This is one of my favourite photos. Click on it to enlarge the image. This pony ended up at the knackery because it had foundered. But the legs were saved by Tasmanian trimmer, former farrier, Jeremy Ford, who saw it as an opportunity to show the students on last year's Cert III Agriculture (Hoof Care) course what a difference proper trimming could do for a foundered pony.
What we have here are actually two different front feet (from the same pony). The foot on the right shows the founder, and you can see how the poor pony is pretty much walking on the tip of his rotated pedal bone. But the hoof which has been trimmed, shows that by dropping the heels, the pedal bone - though still at an acute angle (but this is a dead horse, remember) is closer to ground parallel.
However - had this pony been lucky enough to have had the benefit of the trims before it was euthanased, it would still have needed a hellava lot of help to recover.
In my experience a horse like this is so metabolically compromised that it needs a multi disciplinary approach to rehab.
First up it needs its feet trimmed and then it needs to be padded and possibly booted...so it can move about. Movement is critical. Once the acute stage (inflammation) of the laminitis has passed it will need to be hand walked daily.
I have found that when I take the heels down in badly neglected horses, they will often continue to walk on their toes until the tendons and ligaments let down. So I recommend owners of such ponies or horses get a good chiropractor or body worker in to help with this.
And a foundered horse needs plenty of feed but it must be low calorie and high fibre. Speedibeet (soaked) is excellent. Hay should be soaked for ten minutes and the soaking water thrown out. The soaking will leech out some of the sugars, and therefore the horse will be ingesting a lower calorie hay. A good quality mineral or vitamin supplement, such as HYGAIN SPORTHORSE is also recommended.
The students on the CERT III course at Burnie TAFE also got to trim a live acutely foundered pony. I'll see if I can get permission to publish the before and after photos here. Its a much happier ending.
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