Category: Important

New Treatment Method Softens Dry Hooves, May Fight Laminitis

Posted on: December 19, 2023

This fall (fall of 2023), I created a successful treatment for softening dry and rock hard hooves, but that may be the least interesting part of the story.

I may have discovered a potential secret to treating laminitic horses.

I now believe fully treating a laminitic foot includes directly treating inflammation in the sole and frog of the hoof — as in, treating the bottom of the foot — in addition to the heat and digital pulse higher in the hoof.

And I have learned that a successful way to treat the bottom of the hoof is making sure the treatment doesn’t get immediately removed by dirt and shavings.

After much experimentation, I wound up concocting a winning cream mixture of regular hand cream, Equate arthritis cream (which is similar to Aspercreme) and Laminil (a mast cell stabilizer; prescription required) to Kurt’s sole and frog.

I held that cream mixture in place with a freezer bag and duct tape for one to four hours, depending on my schedule.

And, bingo. Kurt went from very lame to sound over a few weeks.

Today, Dec. 19, he galloped around his pasture at a pretty fast pace. I have no video. I had a work crew at my house removing a downed tree, and I didn’t want to ask the foreman to stop talking to me so I could go video my horse. But I was tempted. The foreman commented that the galloping Kurt was beautiful. A 28-year-old Connemara pony that everyone wrote off as ready to be put down got called beautiful today when he raced around his pasture. Big victory for us.

My initial search to treat dry hooves

I’ve been searching the internet for “best treatment for dry horse hooves” since 2017 (six years now).

I have never found a satisfactory answer.

Every fall, Kurt, a chronically laminitic pony since 2010, has suffered from his feet getting too dry, often after I’ve cleared up a frog infection in August.

He goes back and forth between feet too wet and too dry.

I would celebrate solving one problem only to face the other. A frog infection is easier to treat than a dry foot, at least in Kurt.

This hasn’t seemed to be a laminitic episode. He hasn’t had heat or a pulse. I’m guessing that low-grade laminitis is percolating all the time, but the main issue is his feet get too try and don’t have any flexibility. The hooves are rock hard, like walking on a Dutch clog.

I have applied a ton of cream to his feet over the years, including on the sole and frog. It has seemed to make him worse. And that makes sense in hindsight. Nothing is going to make shavings stick to his feet like cream, so I was just encouraging dust to collect on his feet and dry them out.

My first successful experiment in moisturizing Kurt’s feet this year was Sept. 23 when I gave Kurt’s feet a quick soak in plain warm water, then applied cream and covered each foot with a freezer bag secured loosely around his ankle with a piece of duct tape about 18 inches long.

After an hour, Kurt was noticeably better (see video for before and after clips).

But he was less sound the next day. The treatment was a short-term fix.

I redid the treatment every afternoon, he walked around well at night, then he stood in his shavings the next day, and he was back to sore by afternoon.

While I recognized that my timing was wrong — I should have been applying the treatment in the morning, moisturizing his feet during the day while he was in the shavings — I really just wanted to come up with a solution that was more long-lasting.

I started trying to improve the formula, and I dropped soaking his feet when I did, because Kurt and I both hate soaking his feet.

I first added in Equate arthritis cream to the hand cream, targeting pain and potentially inflammation. It’s really cheap ($3.30ish at Walmart). I used maybe a fourth of the tube on two feet.

I saw another big improvement. And the effects lasted a little longer. We were able to skip a day here and there from treatment.

But when I finally started adding in Laminil cream, that was a game changer. Kurt’s walk started getting some bounce and confidence.

I am selling nothing. I say this in every post, but I’ll do it again here. I get nothing for writing anything in this post, and most of these items are probably already in your home.

If you want to see if arthritis cream for a sore foot, or hand cream for a dry foot, is all you need to make your horse’s feet less ouchy, try it and see what happens.

You will be out less than a dollar in ingredients.

Also, I want to point out this works to soften a hoof for a trim. I trim Kurt’s feet, and boy has this helped.

I couldn’t do anything with his rock hard soles all summer. A hoof knife was useless. I could sand them with a belt sander, but even that took work.

Another plus is this is first time since maybe July that Kurt hasn’t been getting sore after I trim him.

I’m pretty excited to have solved this issue for Kurt. He doesn’t mind the freezer bags. He doesn’t seem to notice.

One note: Don’t use comfort boots for this. Wet feet and comfort boots wind up creating ulcers on the horse’s heels. Some soaking boots will work, and we did that for a few days, but I don’t want Kurt destroying his soaking boots walking around. The bags hold up well unless Kurt trots.

Analyzing what we do in general to horses’ feet

Wetness: I see websites that suggest dry feet can be moistened by soaking a horse’s feet for 15 to 30 minutes per day. Does taking a shower every day make a human’s skin more moist? No. It dries out the skin. Same for a horses’ feet unless you add moisturizer afterward and make sure it stays there. Farriers often complain about horses going from wet paddocks to shavings and back again all day, saying that it is a bad combination for creating overly dry hooves.

Shavings: Most horses, especially mine, stand in shavings a lot. Kurt tends to stand in his shavings from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., though he walks out in his pasture for chunks of time. After 7 p.m., he goes out to graze overnight and stays out most of the night with the exception of a nap around 4 a.m. in his shavings. He picks that schedule. I don’t make him do anything. The shavings are doing what they are supposed to do. It’s just a bit of overkill having a horse stand in moisture-drawing shavings so much.

Dry weather: When it rains now in the Midwest, where we are, it really rains. The rest of the time, it’s really dry. We had a particularly dry year in 2023 (creating a hay shortage in addition to dry hooves). Continuing weather challenges mean my treatment for Kurt’s dry hooves has to be sustainable. I am willing and able to apply cream and bags. It’s not something I dread every day. And Kurt doesn’t run off when I show up with my stuff, even though I don’t halter him and he can run off now.

