Your horse’s feet are vulnerable, and a number of ailments can take hold fairly easily. The more common of these are, White line disease, Seedy Toe, Thrush, Puncture wounds, Infections, Abscesses and many more.

It’s a good idea to be familiar with the structure and condition of your horses hooves so you can recognise issues that arise in the early stages. Your farrier will pick things up as well, but it’s best to know what’s healthy and what might turn nasty without proper intervention.

 

Causes

A number of factors influence the health of hooves, including;

 Genetics - Some horses naturally have better feet than others. Some will stay stronger and more resilient, some will be plagued with problems and other may require intervention now and again.

 Nutrition - A horses diet will strongly influence their hoof growth. Poor growth cycles can leave hooves vulnerable to cracks and punctures, leading to injury and infection.

 Environment - This one is a big factor. Warm and wet conditions may cause softening and cracking of the hoof, allowing disease causing microbes to get in and infection to take hold.

 

Recognizing the signs

 

Healing and Prevention 

While there are many things that can go wrong with hooves, often problems are caused by bacterial or fungal infections. Traditionally you would treat these with antibiotics, anti-fungals and anti-microbial approaches.

Here at EquineCare Probiotic, we espouse an approach that supports your horses overall well being. These “traditional” approaches tend to annihilate all microbes in their path, good or bad. EquineCare Probiotic is designed to smother out the  bad bacteria with more and more good.

It’s also easy to use, being a simple spray on, and for horses that dislike spray bottles it can be wiped onto the skin or hoof with a sponge or similar. It’s a natural, non-toxic, New Zealand made formula and can be applied regularly to keep your horse in top shape either as a treatment or as a preventative.