Friday, April 27, 2007

Farriers, Do Horses Eat Their Feet?

The farrier here today. He did a fine job. I was very pleased. I did warn him though that I wanted the girls scooped out a bit and rasped. Very, very pleased. Thank-you, Jeremiah. And we have a rather unconventional way of doing things here, anyway. Because I don't have a barn, we do the farrier work in the paddock or the training pen and in this fine spring rained soaked, trampled ground, it's the highest driest spot we can find. I catch one and halter her, hold her with a lead and Jeremiah has the pleasure of wet muddy feet and he never complains. While we do the feet of one mare, the other stands right there poking at her and us and visa verse when I hold the second mare. Now here's the interesting part about today, Kola was done first, with little complaint. All and all, she was very well behaved. She groans through it. Started on Misty, who likes to press her nose over my shoulder and snug in close throughout the procedure and turned to see Kola with a piece of her own hoof in her teeth chewing and scraping the ground with it. What?!! Of course there was nothing I could do about it right then as we're in the middle of trimming Misty and I had already taken her halter off. When we were done with Misty, Jeremiah and I were chasing Kola to catch her to check her mouth as she was still chewing and she did not want to be caught. It was as if she had stolen a scrumptious piece of candy and wasn't letting go. We did count eight full trims as we through them out of the paddock. She did eat some little chip of hoof. Silly horse.

2 comments:

whitehorsepilgrim said...

That's odd, it's usually the dogs that go for hoof cuttings. I wonder whether she felt a "need" for the minerals in that hoof cutting? Just a thought. The same basic material makes up the hooves and the coat.

Callie said...

Thanks for the comment. I still haven't figured out why she did that. They have a mineral block, a salt block, pasture they're let out into and a bit of hay with just a taste of 11% sweet feed in the morning. I plan on changing feed, but my feed store still hasn't gotten the Omelene 10 from Purina in as promised over a month ago. It's nutritionally better for them so I've read.