A chilled Filly

Wednesday 28 January 2015

Filly breaks a nail again

A couple of days ago I went to the yard in the afternoon to take Filly for her usual walk. As we started to leave the yard I glanced around to make sure she was sound and something on her right hind hoof caught my attention. A bit of mud stuck to the hoof wall seemed to be moving strangely.
I decided to tie her up and investigate. As I probed around I found I could dig away at the mud and eventually arrived at the following

This was alarming to say the least. I could guess what had happened.
When Filly first came out of shoes at Rockley farm the increased mobility of the hoof caused several abscesses to come out of her hooves around the coronet band. One of these was on the back right and two on the front left (though the front left was probably the same one twice).

The general feeling was that, given she had been very lame on her front left to the point of barely being able to walk prior to the shoes coming off, these were old injuries that the increased circulation due to the foot being able to expand and contract on each footfall had finally caused to come out. When they came out of the coronet band they created a hole in the hoof wall which then healed over internally. However the hole remained and slowly grew down the hoof.
The hole on the right hind was getting close to the ground when a small crack appeared to one side of it. She then had a burst of running around the field and must have landed her foot on a rock. The pressure that caused made the lump of hoof wall below the abscess come away, it also caused the bruising you can see to the left of the missing lump.

As you can imagine I was very concerned about this, never having seen anything like it before. However she was walking normally so it did not appear to be causing much pain. I took the photo above and sent it to Nic Barker at Rockley farm asking her what I should do. Unfortunately it was not until the following day I got a reply. I also consulted Mel Isaac who is a barefoot trimmer who knows Nic well. Again she was not available. So I asked the yard owner who did not seem too concerned either.
I abandoned the idea of the walk and spent time cleaning up the wound site and putting some hoof putty in. More to make me feel better than thinking it would help. I also bevelled the underside of the toe just a little to take pressure of the edges of the damage.

It was a somewhat sleepless night.

I woke in the morning to find a message from Nic saying she felt that the edges of the damage would have sealed when the abscess healed itself and the bit that had come out was probably dead anyway and not to worry too much about it. A conversation with Mel later gave much the same advice and so I relaxed a little.

The yard staff said she had been lame in the morning as she was turned out but came in fine. I took her for a walk and again found she was fine. Since then we have been on some longish walks on a variety of terrain with no apparent soreness so I'm just monitoring the area for any further damage and applying some antiseptic to it daily just to make me feel better.

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