How long must one keep this up?

I intend to keep applying the cream and bags at least a few times a week until Kurt stops improving.

If I could be so lucky as to have him one more summer, I’d love the chance to test this again in the summer of 2024 during the worst heat and dry weather.

I’ve been so amazed already. I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to keep him sound.

If this catches on, remember where you heard it first. There are a lot of vets who think I’m crazy. No, I’m just determined. I’d like to take something away from 25-plus years of fighting laminitis 24/7 in six horses. If it’s credit for a freezer bag potion, so be it.

Mastitis treatment clears up frog infections in horse foot

Posted on: November 18, 2022

August 2022 was the third August in a row in which Kurt, 26, developed an infection in the frogs of all four of his feet.

This time, I applied a drug for cow mastitis to his frogs, and that seemed to fix the issue.

I thought this summary of our experience might help someone else.

There were no physical changes in Kurt’s frog during the summer. No wet area. No deep crack. No smell.

In mid-August, he started moving less and put his feet down toe heel. Watch the video to see that toe-heel placement (it’s the third clip in the series of clips).

Standing still, Kurt looked fine. Grazing, he could lean over his front toes and look as normal as any horse. I’ve never seen a horse having an active bout of laminitis lean over its toes.

This wasn’t a new bout of laminitis, though it likely was the result of compromised hoof walls from Kurt having chronic laminitis since at least 2010.

A study by Susan Kempson and Elaine Campbell at the veterinary school at the University of Edinburgh found that horn considered to be of poor quality had a weaker permeability barrier than horn of good quality.

Thus, laminitic hooves that no longer have good horn would not be moisture proof, as typical hooves are. This would allow bacteria and fungus to reach sensitive tissue.

I thought I could prevent the frog infections this year by spraying Kurt’s frogs every day with a Listerine type product. His frogs looked fabulous all summer. They were not too hard or too soft. I could use a hoof knife on them; in the past, they have been too hard to trim with a hoof knife.

I was so confident in my plan that I wasn’t watching for any walking issues that would indicate a frog infection.

But Kurt has one other “tell” when it comes to the frog infections: He bites his heel bulbs. The worse the infections get, the more he bites his heel bulbs. This year, the biting reappeared in August and got worse as September arrived.

He’s been biting his heel bulbs occasionally going back to at least 2014. So I’m wondering how long he’s been getting these infections, and I haven’t known it because they’ve been masked by numbness from laminitis.

Since Laminil has knocked out the inflammation in his feet the past few years, Kurt is really feeling these infections now.

I put together the video to show Kurt’s response to treatment. The video starts with him sound, miraculously, in May 2022 despite April and May traditionally being bad months for him. That victory, I believe, is due to him being treated throughout the spring with Laminil IM, a therapy that stops inflammation.

The video shows Kurt still sound in late July.

Then, the video shows how Kurt’s walking went south with the frog issues and was at its worst in late September 2022 and early October.

I was panicking by that point.

Internet searches suggested that thrush is the most common infection in the frog and back of the hoof.

But thrush involves moisture, and the frog often smells.

August 2022 here was very dry after one big rain at the start of the month.

Kurt spent his daytime hours during August in his shed in deep shavings in front of several fans and an air cooler. If anything, I was worried his feet were too dry. He walked around his pastures at night. He was free to walk around during the day, but the flies made him want to stay in.

When the frog pain occurred a year earlier, in August 2021, I soaked Kurt’s feet every day. It took several tries to find the right soaking agent, but we succeeded in getting rid of the infections with a Listerine-type product, which is why I kept using it to spray his feet over the winter and through the summer.

This August, soaking did not help at all. I kept trying for five weeks. I first used the same Listerine-type product and, when that didn’t work, I tried (one at a time) Clorox, apple cider vinegar, and various other things.

He got worse.

Things looked pretty hopeless the last weekend of September, and he was starting to lie down a lot. I stumbled over a YouTube video by a farrier who said he used a mastitis product of penicillin mixed in sunflower oil to cure a bad frog infection.

Using Go-Dry on Kurt’s feet

I ordered a box of 12 tubes of a product called Go-Dry and tried it starting on Oct. 1.

Kurt was definitely better within 24 hours, continued to improve day by day, and was close to sound in a month. His right front took longer to heel than the other frogs.

There are other products with the same formula. I have no affiliation with Go-Dry, and I’m not promoting it over other options.

Go-Dry comes in a dewormer-like tube, though smaller, and I found one tube applied generously did two feet, so I used two tubes per day to do all four feet. One box of 12 tubes lasted six days.

Removing the cap was a bit of a puzzle. It came off if the whole tip was pushed to the side.

I applied Go-Dry in the central sulcus of each of Kurt’s frogs and collateral grooves next to his frogs, then spread it all over the heel area across both bulbs, along the hairline, and into the dimple area, rubbing it in for about 30 seconds.

I had no guidelines here. I was just winging it.

Apparently, Go-Dry’s usefulness in hoof issues is common knowledge to others. When I asked if the local feed store had any after I started using it, one employee there, a jumper rider, looked surprised at first because he knows I have no cows, then said, “Oh, for your horse’s hooves.”

Am I sure it was the Go-Dry that made my horse better? He improved the day after starting treatment and just kept improving.

The weather didn’t change. His diet didn’t change. His bedding didn’t change.

In 2020, I interpreted the toe/heel walking as his feet being too dry and tried moisturizing them for weeks. He got worse.

So I believe the sunflower oil was not what fixed the problem in 2022. I think it was the penicillin.

How do we proceed from here? I am not sure.

I don’t want the penicillin to become ineffective for these infections. I’m using Go-Dry on his feet twice a week right now. That will need to end.

