Plastic fantastic
First came steel, then aluminium and now there is even titanium as an option (the author can picture one set of titanium shoes lasting not just three re-fits, but three whole generations!). Metal is the obvious choice, easy to customize, yet hard wearing and holds its shape. It does the job.
Despite the practical suitability, however, metal horse shoes remove the frogs from ground contact and concentrate a horse’s whole body weight onto the hoof walls alone. As a result, blood flow is impacted, as is the ability to absorb concussion, turning a short-term solution for protecting soft hooves into a long-term problem. A large percentage of chronic lameness can be traced back to this simple scenario.
For horses living and working only on soft ground, this is not a huge issue, but the subject is always topical in Australia because the dry season is never far away.
Read the full article written by Andrew Bowe and published as part of the five part series “When a horse needs shoes” in Horses and People Magazine.
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