JOHN McAteer is an Irish Master Farrier from Navan, Co Meath. His daily work mainly consists of racehorses, broodmares and foals and sales horses. He does, however, cover all aspects of equine hoof care in the greater Meath area.

Over the last number of years, John has been fortunate to work with some interesting horses, who posed unique challenges when it came to shoeing them and helping them to return to soundness: here he shares two cases.

Horse type: six-year-old racehorse

Symptoms: The trainer felt the horse in question was not reaching his full potential and he suffered from intermittent lameness.

The vet reported that the horse had trotted sound upon nerve blocking both fore hoofs and no other injuries were discovered.

This was a racehorse that was brought to my home forge, he happened to suffer from intermittent lameness where he tended to go lame, then with rest, he would return to sound only to go lame again following reintroduction to work.

He was a reasonably good horse, who had won and was placed, but he seemed to have lost his way a little bit.

Upon first inspection and removing his shoes, you could see that the horse was suffering from collapsed and weakened heels. He also displayed discomfort around the heel area when pressure was applied to them.

In this instance, we needed to remove the weakened horn around the heel area, we then built his heels back up to a more desired state with an acrylic adhesive.

I then fitted the horse’s shoes and glued them in place as this allowed me to leave his feet correctly balanced, allowing the horse to return to a level footfall.

In the days following the application, the trainer remarked on a noticeable improvement in the horse’s gait and soundness, he soon returned to full work.

Five weeks later, the horse returned to my forge and he had grown a reasonable amount of hoof in that time-frame, we repeated the process above to further support his hoof capsule and help his heels continue to recover, before returning the horse to normal shoes nailed on in a traditional fashion five weeks later.

During the above 10 weeks, the horse in question was able to maintain his training routine and was placed on his sole start during this time, he subsequently was placed twice in quick succession shortly afterwards.

Key takeaway: this horse’s intermittent lameness was caused by his tender heels and further hindered by his poor hoof balance.

Working together with the trainer and his vet, we were able to get their horse back to work safely and efficiently.

Horse type: broodmare

Symptoms: lame, badly distorted front hooves with very thin soles, brittle hoof wall and a large crack in the centre of her toe of the off-fore hoof.

This mare happened to be quite lame upon initial inspection. Straight away you can see a large crack in the toe of her off-fore hoof and a brittle hoof wall on her near fore, her soles were very thin and bruised.

For this mare, I applied a plastic shoe with cuffs around the edge that extended up the hoof wall, past the weakened hoof wall, which allowed the shoes a better opportunity to stay in place throughout her shoeing cycle. I also applied liquid sole cushioning and pads, to help her grow some depth of sole. The crack on her toe needed to be braced to prevent it from moving upon weight bearing, so I braced the crack with an aluminium patch to help it heal.

Thankfully, this broodmare responded positively to this treatment and, over the coming months you can see the crack, having healed at the coronet band, now has a solid piece of hoof above which shows the healing process.

It took over 10 months of regular hoof care, but this mare was able to return to her bare feet comfortably afterwards. It was a great pleasure to be part of both the cases above and witness the improvement in the horse’s hooves and overall well-being.

A note from John: “I am very grateful to my father Liam, uncles Michael and Donal and my late cousin Robert O’Hare for teaching me this trade. Every day is a day to learn something new, which in itself is an enthralling part of my job. I would like to thank all my clients for their continued loyalty and support and wish them every success in the future.”

For more information: jmcateerfarriery@gmail.com