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| Author |
Message |
    
Alicia Kost (Aannk)
| | Posted on Wednesday, Aug 21, 2002 - 12:06 pm: |   |
Dr. O.,
A few horses at our barn have a "trench" in their unshod hooves (almost all our horses are shod only on the front). Basically, it looks like the area just behind the wall of the hoof (I assume the white line) is being worn away. The soles and wall look fine, but there is a trench varying between less than a millimeter in some horses to about a centimeter in depth (width is smaller, the largest I saw was about 2 millimeters). The trenches are not moist, don't smell, and don't cause pain, but are gathering mud and stones. What is this, and what should we do about it? I haven't looked at all the horses, but every one we looked at had it. The vet called it gravel, but the presentation doesn't match that.
Alicia |
Robert N. Oglesby DVM (Dro)
| | Posted on Thursday, Aug 22, 2002 - 6:55 am: | |
You are right, that is not a gravel. If you have horses with a 1 centimeter deep defect in the white line I suspect either past thrush (I assume it is gone or else it would smell and be black) or possible white line disease. See the article on WLD for more on its characteristic. Defects as small as a few mm by a few mm may just be normal wear and tear.
DrO |
Alicia Kost (Aannk)
| | Posted on Thursday, Aug 22, 2002 - 10:23 am: | |
Thanks, I will look up the article. |
