What is Barefoot Trimming?
We all know how important regular hoof care is to our horses. However, what’s just as important, is to choose a hoof care professional that is qualified to take care of barefoot horses in particular. The reason is that a barefoot horse needs to be trimmed differently to a horse that wears shoes, and not all hoof care providers are qualified to do that.
A barefoot trim is the best trim for a barefoot horse because of its specific aim to imitate the trimming that would naturally occur in wild horses. Wild horse’s incredible ability to maintain strong, resilient, healthy hooves are due to two main factors; their natural diet, and extensive daily amount of movement. Ideally, we shouldn’t need to trim our horses at all, but the domestication of horses has changed their circumstances dramatically.
Horse owners are frequently faced with a myriad of hoof related issues that are largely caused by the consequences of domestication. These consequences are typically lack of movement and exercise, due to stabling and turnout in small paddocks, inappropriate diet such as low fiber sugary grasses and grain feeds, and lack of consistent hoof conditioning across a variety of surfaces such as rocks and gravel.
Quite differently to a pasture trim, a barefoot trim seeks to take as little off the hoof as possible. The ultimate aim of a barefoot trim is to help the horse develop as tough, hard wearing and healthy bare hooves as he would have had, if he had lived in the wild. In principle, a barefoot trimmer will only take away the excessive growth of the toes that the horse’s environment hasn’t been able to help him wear off naturally. The hoof is balanced. Another typical difference between a barefoot trim and a pasture trim is the length of the toe and breakover. Since a pasture trim commonly will shorten the entire hoof, the toe is often left longer than after a barefoot trim, and this longer, straight toe is likely to delay the breakover of the foot. On the contrary, barefoot trimmers use a "mustang roll" technique to round the toe at the hoof's natural breakover point, to imitate what would have occurred naturally if the horse had worn his hooves as wild horses do.
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