Not something that keeps me awake at night, but I’m curious why horses are commonly shod, since wild horses seem to get along fine without them. I suppose it might have something to do with reducing hoof wear on man-made surfaces, such as pavement, but there has to be a more cogent reason, doesn’t there?
You pretty much have it. Horses hooves aren’t designed for hard surfaces like concrete, and can easily split them producing “quarter cracks” in their hooves. Quarter cracks are slits that go all the way up the hoof into the fetlock and are painful for the animal and require veterinary care. Moreover, those types of surfaces are extremely slippery for unshod animals. Some shoes have screw-ins like cleats. You can screw in little rubber “spikes” for better traction on concrete and surfaces of that ilk.
Race horse wear extremely light shoes that are replaced for each race. Some show horses, like Tennessee Walkers, wear really heavy shoes that make them move a little “showier” (e.g. they lift their feet higher making them appear to prance).
Shoes are also used for corrective reasons. My mare has a degenerative bone condition called navicular and corrective shoes ease her pain enough that I don’t have to put her on steroids.
My gelding, though, goes barefoot all the time, except in the winter when he has pad on under his shoes to prevent snow from balling up in his hooves. They aren’t necessary but they make him more comfy.
Thanks, Light. I guess there isn’t some arcane reason, other than the obvious. Appreciate your expertise.
Most wild horses do fine without shoes. Horses in the wild with bad hooves will die, thus only animals with tougher hooves live to breed. So most have tougher hooves.
Domesticated horses, on the other hand, are not specifaically bred for hoof toughness, and they need a little help. And most people like to use the horses they are paying to keep, and will do weird things like shoe them to keep them sound.
The thing is, horseshoes predate modern hard road surfaces. Why did horses nees to be shod to run on dirt 150 years ago?
Because domestic horses walk, trot, run, etc., a lot more than wild horses. Wild horses stop when they decide to stop, but domestic horses keep going until some human decides to stop. Also, wild horses don’t carry riders or haul loads.
Constant concussion on any hard or rocky surface - such as a dirt road during a dry spell, or a gravel-paved road, can cause chips and cracks in the hoof. A shoe helps prevent the hoof from getting damaged by concussion.
Hoof toughness varies widely – my horse wears shoes only on her front feet, and only in the summer when we do more jumping. I had her shoes pulled for the winter last week, and she’ll go barefoot till about May. However, there is another horse in the barn who just cannot go without his shoes.
The shoe also protects the sole (by elevating it) to some extent from getting bruised on rocky, gravely surfaces.
You might know this saying:
“For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want a horse the rider was lost, for want of a rider the message was lost, for want of a message the battle was lost, for want of a battle the war was lost… and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”
Paved roads go back a couple of thousand years. Witness the Roman roads running all over Europe, paved with various types of stone. Paved roads were not unheard of (though hardly common) in many large metropolises quite a loong time ago.
Working horses too got/get more “mileage” put on their hooves too, like pulling a heavy plow through the dirt for years on end or hauling logs/wagons/whatever back and forth all day. If the cowboy’s ass gets sore from being in the saddle for 12 hours a day for a couple weeks during a drive, imagine what the poor horse’s feet go through carrying them both.
All the talk about pulling, changing and removing the shoes has me wondering - how long does it take to repair or heal the nail holes in the hoof? Does it matter? Or how often can you change them out before there is some sort of damage?
My mare is NEVER barefoot. When she needs to be shod, the farier comes out, pulls her old shoes, cuts off the bottom of her hooves, files them down with a big ass rasp, (scrapes down her frog) and usually puts her shoes back on. Sometimes her old shoes are unusable so she gets new ones made.
The nail holes are never reused. She is lightly ridden (more like a big dog now) and we have a good farrier, so she’s never thrown a shoe. Hooves are like fingernails, so by the time she’s reshod the holes are usually cut off because he hoof has grown.
From the coronet band down to the ground, it takes a year to grow completely new hoof. The usual schedule of shoeing is every 6-8 weeks. Enough hoof has generally grown by then to provide new homes for nails.
However, every now and then there is a that horse consistently pulls shoes off between trims (most often due to the hind leg reaching forward and grabbing the edge) then the hoof will get too holey to nail into. At that point, you are looking at “easyboots” – a sort of step-in slipper for horses, – or glue-on shoes until the hoof grows out. As a preventative measure, many horses who have this tendency to “overreach” wear “bell boots” which are sort of cylindrical covers made of gum rubber or pvc that rest over the hoof.