I just learned that people all around the world drive nails through the hooves of horses and somehow this is meant to help them
are you guys crazy? this is like discovering circumcision all over again
I just learned that people all around the world drive nails through the hooves of horses and somehow this is meant to help them
It's to protect their feet if they're a working horse but it's not necessary with every individual, it depends on where they live and how much work they do.
Also they don't feel it, it's like cutting a nail.
silicone rubber is a thing
Is that what they’re supposed to look like or is this one botched? Are the nails supposed to stick out like that?
Its a work in progress pic, the nail tips will get removed later and the hoof wall filed down so that theyre flush
>this is meant to help them
No, it is meant to help humanity by modifying our domesticated animals to be more efficient.
It’s to compensate for forcing them to live in less than ideal conditions. You can always trim away keratin that gets too long just like trimming your nails, but protecting the hoof from wearing down too much is why shoes exist. Living on soft and/or moist ground makes the hoof capsule overly soft to the point it’ll split, break, or just grind down too much once you expect the horse to suddenly bear a load or work on concrete. If you’re in a dry arid climate with hard rocky ground and the horse has plenty of pasture to roam around in all day or you can properly simulate the positive effects of that lifestyle, then shoes are kinda pointless unless the horse is doing particularly heavy work or needs better traction. And you can just use glue or clip-ons for studs if you temporarily need better traction. Gluing shoes is only useful as a temporary thing, they both randomly fall off too easily and are too difficult to actually remove when you need to.
yeah through the nail, not the nail bed, or finger, just the nail
they also need them in cities because walking on stones will frick up their hooves really badly
>Oh mah gersh guys! It's, like, totally animal abuse!
Do you think shoes and orthopedics are bad? Do you hate hooved animals?
Shoes are actually kinda bad. Female shoes in particular are so ridiculously bad that they ought to be banned outright.
But the mares look so hot in heels
have a nice day
Females are animals of burden and should be shoed
It's keratin - the same stuff your toenails are made from. It doesn't have nerves or veins or anything. It also grows continually just like a toenail, so any holes you make in it are not permanent. The shoe is to protect the hoof when the horse works on hard surfaces.
I could see this becoming trend. Call them permaheels or something.
>women can't resist buying products which are uncomfortable but increase their desirability
>so we have to pass laws to protect them
her body, her choice Chud
yes, and also we need to ban them from buying men's shoes as well
imagine the smelle
I always wondered why horses? Recently dog booties are a thing but horse shoes are an old tradition. Did we inbreed horses so much this became essential or do we not use other animals so much that it's required?
You dip, horse shoes are necessary since there's abrasive and hard as frick asphalt EVERYWHERE now. The times of grass and soft farm roads are long gone. Hooves aren't made for asphalt.
So approximately, we've been using horseshoes for 1000 years but asphalt since the early 1800s. To concede to your point a little paved roads go back to early civilisations i.e. Mesopotamia or Rome etc. but I don't know if they're as rough as asphalt.
So a chunk of the reason is the environment we have traditionally kept them in and then the condition of terrain they travel on. Thanks anon!
In terms of damp fields, why do cattle & sheep seem to cope better or take longer to get hoof issues? Or do they not but farmers don't need to worry about it as much?
>why do cattle & sheep seem to cope better or take longer to get hoof issues?
They get similar gross problems from the same conditions. Getting slaughtered early in life for meat cattle helps keep it from getting too bad tho. Still, cattle in shitty factory environments tend to have even worse foot problems than I’ve seen in a horses. Sheep have the benefit of gravity being kinder to them since they weigh less, but both sheep and cows also just have differently shaped hooves than horses with actual toes that can be easily spread somewhat (that gap is harder to clean though). Horses instead have these super overly long limbs whose optimal circulation kinda depends on just the one single hoof everything is balanced on. Basically, there’s a soft sensitive part stretched across the middle and back of the hoof that attaches to the rigid walls. The pressure of the horse walking around flexes those soft bits vaguely like a suction cup (sorta like how the diaphragm in your chest help you breathe) and that
motion helps pump blood all the way down & up the leg and brings in more fresh nutrients straight to the hoof bed for growing right. You don’t get much flex if the hoof wall isn’t kept rigid enough or if the horse isn’t walking, and that fricks up hoof growth too just from not getting enough nutrients carried to it.
Cattle really don't. Look up cow hoof fixing videos on youtube. They get majorly infected and painfully pus-filled all the time.
>Or do they not but farmers don't need to worry about it as much?
Cows can have trouble with their feet. Especially if they have to walk on concrete all the time. They can still have issues on pasture, too. Decent farmers will have people out to check hooves occasionally.
>Did we inbreed horses so much this became essential or do we not use other animals so much that it's required?
Broadly yes. It also became tradition when horses aren’t being used to store them in a small muddy stall and force them to just stand around in their disgusting shit & piss soaked bedding all day. If it gets bad enough, the horse becomes lame from what is the horse equivalent of trench foot. Even if conditions are mucked out regularly and kept slightly more sanitary with better drainage, the hooves are still so softened from directly soaking in those shitty damp conditions and also grown thinner from not moving around for long periods of time and getting proper circulation that they literally fall apart when you stuck a knight on the horse or expected the beast to pull a carriage or haul lumber or walk on stone; thus shoes.
Modernly speaking, living in stalls for too many hours or even soggy pasture still sucks for horses and makes their feet wear down prematurely or just get fricked up. Roads are also abrasive af- way more so when pulling a load- and can still wear down a hoof too quickly, but it depends on the individual horse. Locally, most of the police horse’s hooves are fine being unshod and rode down streets all day everyday, some aren’t and need shoes. They don’t carry more than a cop, gear, and feed though.
Except this is not cutting a sensitive part of the body that'll be lost forever.
It's a fricking nail.