Low Tech Cooling for Hooves

Animal scientists at Virginia Tech conducted a small clinical trial to compare the effectiveness of cooling hooves with homemade ice bags (5-liter IV bags) with and without drainage holes with a commercially available wader-style ice boot. They used four normal horses with no signs of lameness or laminitis in a cross-over design and thermal imaging to measure hoof cooling over a 12-hour period for each method of cooling. Measurements were taken every 2 hours when the hooves were removed from the devices and dried for imaging before the ice was replenished for the next 2-hour treatment period.

All three cryotherapy methods significantly reduced hoof wall temperatures compared with controls within 2 hours. The undrained bag and commercial boot were more effective than the drained bag at lowering and maintaining hoof cooling over time. The researchers noted that among these unsedated horses that were also unaccustomed to icing of the lower limb, the homemade bags taped to the lower limb were better tolerated compared with the wader-style boot. This simple approach is more effective when the hoof is allowed to sit in an ice water slurry rather than in a bag of ice with the water drained off. 

—  Folk et al. JEVS 2024:105255

Senior Horses Still Got It

As equestrians age, so do our horses. As part of a larger study, a portion of which was previously abstracted here in Research Journal, researchers from the U.S. and the U.K. conducted an online survey of 2,717…