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Hi, I'm Danvers, the Hoof Health Consultant for SmartPak and we're going to talk about
hoof cracks today.
We tend to talk about toe cracks, quarter cracks - the nomenclature is almost endless.
You have sand cracks, you have superating cracks, and superficial cracks. The bottom
line is, it's a crack. And it needs to be attended to and have some concern addressed
to it. It may end up being nothing, it may end up being routine, it may end up being that it's
superficial, it's evironment or climate related, but it needs to be looked at. You need to
have sort of an idea of what should be a concern and what shouldn't.
The two most common areas for cracks are at the toe and in the quarter. And it's actually
quite interesting why that is. If you look at a coffin bone - the inside, the third phalanx,
whatever you want to call it, the inside of that horse's foot - you'll see this dorsal
notch at the toe. It's a weak spot. Then the quarter crack is usually consistent with the
termination of that bony connection within the hoof. And so, it occurs at the quarter.
You can see that termination point is basically where your quarter crack will occur. Whether
it's at the collateral cartilage connection or whether it's at the bony connection, it's
going to run with the horn tubules in this area. And you can see a slight weakness here
that you can see that line right here that corresponds to this little disruption at the
ground surface. So there's a weak spot there. The more this hoof is flared, the more that
it's not maintained, the more opportunistic that is for it to crack at the bottom, and
then follow up and that stress point weakens all the way.
The same at the toe. You've got the dorsal notch that is in the coffin bone. And you
can see that scoop, and again, that's a weak spot, and as that toe gets too long, if it
flares and you have a toe flare, you have excess toe, long toe, low heel, then that
leverage creates an opportunity for it to crack there. So these are faults where you
lose the integrity of the hoof wall connections.
You'll see cracks elsewhere, but those are your main areas - quarter and toe. Stay with
us as we look at more hoof health concerns, here at SmartPak.