Will he stay sound? Hope so.

How do we prevent the frog infections next year? Definitely looking for that answer.

Laminitic horse avoids winter laminitis during polar vortex with Laminil IM and Laminil Cream

Posted on: February 25, 2021

Post reviewed Nov. 26,  2022

I would not intentionally torture my longtime laminitic horse with two weeks of subfreezing temperatures, including three consecutive days with highs ranging from 4 to 10 degrees, a stretch that ended with a big snowstorm and an overnight low of -4 degrees.

In the past, a single night near zero has been enough to make Kurt’s feet uncomfortable immediately, with lasting effects for weeks.

But this is what Mother Nature gave us in February 2021, and it allowed us to see how well Laminil kept Kurt’s compromised immune system in check, preventing it from overreacting to the weather, which likely would have caused an inflammatory attack on his feet.

The cold temperatures started in the St. Louis area on Feb. 6 and stayed well below freezing until Feb. 19.

My biggest concern was that Kurt, 25, would fall apart after the temperatures warmed, something I had seen previously with a winter laminitis case in 2004. In that case, the horse withstood the weather stress of two consecutive ice storms but then fell apart as the weather warmed with the worst case of laminitis my farm has seen.

I was determined to use the new tools I had to prevent that from happening to Kurt.

As the cold snap started, Kurt’s Laminil IM shots were increased to once every three days, and he started getting Laminil Cream on his feet at night as the overnight temperatures dropped to zero. He returned to IM shots every five days a few days after the polar vortex weather ended.

Through the freezing weather, he got free choice hay, as always, and ate more than normal. He looks fatter now (his hair is puffier), but his weight tape says he’s the same weight.

His shed was bedded with shavings twice as deep as normal to try to keep his feet warm.

He doesn’t like to wear boots, so I didn’t put them on, but they were ready to go if he seemed sore. I really didn’t want to mess with boots in the snow. They tend to turn into snow-filled icicles.

Kurt’s Cushing’s like heavy coat likely kept his body warm. Horses on a farm down the street were double-blanketed.

I would say Kurt was bored, because the snow took away his reason to walk around and nibble at what’s left of the grass. Otherwise, he did fine.

 

Kurt walking on Feb. 23, about a week after the worst of the polar vortex of February 2021.

 

I have thanked Willowcroft Pharm for what I termed a “medical miracle,” because there is no logical reason that Kurt came through the polar vortex of 2021 unscathed — based on his long history of doing poorly in zero-degree weather — other than Laminil protected him.

This old pony has been through so much in his 25 years. He does not need one more thing to knock him down.

Turmeric pellets reduce coat, sweating of horse with Cushing’s disease

Posted on: February 15, 2021

Kurt's hair is dry in 6-degree weather on Feb. 7, 2021

Kurt’s hair is dry in 6-degree weather on Feb. 7, 2021.

Post reviewed on Nov. 26, 2022

Turmeric pellets may be a relatively cheap and easy-to-use treatment if your horse is dealing with Cushing’s disease and related symptoms, such as sweating.

I cannot say turmeric pellets improve laminitis issues in the hoof.

But turmeric pellets have reduced my gelding’s sweating during the winter, including when the temperature drops to zero, and made him much more comfortable, improving his quality of life dramatically.

Turmeric, an herb belonging to the ginger family, is the major source of curcumin, a polyphenol (micronutrient) that has been shown to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, according to many studies.

However, a major problem with curcumin is its poor bioavailability.

I initially started trying to give my horses turmeric in powdered form in December 2014, because of its chelation activity. It removes iron from the cells of the body and lowers ferritin levels, according to many sources, including the Hemochromatosis Help website.  If my horses indeed suffer from iron overload, as I’ve suspected for years, the turmeric should help.

Adding turmeric powder lasted only a few weeks each time I tried it because the horses wound up colicking. I assumed that the turmeric, along with the horses’ on and off again use of bute, was making ulcers flare up.

During the three winters prior to the 2019-2020 winter, Kurt, my last horse and a longtime sufferer of laminitis, developed a huge, curly coat and sweated all winter, even when the temperature dropped below zero. He didn’t mind his wet coat icing over like everything else in sub-freezing temperatures, but I panicked through every deep cold snap.

In the fall of 2019, I noticed that SmartPak was selling turmeric in pellet form. I have no affiliation with SmartPak and receive no compensation or discount for saying the brand name.

Kurt started on the supplement Oct. 31, 2019. Two months later, it was obvious the turmeric was having a positive effect on his coat. Sweating was greatly reduced on warm days and nonexistent on cold days.

That is still true.

Here are photos of Kurt’s excessive coat in December 2016 and January 2019 and then his much lighter coat in December 2019, two months after he began the turmeric pellets, and in February 2020.

 

 

And here are pre- and post-turmeric-pellet photos of Kurt’s wet coat icing over on Dec. 10, 2018, a day with a morning low of 14 degrees, about the time when the photo was taken, and his coat completely dry in 6-degree weather on Feb. 7, 2021.

 

 

I give the turmeric pellets to Kurt separately after he eats his forage balancer. He likes the pellets more than his forage balancer and treats them like dessert. The dose is one scoop a day of 10,000 mg of turmeric. At least one study has used a higher amount.

I’ve tasted it and it tastes like someone dumped a spice rack in my mouth, but it’s not bad.

I don’t know why Kurt can ingest the pellet with no issues, while the powdered turmeric always led to a bouts of colic. Some studies suggest turmeric actually improves ulcers.

A study presented at the 2020 AAEP meeting by Michael St. Blanc, DVM, from Louisiana State University’s School of Veterinary Medicine, indicated that turmeric and devil’s claw fed together as a supplement to horses with pre-existing equine gastric ulcers did not worsen the ulcers, according to a report on thehorse.com. In fact all study horses — those fed the supplement and the control horses — saw their ulcers improve, likely due to the change in management of the horses once they were enrolled in the study, St. Blanc said. The turmeric dose in that study was 12,000 mg.

