Page 25 - Canada Spring 2022

“The earlier the better,
for some corrections to be effective.” – Dr. Tia Nelson
EQUINE HEALTH
you try to correct them, they will become crooked later due to your interference with bone growth.
A young horse has different parameters and proportions than an adult horse, such as longer legs and shorter neck and not as deep a body. A foals’ front end is not fully developed, especially the pectoral muscles.
Many foals are a little base wide (feet tend to splay outward) because they are so narrow through the chest but become straighter as they grow up and fill out. If you try to correct them very much as foals, you may do more harm than good because you have actually overcorrected by the time they are yearlings or 2 year olds. A foal that’s a little splay-footed is usually nothing to worry about. As the foals’ pectoral muscles and shoulders fill out, this pushes the elbows out and turns his feet in, making the legs straight as he grows.
Another factor involves the growth plates and the cartilage that turns to bone, at the ends of the long bones, lengthening them as the foal grows. Weight-bearing and compression stimulates growth of these areas.
As a result, a foal with minor angular limb deviations will actually correct itself. The growth plates are stimulated to grow more on the more loaded side. This tends to straighten the leg because the loaded side is growing faster. Mother Nature fixes most minor limb deviation problems.
This works very well, to a point.
There’s always a point at which the pressure is too much (the leg too crooked), which will crush the growth plates, inhibiting growth. It’s often best to give a young horse the benefit of the doubt and try to manage this type of limb deviation less invasively at first - unless he has a severe deformity that needs immediate attention. We can often just watch the foal and see if the problem resolves on its own, or whether we need to do a little corrective trimming as the foal grows.
It is important to assess the entire leg, however, and not just whether
the foal toes in or out. If a foal toes
in or out because of bone rotation at the fetlock joint or the entire leg, it can’t be corrected with foot trimming. You must look at the whole leg to determine what should be done with a crooked foot. Knowing what types of deviations can be helped by trimming and which cannot is important because corrections may sometimes ultimately hinder or injure the horse.
Many small problems, however, can be corrected or kept from becoming larger problems just with regular, careful trimming as a foal. Often, corrective trimming is simply a matter of balancing the foot. Most corrections are just a response to uneven footwear, seeking to keep the foot level and balanced.
And if you start handling the feet regularly, the foal will be well
Weight-bearing and compression stimulates growth. Mother nature fixes most minor limb deviation problems.
Many small problems can be corrected or kept from becoming larger problems with regular, careful trimming as a foal.
mannered by the time he needs his first trim. The first trim might be needed at a few weeks to a few months of age, depending on his conformation and the amount of wear on the feet.
Tia Nelson, a veterinarian/farrier in Helena, Montana, says it’s wise to have a farrier look at the foal at 1 or 2 weeks of age if you are concerned about crooked legs that might
need some corrective trimming to straighten them. “The earlier the better, for some corrections to be effective,” she says.
SPEEDHORSE CANADA Spring 2022 23
COURTESY HEATHER SMITH THOMAS