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Thin Walls Need Careful Nailing
Split hooves from nailing too fine are avoidable with careful trimming and proper nail angle
Thin-walled hooves present an interesting challenge to farriers. Should you modify a pre-made shoe or make a shoe from bar stock?
While nailing too fine (or low-nailing)—with the nail exiting so close to the bottom of the hoof that it splits—is possible with any horse, it’s more likely to be a problem when
there isn’t much hoof wall to nail into or if the hoof is brittle.
Some farriers are convinced that modifying pre-made shoes will go a long way toward avoiding split hooves caused by nailing too fine. Others believe that hand-making the
shoe gives you the opportunity to place the nail holes according to the hoof wall thickness and is the best way to ensure that nails go in and out without splitting the hoof.
Hole Angle Vital
“I make most of the shoes I use,” says Chris Gregory of Lamar, Mo. “By putting the right pitch or angle to the nail holes based on my observations of the hoof, I avoid that
problem.”
Gregory, who runs Heartland Horseshoeing School and a farrier business, makes so many shoes that he believes there isn’t much, if any, difference in the time it takes him to
make a custom-fit shoe versus modifying a keg shoe.
“One way to solve the problem using keg shoes is to make the hoof conform to the shoe, but this is not really the best way to go,” Gregory adds. “It’s better to make the shoe
conform to the hoof.”
Follow The White Line
Michael…
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