Cushing’s syndrome in horses is unique, according to VetFolio, in that it involves hyperplasia (an increase in the number of cells) in part of the pituitary gland rather than tumors in a different part of the gland — which occurs in humans.

Either condition can result in excessive production of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH).

The excess ACTH causes the adrenal glands to make too much cortisol, which can lead to immune suppression and insulin resistance.

The website vetspecialists.com, a joint venture of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM) and the American College of Veterinary Surgeons (ACVS), says equine Cushing’s disease, or pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction (PPID), is the most common endocrine disorder in horses, ponies, donkeys and mules. PPID most often affects older horses (teenage or older) but has been observed in some younger than 10 years of age.

Affected horses are prone to chronic infections such as sinusitis, dental disease, and sole abscesses.

The website lists these signs and symptom, and my gelding Kurt had them all (expect the abnormal heat cycles in mares):

 

1. Failure to shed hair fully each spring.
2. Long, wavy/curly hair.
3. Chronic infections.
4. Repeated laminitis episodes sometimes with associated hoof abscesses.
5. Excess or inappropriate sweating.
6. Increased water intake and urination.
7. Lethargy.
8. Loss of muscle mass, typically noticed over the back and hind quarters, as well as the “pot-bellied” appearance.
9. Infertility or abnormal heat cycles in mares.

 

There seems to be ample evidence in human studies that turmeric can help alleviate the cell activity behind Cushing’s disease. I am not finding a study in horses that examined curcumin’s effect on the pituitary gland or Cushing’s symptoms.

Authors of a German study in humans and rodents said their research “demonstrated for the first time that curcumin has anti-tumorigenic actions on rodent and human pituitary tumor cells in vitro and in vivo.” The research was published in 2009.

Given all the money I’ve thrown at laminitis supplements so far, the price of the turmeric pellets seemed more than reasonable.

I will keep Kurt on the turmeric pellets for the rest of his life, assuming they are available.

Can a chronically laminitic horse recover? Yes, with systemic laminitis treatment, Laminil IM

Posted on: January 24, 2021

Kurt lunges himself on Dec. 20, 2020

Kurt trotting on the lunge line on Feb. 3, 2021

Post reviewed on Nov. 26, 2022

A practical and effective treatment for laminitis now exists, according to my longtime laminitic horse Kurt, who turned 25 in 2021 and is dancing around like a 2-year-old.

The treatment is Laminil IM, an intramuscular injection of Laminil, a mast cell stabilizer designed to prevent the release of inflammatory mediators that can lead to a range of problems.

The idea is to treat the horse systemically and stop laminitis from the inside out.

Don’t wince at the thought of giving injections into the muscle.

I was that person for years, unnecessarily.

In July, I gave Laminil IM a try, because I knew it made sense on paper.

Kurt has completely changed over the past six months.

He can walk, trot and canter (see the videos at the top of this post).

He’s off painkillers.

And I hadn’t realized how much he seemed to have brain fog over the past 11 years until it went away.

He’s very alert and interested in life again. At 25!

In fact, he’s been a bit too high. My attempts to lead him around often turn into me scolding him to behave like a trained horse.

He is trained. But he hasn’t been ridden or asked to do anything since 2002.

And he wants to play.

As for Kurt’s brother, Robin Hood, the bay gelding discussed on this site for years, I lost him in August 2018 at age 22 due to a very large splenic mass. That was a very sad time for us.

Thankfully, Kurt is fine with living alone.

Many people thought I should put down Kurt when Robin Hood died, given the damage to Kurt’s feet and body.

I’ve run this next photo before, but Kurt was a refined pony in 2001. His body condition in later life reveals how much his immune system has been damaged.

 

 

I never thought he could feel this good again.

Laminil IM requires seconds of effort on my part every few days, not hours and hours of drudgery that my six laminitis horses endured over two decades with almost no results.

I believe that the trigger that created laminitis in my horses remains on my farm, and Laminil IM is overcoming it in Kurt.

And for the first time since 1998, when all the laminitis started at my farm, I can answer the question: Can a chronically laminitic horse recover?

Yes.

Why no posts since 2018?

Three years have passed since I have posted anything on my horses.
Some people have emailed me and asked why.

I’m never going to write about a treatment working or not working without letting months pass to see what happens.

In my last post in January 2018, I wrote about being sure that Laminil Cream was working in treating my horses’ laminitic hooves.

The improvement was obvious. The heat disappeared, and the pounding pulses went away or were reduced to barely detectable.

But, as time went on, I was faced with the fact that the rest of the horses’ body remained compromised.

I was tamping down laminitis bouts in the hoof but not fixing the cause.

I was never going to win the war against laminitis that way, but I would say that Laminil Cream is an excellent adjunct therapy as part of a more comprehensive approach. And I’ve heard from others that it’s fabulous for weak hooves of non-laminitic horses; farriers have been amazed at the improvement in those hooves.

Comprehensive approach

Willowcroft Pharm CEO Dr. John Kelly, PhD, has been working on coming up with a more comprehensive approach to laminitis.

Since Laminil Cream was launched in 2017, Dr. Kelly has listened to all of the feedback from horse owners as they used the cream, as well as vets that have used Laminil Perfusion, and he has studied a seemingly impossible amount of research on mast cells at the same time.

Much of that research has been on mast cells’ role in a range of human diseases, because use of mast cell stabilizers in human disease is an exploding field.

I am not qualified to explain how it all ties together. He will do that one day.

But, he used all this knowledge to come up with a better way to give Laminil to the horse.

