image 2

Similarly, the other front hoof before and after trimming. See Image 3 and Image 4

HOOF PASTERN AXIS (HPA)

This is balancing the hoof with respect to the angle the hoof wall makes to the ground and a line drawn midway through the pastern when viewed from the side. See Figures 1 to 3.

Figure 1 demonstrates a broken forward HPA; this is frequently seen with club footed horses and horses with long sloping pasterns. This HPA fault is relatively rare.

Figure 2 demonstrates a normal HPA; you will note that the midline through the pastern is parallel with the angle of the hoof wall.

Figure 3 demonstrates a broken back HPA and is arguably the most common of the HPA faults. This can be the root cause of a horse stumbling or chronic sole bruising in the heels (corms). You will note that the heels in all 3 figures are parallel with the hoof wall. This is considered to be the normal relationship of the heels to the hoof wall. Although it sounds complicated to do so, it is actually simple enough.

There are only two real traps for the young player, one is to make sure you take a line through the middle of the pastern as the front edge of the pastern is not a straight line and two, make sure the horse is standing square in front. See Image 5. In this example, the horse exhibits a markedly broken back hoof pastern axis. Taken by themselves, the hooves look reasonable, but the important thing to understand is that the hoof angle should be compared to the pastern angle NOT the ground. In this example the pasterns of the horse are more upright than usual. This means the hoof angle needs to be more upright to MATCH the pastern axis.

See Image 6. This image shows just how long that toe really was! Note the nail placed at the front edge of the shoe, we see this nail come out in Image 7. This image demonstrates the shoe in place. It can be seem that the hoof pastern angle is much closer to an acceptable angle. This was a big change on one shoeing and further shoeing will see the angle approach perfect.

Problems with medio lateral imbalance range from sole bruising (corns) to lameness, especially noticeable on a lunging circle. Problems with hoof pastern angle imbalance range from stumbling (broken back HPA) to suspensory ligament and flexor tendon strains, (Broken forward HPA). For something this important to be relatively easy to assess, I hope people take advantage of this and talk to their farriers next time your horse is due to be trimmed or shod.