THE SHOEING OF THE HORSE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1716, 18 January 1905, Page 60

THE SHOEING OF THE HORSE

“Shoeing is a necessary evil.” It is a wise and true saying, and might be put up in all farriers’ workshops. The farrier’s art, says a correspondent in “Da Semaine Agricole,” consists of supplying the horses’ feet with a metallic covering for the purpose of preventing the foot from a too quick wear and tear upon our paved and macadamised roads. The horse is not really formed by nature to wear shoes, and this necessai'y evil is for the domestic horse one of the hard necessities of our civilisation. We ought, then, to try to use it as little as possible. Unfortunately, many horses are worn out before their time in consequence of a carelessly-made or badly-fitting shoe. Take a colt, for instance._ Watch it walk before :t is shod * the hoof is placed flat upon the ground, the frog of the foot is enormous, and thus deadens the shock of the contact with +he ground, and the animal is free in all its movements.

When the animal is shod, a large part of the frog is removed with the narinsr

knife, under the idiotic pretext that if the horse walks upon the frog of the foot it would cause lameness, whilst, on the contrary, the shce.ng causes it. This part of the foot is supplied by the clever hand of Nature, and condemned by the farrier as being of no use; so he cuts it, thus preventing the frog from fulfilling its role, so it dries up, and gradually disappears. The shoe, which is destined to protect the foot, in many cases deforms and cripples the animal. The shoe should not cramp the hoof ; it ought to be quite flat, thicker at the toe than the heels, and leave the frog quite free to do its share of supporting the animal.