For me, a self-described average horse owner, Laminil IM is practical and effective.

And it works!

 

This video is of Kurt walking on Jan. 23.

Iron overload likely caused my horses’ laminitis

Posted on: July 12, 2015

Toxicology test on horses' iron level

Toxicology test on horses’ iron level.

Hematology test on horses' iron level

Hematology test on horses’ iron level.

Post reviewed Nov. 27, 2022

In “Clue” like fashion, I’m declaring the cause of my six horses’ laminitis over the last 18 years as an excess intake of iron from weeds, trace mineral blocks and well water, leading to insulin resistance and the insulin form of laminitis.

The insulin resistance and laminitis were exacerbated by me following veterinary guidance to restrict the horses’ hay, keep the horses on dry lots and prevent the horses from eating so-called “lush grass.” I now believe these moves were the exact opposite of what was needed to get the horses’ metabolism functioning properly.

In the game of “Clue,” I’d get immediate confirmation of whether my assertion is correct. Unfortunately, with the laminitis, I will receive no such feedback.

But a cascade of events led me to this conclusion.

In October 2014, I needed to have my leaking well fixed (the water pressure was down considerably, and a pond had formed to the west).

But I also wanted to have my horses’ iron levels tested at Kansas State University’s lab. I suspected iron as the cause of the horses’ laminitis for a decade but had no proof.

A previous iron test done through the local zoo did not provide useful results.

Several experts recommended KSU for these tests (I’m not making such a recommendation at the moment). I was hoping to do a three-test panel of serum iron, TIBC and ferritin (a hematology test) and a serum trace mineral panel (a toxicology test). I admit I didn’t know what I was doing. I wanted some data.

There wasn’t enough money to do the tests and fix the well.

The iron tests for my two living horses totaled $400, including my vet’s fees. I chose to do the tests and hope for the best with the well.

My vet didn’t provide this iron test as a regular service but agreed to draw the blood if I did the mailing.

I sent the package in a vet-provided cooled envelope by overnight shipping on a Thursday. KSU said shipping on Thursday was fine as long as the package arrived Friday morning. I don’t know what happened to the package after it got under way. I don’t know when it arrived or was tested, and all may have gone as planned.

I received results from KSU that suggested my horses had toxic levels of iron (see images at top).

A university vet who provided comments on the tests said the toxic level “could be indicative of artifactual hemolysis” within the submitted sample. In other words, the blood got too warm or tainted in transit.

I talked to a lab person by phone, and the blood was indeed considered compromised.

I personally believed the results were correct as far as the horses having too much iron but couldn’t be sure, and I couldn’t do the tests again due to the cost.

I had my own iron level tested through a company I found online, Lab Corp, for considerably less money, and my iron level was normal, making me think the iron theory had come up short.

My sister told me my iron results did not seem normal, given that all the women in my family were anemic. She said I likely was anemic, too, and was being affected by the iron in the water.

Meanwhile, also in 2014, veterinarian Frank Reilly, a leading advocate for laminitic horses, posted on his website the iron levels of common pasture weeds (scroll down to the tab titled “Equine Insulin Resistance High Iron“). The iron levels are really high. Excess iron can fuel insulin resistance. His site provides plenty of research on that, too.

I knew my horses had been eating more weeds than anything else in recent years because I had intentionally ignored the grass, thinking that less grass was better. The grass went away, and the horses ate the weeds.

I was suspicious of the well water having too much iron, since the water turns everything rust colored and has eaten through the bottom of all my aluminum tanks. But I still didn’t have proof there. A water test in 2005 showed nothing suspicious.

I did find out that the horses’ trace mineral blocks were 25 percent iron, and I threw those away in 2012.

In November 2014, I emailed Dr. Reilly, asking how one might reduce the iron level in horses through supplements. He spent his Thanksgiving holiday investigating this idea. He emailed back that curcumin and ginkgo could reduce the iron level, and he provided suggested amounts and where to buy it. Purebulk.com sells the curcumin (250 grams, $70 at the time — it’s gone up). Reilly suggested feeding 1/2 tablespoon a day. Starwest Botanicals sells ginkgo leaf cut and sifted (1 pound bag). Reilly suggested feeding 1 tablespoon in the morning and 1 tablespoon in the evening.

After giving the horses the two supplements for a few weeks, I stopped because my gelding Kurt was breaking out in drenching sweats as we entered yet another frigid winter. We eventually figured out the sweats were caused by thyroid powder (no longer given).

Also, a friend had sent me a camping filter for the well head to filter out iron, but I don’t use the well head during the winter due to the hose always being frozen. I carry buckets of hot water outside. So I didn’t put on the filter.

All these things nagged at me, but polar vortex winters tend to keep one busy.

I considered putting the horses back on the curcumin and ginkgo, but I wanted to do the iron tests again to see if the previous tests were correct. Does one want to chelate iron from a horse that doesn’t have excess iron?

There was no money to repeat the tests, and the situation with the well was becoming more of an emergency.

Everything came together in May 2015, when I finally had the well fixed, and a well company employee blurted out, “You must have an iron problem” when telling me how deep the well was. The casing is 350 feet deep (very deep) and collects iron all along the shaft, which gets transferred to the water as the water sloshes through, according to the well guy, an industry veteran.

The irony is not lost on me that fixing the well gave me more information than the iron tests.

Feed more hay to laminitic horse, equine nutritionist says

Posted on: June 14, 2015

Restricting Kurt's food intake has not reduced his girth.

Restricting Kurt’s food intake has not reduced his girth. Quite the opposite. During the first half of 2015, Kurt was given a flake of hay during the morning and evening and another overnight. He did have access to pastures, but there was no grass from January to March and the flies drove him into the shed from April to June (despite him being fly sprayed).

