Foot Trimming Protocol for Farriers & Hoof Care Professionals

Many approaches to gathering data on the shape of the equine hoof refer to a trimming protocol that has been used without specifying the full farriery details that have contributed to that protocol.

In the past this may have sufficed for a veterinary-based approach to a particular subject, but a rigorous farriery appraisal requires detailed information about the techniques used to achieve a repeatable hoof trim for research standardisation and control purposes. The aim of this paper is to give detailed information about the important farriery reference points that can be used to give a defined and repeatable trim. This can then be used for research purposes as a means of controlling important variables which will then allow both reliable and farrier controlled quantitative data to be collected.

It is from this base that both farriers and veterinary surgeons could accurately calculate interventions and gauge their effects on static proportions and dynamic variations of the current biomechanical model. The availability of a quantifiable morphometric assessment of hoof proportions and skeletal orientation and alignment may well enable accurate prescriptive farriery interventions such as heel or mediolateral elevations.