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Re: [RC] [RC] [RC] more cowhocked - desertrydr1Genevieve said:Hm. I had an Arab who was Bey Shah and double Bask bred and had a club foot. The lady who bought him from me said that club feet are common with those bloodlines as well. However, I think it was because he had a bowed tendon on the other leg and he tended to graze with that leg back to keep the strain off of it, thus making the leg that he put forward develop a club foot.
I've heard that Bey Shah lines often have a club foot. I have seen pics of him where it pretty clearly looked like he had a clubfoot himself. As far as the grazing thing goes, not sure I believe that. I have a Shagya filly who broke her neck as a baby. It healed, but her neck is a good 2" shorter than it should have been. As a result, she grazes with one front way out in front, and the other back by her hind feet. She has about an 1/8" difference in toe length between the two fronts, and the one that goes back is NOT clubby, just the other one is a tiny bit flatter. It shows when she's due for a trim, but is hardly noticeable after she's trimmed, and my farrier does trim to the natural foot. I believe, after a fair amount of studying clubfooted horses and the farms they come from that early nutrition has a lot to do with it, and also there is a genetic component, where horses that carry some sort of genetic tendency are more likely to become clubfooted if they are fed improperly (too rich, leading to too fast growth). I know at least two breeding farms that have a hig number of clubfooted horses, not all related. One farm fed their horses straight alfalfa. The other farm fed a lot of grain to the babies at and after weaning. I was boarding there when a filly developed a clubfoot. She was lame for a while, and they did nothing about it, just sold her, clubfoot and all, told the new owners that hse just needed to have the check ligament surgery. I have a colt, now coming 2, who started to get a little sore at about 9 months of age. One of his front feet started to look high in the heel. I had been feeding him a high protein supplement. I immediately took him off it, and he immediately got over being sore. Now there is very little difference, more of a high/low syndrome than actual clubfoot. He is only a quarter Arab, his mom was an Anglo-Arab out of my clubfooted Arab mare. The anglo Arab had the most well-matched feet my farrier had ever seen. It's a complicated issue. jeri
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