Guilt drives a lot of my laminitis research. I’m always looking to clear my conscience. Did I cause my horses’ laminitis? Or did something else do so?

Since 1998, when my first laminitis case occurred, I’ve routinely paid vets to heap on more guilt. Each farm call has led to the same conclusion: My horses are obese; thus, I must be overfeeding them and causing the insulin resistance and laminitis.

Now, a new article suggests my horses are obese because I’m underfeeding them.

I’m still guilty, just of a different crime.

The article is written by equine nutritionist Juliet Getty, Ph.D., who makes her money consulting so she’s not going to go too far out on a limb unless she’s convinced she’s correct.

The article is titled, “Can the Damaged Insulin Resistant Horse Be Fixed?”

It’s long, and I’m just picking out a few things, but the whole article is worth reading at least twice.

Getty says we’ve created the insulin resistant horse by doing all the wrong things in the name of helping.

She urges owners to give horses free choice, low-carb hay, so horses eat constantly and slowly, as they were intended to eat. As in, horses should never be without hay.

To those, including me, who blurt out, “That’s going to cost a lot of money,” she says it will save money in the end because the horse will eat less. My horses poop on their leftover hay so I have issues there, but she would probably say I need to work on how I feed my horses.

She also suggests turning horses out on pasture (preferably after testing the sugar level in the grass, which I personally think is a waste of time since the sugar level in pasture rises and falls all day long).

Getty says, “Horses who graze on pasture 24/7 will eat far less grass than those who are only allowed to graze on pasture for a few hours each day, with hay provided the rest of the time.”

She includes caveats such as it might be good to ease a horse into having hay full time by using a couple of slow feeders that are always kept full.

She suggests not stalling a horse, which may be out of the question for a lot of horse owners, but Getty feels that’s a big factor for horse health.

Getty doesn’t address calories. I would argue that today’s hay seems to have an excessive amount of calories (about 2,000 calories per flake), but I’m guessing she feels a horse will stop eating when it has enough calories.

She concludes that the only way to fix an insulin resistant horse is to help it return to its natural state. She emphasizes that continuing down the same path of restricting food will get the same results: more insulin resistance.

I would add that it is possible to get a horse to lose weight by limiting its food and exercising it like crazy. But the result is temporary. The horse is not healthy, and adding a little more hay will make that horse balloon up.

Other factors that Getty mentions are addressing inflammation and lowering iron intake.

I worry that a horse with insulin resistance from excess iron may not improve if it is given free-choice hay and it continues to shovel in the hay. The horse may get worse.

My takeaway from the article is it needs to be embraced in its entirety. Helping an insulin resistant laminitic horse requires addressing all the possible issues that are causing the insulin resistance, not just forage intake.

Getty’s suggestions are revolutionary. She’s going against the advice of perhaps all leading laminitis researchers and vets.

Some of the top speakers at laminitis conferences have visited my farm (as friends of my former vet) and advised:

— Kill the grass on the pastures completely;
— Dry lot the horses on the existing paddocks and rent out the pastures to thoroughbreds (my horses would have loved that);
— Break up the 2-acre pastures into tiny pastures to limit access and improve the grass;
— Move.

Over the years, I found that restricting the horses’ food and dry lotting them made them fatter. And miserable. And the laminitis continued.

I refused to listen to laminitis researchers who were anti-grazing.

Horses closely related to my own were on bigger and much lusher pastures within a few miles of my farm, and those horses were thin and healthy. It convinced me that the grass itself was not the problem.

I wanted my horses walking constantly, covering a lot of ground, taking in a steady stream of forage and keeping busy.

In 2007, I fenced my two ungrazed lower fields (an additional 4 acres to the overgrazed 4 acres already fenced) and turned my remaining horses loose. I felt even more guilty, if possible, but at least my horses didn’t hate me. In the end, there was no uptick in laminitic cases. If anything, the bouts dropped.

I haven’t seen a groundswell of criticism of Getty’s article. But it is a study in contrasts with advice from other experts.

Kathryn Watts, retired plant scientist, creator of the safergrass.org website and a onetime hugely popular speaker, used to have a PDF on her consulting page that started out:

“If you insist on keeping an obese, non-exercised, laminitic horse on pasture at least 12 hours per day all year long … I cannot help you or your horse. My pasture management advice will include limiting grass intake, increasing exercise and completely eliminating access to pasture during periods when environmental conditions make it impossible to control grass sugar content by cultural practices. If you cannot or will not limit intake, it will be a waste of your money and my time to give you a complete pasture management program.”

Thehorse.com posted an article June 8, 2015, on feeding the laminitic horse that offers tips from Jennifer A. Wrigley, CVT, of New Bolton Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The school founded the now shuttered international laminitis conference in 2001.

Wrigley’s tips include restricting hay for the laminitic horse and perhaps dry lotting the horse.

Those of us who dieted heavily in our teens and 20s will attest to the counterproductive effect of restricting food intake. It makes one want food more. I never looked at the science behind why dieting made me crazy, but the craziness was undeniable. Getty has provided the science.

Laminitic horses already go through hell.

After reading Getty’s article, I realize we have been keeping our horses in that hell perpetually.

No guilt there.

Vet examines why some laminitic feet return to soundness

Posted on: October 18, 2014

Some horses recovering from laminitis and coffin bone rotation become sound even though the hoof wall no longer is parallel to the bone. Dr. Debra Taylor, DVM, looks at possible explanations for this occurrence in a video posted on thehorse.com in September 2014.

Taylor is an equine podiatrist at Auburn University in Alabama.

 

Dr._Debra_Taylor

 

In Taylor’s 53-minute presentation, she discusses her journey in trying to come up with basic definitions for what constitutes a healthy equine foot and an appropriate physical exam of the foot.

