Golden Slippers

Miniature Horse Talk Forums

Help Support Miniature Horse Talk Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

BSharpRanch

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 9, 2012
Messages
839
Reaction score
825
We had are only bred mare foal a month early. The foal had died before foaling due to a severely twisted umbilical cord.

It was really sad. However I was thinking enough to get a couple photos of this precious foal's hoof to share. While Most people that have and raise foals know of these golden slippers, many people do not.

The golden slippers help protect the mare's uterus and birth canal from damage caused by the foal's hooves. The coverings are almost gel-like in their texture. These two photos show why some miniature foals tend to have the appearance of rundown pasterns or laxities in their pastern/fetlock tendons/ligaments. My experience/observation has been that a lot of the laxities are more often caused by the golden slippers not shedding off as well as the full sized horses do. This may be caused by the fact that miniature foals have no real weight to their bodies so they fail to be able to efficiently wear their golden slippers off. This allows the heels to "run under" and cause the fetlock to drop downward while raising the toes upward, making it look like the toes are way too long and the heels appear too short. I call this the "fulcrum effect" because just like our childhood teeter-totter, the hoof will totter to the heavier side of the fulcrum. The fulcrum is the heels. If the heel is very far under the hoof, it will allow the hoof to rock backwards. If the heels are brought back under the column of the leg to provide a base, the dropping will end at the back of the hoof and the toes will come back to earth.

I see a lot of questions on foal hooves that are long and the toes are pointing skyward, while the fetlocks are near to or on the ground. Most responders tell the person that the toes are too long and the heels too short. Take toe, leave heel. However, all this does is allow the heels to continue their forward march under the hoof and for the pastern to continue it's decent. Now picture that this foal is now six months old. He will start having pain because now his overgrown heels are folding up into his bars and frog. Now he gets a real trim and suddenly this foal is very upright. Why? because of the pain generated from the crashed heels. Make sense?

So take those heels gently, it is okay. Go ahead and take the toes too. Balance that foal hoof just like an adult hoof. Stop the "fulcrum effect".

V__5B5E(2).JPG

V__1B8C(3).JPG
 
I'm so sorry to read about your foal
default_sad.png
that would be my worst nightmare. This post is very interesting, i wasnt aware of these at all! I'm learning every day
default_smile.png
 
Thank you for your post. I am so sorry for your loss, that is truly heartbreaking. I appreciate the info on trimming, it makes a lot of sense.
 
Thank you for sharing your pics and info. So sorry for your loss.

Your write up is excellent. It has never occurred to me that this needed to be "brought up" and discussed. We have had some foals over the years that have had their hooves trimmed as early as 7 days of age (our smaller ones!) - to do exactly what you stated. Most usually go 30 - 60 days, though. Then we do do a similar trim job. Our current farrier is a "natural horse/barefoot trimmer" and she completely flipped out the first time I asked/told her how I wanted to have a foals' hooves trimmed. I waited for her to finish her tirade and how she was more educated than I was and a few other choice things. Then I asked her how many mini horses she'd trimmed (not many when she first started trimming for me), how many horse sized foals & then how many pony/mini foals (again - not many at the time of our first appointment). She wasn't real keen to listen to my view at first. Sometimes we still have major differences of opinions - but we work it out and IF/WHEN we can't - I have had a couple of ponies done by other farriers.

We lost one of ours about 6 weeks early in 2013 and now I have to go back and look at the pics I took to see if the hoof shows the same "slipper". I believe they do, just have to do some cropping to display them - on photos I have on an external hard drive not on this lap top. Sadly, I have no pics of the slipper and then a trim after on any of our foals. I actually have very few before/after photos of trim jobs and a lot of the ones that I've taken simply don't show very well what I wanted to see.
 
Thanks everyone. I see so many foals where the owners and others feel that the heels are not there and that only the toes matter to "fix" the problem. I hope that my little guy has helped open a few eyes to whys and how comes so that more foals can be helped!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top