Snowballs in feet

[Lanny Collins]

How do you guy’s up in snow country keep snowballs from collecting in your horses feet? Maybe this is not so much a problem with big draft horse feet but my riding horse (QH) has trouble navigating. The snowballs build up and he looks like he is on stilks. He has bad feet so I have to keep shoes on him year round. Most of my horses go barefoot and don’t have the same trouble, or at least not as bad. Snow really likes to stick to metal. I have seen pic’s on this DAP site showing borium corks added to the bottom for traction. Guess maybe using pads would help but snow in Oklahoma doesn’t usually come real often or last very long, however this year we broke a previous record. I was just curious if I had to deal with snow for 3 or 4 months at a time. Lanny Collins

[Simple Living]

Lanny,

This was a topic on here in just the last couple weeks. Here is a link to some of it.
http://www.draftanimalpower.com/showthread.php?t=3938&highlight=snow+hammer

Gordon

[Lanny Collins]

Thanks Gordon. Guess I didn’t do quite enough searching. I read thru the threads. Never heard of the hammer but have heard using crisco or some type of oil. In my neck of the woods we normally have more ice than snow and it was mentioned about the water content in snow. Our snow here is usually a very wet snow. I worked for a company headquartered in Denver Colorado. When I would be in Denver and there would be a big snow you could go to your rental car in the morning with a snow brush and it would just slide off the car with such ease. I suspect there would not be too much snowball pack in horses feet with that type of dry snow. Here, you had better take the ice scraper with you and maybe a plastic shovel to get it off because a brush would be useless.:D

[Mark Cowdrey]

See also:
http://www.draftanimalpower.com/showthread.php?t=2418&highlight=snow+pads

They work for me.
Mark

[Lanny Collins]

Thanks Mark. Found that thread last night. After I received the message from Gordon, I went back and typed “snowball” in the search field and it brought up all the posts. That search option is a nice feature. I’m new to DAP so I will probably make some rookie mis-steps:eek: until i get the hang of how this site works. Thanks again to both you and Gordon for the help.

[Lanny Collins]

@Lanny Collins 25559 wrote:

Thanks Mark. Found that thread last night. After I received the message from Gordon, I went back and typed “snowball” in the search field and it brought up all the posts. That search option is a nice feature. I’m new to DAP so I will probably make some rookie mis-steps:eek: until i get the hang of how this site works. Thanks again to both you and Gordon for the help.

Also, forgot to mention; My team of QH, full sisters, normally go barefoot all the time because it’s too expensive to keep them shod. When I am using them I use “boots” made by easycare on their front feet. Don’t usually have any trouble on their hind feet. There are several boot manufacturer’s out there. I suppose boots could be used over shod hooves but haven’t tried that yet. Below is the link to them.

http://www.easycareinc.com/

[mitchmaine]

hi lanny, that thread about the snowball hammers was more bout the hammers than the “technique”. pick the hoof up and with any hammer, strike the horseshoe (not the snow) on the turn halfway between the toe and heel about the second nail head. one good crack and the snowball will (should) pop out slick as a whistle. good luck, mitch

[Author]

Posts