Much of her presentation focuses on the back half of the foot and its soft tissue structures, more suited for absorbing concussion than the front half of the foot.

Taylor said she used to focus on the front of the hoof with laminitic horses, trying to regenerate normal parallelism between the hoof wall and coffin bone. When some of the horses became sound without parallelism, she asked herself: “What in the world are these horses walking on?”

One thing she saw was that increased heel volume seemed to play a role in a horse returning to soundness despite incomplete resolution of rotation. She hypothesized that increased heel volume might compensate for coffin bone remodeling or damage to the laminae.

She said hoof loading creates shock waves that are strong enough to crack a bone, but generally they don’t. They are absorbed through soft tissue. The front part of the foot has less soft tissue and is more rigid, making it more susceptible to shock waves. Taylor said a large frog and prominent heels are likely to play a significant role in cushioning hoof impact.

She credits farrier Pete Ramey with inspiring her to investigate the roles of the front and back of the foot. Ramey once commented that the coffin bone supports the front half of the foot and the digital cushion and lateral cartilages support the back half. She set about quantifying that ratio.

Taylor shows data on three feet comparing the size of the coffin bone in each to the size of the soft tissue structures. In the foot considered the healthiest, the lateral cartilages and digital cushion make up 159 percent of the area of the coffin bone. In the weakest foot, the soft tissue makes up less than 100 percent of the area of the coffin bone. Taylor said there’s a huge variation in nature and perhaps this type of comparison in a hoof can be useful in predicting whether the hoof is capable of taking care of that horse.

Taylor starts her presentation by talking about how horses’ feet are smart, changing in response to external factors. She wonders if the use of physical stimulation and physical therapy can create, or forge, the tissue needed for a healthy equine foot.

Working on grants, she realized there was no consensus on what a healthy foot looks like. Using several papers, she came up with the following description of a healthy foot. She provides 3-D models in her lecture to help illustrate.

Healthy hoof ratio

The foot should have more weight-bearing surface in the back half than the front using the widest part of the foot as a reference line.

Taylor does not review how to find the widest part of the foot. Some hoof experts suggest doubling the length of the central sulcus, or frog dimple, to reach the true apex of the frog, then measuring an inch back toward the heel to indicate the widest part of the foot. Farrier Gene Ovnicek provides an often-used hoof mapping protocol on his website.

Taylor said the front of the foot should be 40 to 50 percent of the weight-bearing surface of the foot and the back part of the hoof should be 50 to 60 percent of the weight-bearing surface of the foot.

Farriers who use this ratio often comment that most horses are trimmed with 60 to 70 percent of the weight-bearing surface out front of the widest part of the hoof, leading to too much pressure on the toe, prying apart of the laminae and painful abscessing.

Healthy frog dimensions

Taylor said the width of a frog should be 50 to 60 percent of its length. The depth should reach the ground, and there should not be a huge air cavity under the frog. The central sulcus, or dimple in the frog, should be wide and shallow without thrush. She shows an example of a heel that became healthier after she treated the frog for bacteria and fungus over a couple of months in muddy weather.

Healthy digital cushion

The digital cushion (a flexible layer of tissue that sits between the lateral cartilages and above the frog and cushions the back half of the foot), should be about 2 inches thick at the back of the foot and three to four fingers wide. She said veterinarians need instrumentation to evaluate the density of the digital cushion, perhaps a tool that would be similar to an A-shore scale measurement tool used to evaluate the density of rubber. She said the density of a digital cushion in decent feet is similar to that of a tennis ball or well-done steak. As for deformability, the digital cushion should have minimum deformability with maximum thumb pressure. She demonstrates how to palpate this tissue at the back of the foot. But she also said that the shape of the digital cushion as it tapers off toward front of the hoof may actually determine how effective it is in supporting the foot.

Healthy collateral cartilages

The collateral cartilages on either side of the digital cushion should be thick but slightly bendable with moderate thumb pressure and about 3 to 4 inches apart.

Healthy bars

The bars should end mid-frog and stand fairly erect. Taylor says to remove folded-over bars that may bruise the sole.

Coronary band circumference

Taylor says her team is finding that coronary band circumference is a good predictor of the volume of the internal structures. She did not provide more detail on that.

Healthy collateral grooves

She said her team was working on a paper on using the collateral grooves (the grooves alongside the frog) to predict coffin bone position. She said her team believed they would be able to use the slope of the collateral grooves to predict sole depth, coffin bone suspension off the ground, palmar angle, and maybe even heel development.

Ramey, the farrier, has done a lot of work in this area and describes the role of the collateral grooves as visual guides. On his website, he says the sole grows down from the bottom of the coffin bone. The sole corium, a bloody layer between the coffin bone and sole, is consistently a half inch away from the collateral grooves at their deepest part, no matter whether the rest of the sole is too thick or too thin. Thus, if a horse has a lot of sole, the collateral grooves will be deep. If a horse has little sole thickness, the collateral grooves will be shallow.

In Taylor’s lecture, she said the grooves gradually get deeper toward the back of the foot. The front hooves get deeper more quickly than the back feet. The collateral groove slope predicts palmar angle (the slope of the bottom of the coffin bone in the front feet). The palmar angle in the front feet averages about 6 degrees, while the angle (called the plantar angle) in the back feet is about 2 degrees.

She said an undulating, or wavy, collateral groove would be akin to a dropped arch in a human foot and cause discomfort, as would collateral grooves deeper at the frog apex, which would indicate a negative slope of the bottom of the coffin bone and warrant radiographs.

Taylor said horse feet can have pathology, even though a horse is sound, much like people can function normally even though they are on the verge of a heart attack. She thinks a lot of horses are in this state, on the verge of a hoof attack, and no one recognizes that there’s pathology in the foot.

She said she saw so many feet with pathology in her early experience that she believed such feet were normal until she learned more about the function of the foot.

