milestones, feet and hacking

We have done over 100 miles of barefoot hacking. On the downside he is fairly footy at the moment on stones, and we have lots of stones. This all relates to moving the paddock onto a fresh area (of winter grazing field). Ponies have started tucking back into the adlib haylage with a vengeance in the last few days, and eating their feeds again, so fingers crossed the paddock is mostly eaten down. I would expect him to be less footy by next weekend.

On Saturday I was panicking, as a large piece of flare / deviation had split and fallen off left fore. Took a fair bit of hoof wall with it. However we tidied the rough edges off it, and he didn’t seem any more footy on it. Spoke to local trimmer, who said if no sharp edges, and sole okay, should be fine to work as normal. I would like the majorly flared / deviated foot to also think about splitting and breaking off (carefully so as not to split foot higher up) however it looks pretty strong and robust and not like splitting. Maybe it is continuing to serve a purpose. I hacked him and he was slow and footy on stones, but good on soft / tarmac.

We had a lovely hack on Monday, we went round the Heath the soft sandy way and did lots of short bouncy canters. Remi was very cheerful on the soft bits.

Hacked again in the rain tuesday morning, with both horses and some more short canters.Kind friend hacked Remi at 6.30am in the rain!! Whilst I hacked Mac. Still quite footy on stones / gravel. Hopefully now eating mostly haylage again will improve.