In a nod to the barefoot movement, she said barefoot farriers are running ahead of science in their hypothesis that the back half of the foot is essential for overall hoof health and the back half is very smart, or adaptive.

She also quotes an ancient Greek horse expert in his day who said smooth surfaces lead to the detriment of the equine foot and horses should be stabled on cobblestone.

Taylor shows an equine foot that developed a healthy concave sole after walking on pea gravel. She said horses get addicted to shoes and hoof boots, and lack of necessary stimulation may hinder healthy development and healing of those feet.

What is the link between laminitis and horse smegma?

Posted on: April 14, 2013

This article was reviewed and updated April 5, 2023.

Horse smegma is not a topic that gets a lot of press.

I went on a mission in 2013 to find the definitive study on smegma and laminitis and came up empty. None seemed to exist.

Horse smegma is the stuff that builds up inside the male horse’s sheath.

I found a few desperate forum postings by horse owners requesting help in dealing with horses with an itchy sheath, as well as references on less established sites to excessive smegma production in horses with insulin resistance. But I didn’t find one university or medical site that had waded into the conversation, as of 2013.

Kurt has what I would describe as excess smegma. And he used to itch a lot. He was backing into me, sometimes at a trot. Sometimes, he would see me come out of the house and run to me from across the driveway, then spin around and back into me.

My vet made a renewed effort to tackle this issue in February 2013 when I pointed out the problem had existed for five years, and I felt like a terrible owner.

Luckily, I now have a female vet. My previous male vets just sort of sighed when I brought up the topic. I think their take on it was that Kurt should take a little itch like a man. It wasn’t a “little” itch, and Kurt preferred to fix it.

In the past, the female vet tried cleaning Kurt herself, as well as approving the idea of me trying various feminine hygiene products on Kurt. None worked.

Kurt tumor 2 17 2013

Kurt’s biggest tumor in his sheath on Feb. 17, 2013.

This time, she suggested we put Kurt on Tagamet, or cimetidine, commonly used as an antacid in horses and people because it blocks the action of histamine on certain cells in the stomach. Maybe it would block a similar allergic reaction in the sheath. The drug also has been shown in some studies to benefit cancer patients. Kurt has several tumors in his sheath. The idea was to reduce the itching and shrink the tumors.

Note that my own search of these tumor studies found more research that says the drug doesn’t help than does. However, there are a lot of forums with horse owners reporting that Tagamet prevented regrowth of a tumor that was removed. I would consider inhibiting growth of tumors worth using it. Mostly, I cared about the itching.

Kurt started taking the Tagamet on March 5, 2013, and he was on it for a month. 

The experiment looked good in the early going. He didn’t back into me very much. We went days without him bothering me. I think he was distracted by the snow. Once the weather warmed to 70 degrees, Kurt became itchy again. I’m not recommending Tagamet as a treatment for the itch. We stopped using it.

After hearing some local radio broadcasters rave about a mixture of water, mouthwash and vinegar as a foot wash, I decided to try that on Kurt’s sheath. It turned out to be a great concoction for cleaning a sheath, and I added baking soda to the mix because I thought it helped reduce the itch even more. Kurt became much less frantic. And the cleanings reduced the smell considerably.

I later removed the vinegar from the mixture because I didn’t think it was needed.

I clean Kurt every two weeks in a process that I describe here.

Silvia Kornherr, an equine nutritionist from Canada, read my original post on this topic and commented that insulin resistance and Cushing’s disease deal with metabolic dysfunction, which leads to many hormonal imbalances, not just inbalances in insulin and ACTH. Logically, there are going to be secondary changes in many areas affected by the hormonal imbalances.

She said many owners of horses with Cushing’s report increased smegma production and a change in the consistency of the smegma. The smegma becomes very thick, glue-like and abrasive against the sensitive sheath skin, causing inflammation, itching and infection, as well as blockage.

Based on her experience in treating horses with this problem, she suggested I try Animal Legends’ Tea Tree Oil enriched with vitamins A, D and E in the spray formulation. So we did in July 2013. We don’t use it currently because the washing alone seems to solve the problem.

So what is the contents of smegma?

There’s an amusing article on ScienceBlogs that discusses the content. The article says smegma is a waxy, oily secretion from skin cells. It consists of about 71 percent fatty acids and 18 percent cholesterol and cholesterol esters.

The article looks at a study published in 1947 by top research institutions that applied horse smegma to mice (poor mice) to see if the smegma produced cancerous tumors. It did not.

I’m not trying to blame Kurt’s tumors on the smegma. The mice study did say that horse smegma was used because penile cancer is frequent in the horse. But, technically, Kurt has sheath tumors. And that study was done in 1947. There are other statements in the study that are not backed up by current science.

Another interesting study is one published by a veterinary school in Turkey in 2006 that looked at the immune function of the reproductive tract of stallions, including their sheaths, and it concluded that the reproductive tract does likely “contribute to the immune surveillance” of the horse. I suspect the fact that Kurt’s sheath has been having an immune system reaction is not helping the insulin resistance.

I hit the jackpot when I did a Google search of “diabetes” and “itch,” because Google suggested several additional terms and one was “groin.” A forum on the site of the American Diabetes Association is full of people, both male and female, with anguished stories about groin itch related to their diabetes. And the ADA’s page on skin disorders says: “As many as 33 percent of people with diabetes will have a skin disorder caused or affected by diabetes at some time in their lives. In fact, such problems are sometimes the first sign that a person has diabetes. … These include bacterial infections, fungal infections, and itching.”

If your laminitic horse has jock itch, and your vet rolls his eyes or sighs, this is one condition that you can help on your own with products found easily. Click this link to read a tutorial on cleaning an itchy sheath. Your horse will thank you.