Thrush - More Than 4 Letters But Still a Bad Word!

Thrush! The season is coming upon us again... my clothes, tools and car are permeated with the smell of wet/rotting hoof already and we've only had a few rainy days. Unfortunately because we choose to keep horses in the great north "wet" it's a delicate balance to keep our horse's feet thrush free year round... but here are the important factors to make that happen.

1. Diet. Making sure your horse is getting a low sugar, high fibre diet that it balanced for vitamins and minerals in your area. stay away from anything with added molasses or corn, and make sure your hay is low in starches/sugars. dietary imbalances as well as excess starches/sugars make feet prone to thrush and because it can cause weakening of the lamina, can make horses prone to "white line disease" aka.. thrush in the white line that can travel high up into the hoof capsule and cause persistent cracks and/or abscessing.

2. Environment. CLEAN... natural dirt/mud doesn't cause thrush.. however mud that is full of manure, hogfuel, wood chips and urine does. Horses who like to stand in their manure/pee spot are very prone to serious thrush infections. Make sure you don't feed where your horse likes to "go" and keep it's main walking/standing areas clean. Using a sand/gravel base for your paddocks or walk ways will help as it drains the urine away better, avoid hogfuel or any wood products, it does nothing good for your horse's feet. It absorbs urine and manure and is in a constant state of "rotting" itself, as well as stays moist even after our weather is dry. If your horse spends a lot of time out in exceptionally wet paddock/pasture areas make sure they have a dry area they can come into so the feet get a chance to dry out. Also... if housing your horses with other farm animals (goats, chickens, ducks, cows, llamas etc) make sure you clean up their poop too! Especially fowl.. as their poop is a mix of poop and pee and is very high in ammonia. Some of the worst thrush I see is with horses who live with chickens.

3. Exercise! Horses who move around a lot on varied terrain generally have much stronger lamina, soles and frogs which are more resistant to the invasive bacteria. Horses that live on harder, more abrasive surfaces have more callus on the bottoms of their feet that is very resistant to infections. Riding/exercising you horses on harder surfaces like sand, gravel, concrete help keep the feet tougher year round. If your horse has issues with sensitivity on those surfaces, use boots... just the concussion and movement alone promotes healthy strong calluses, so don't avoid those surfaces, just boot up!

4. Hoof Balance. Of course how the feet look and feel add to the ability to stay healthy. horses with long heels, heel contraction, weak frogs, previous laminitic or navicular issues can make them very prone to thrush in the white line or frog. And in cases of heel contraction, weak frogs or navicular, the heel pain caused by the thrush can actually be the root cause of those problems or exacerbate them because the horse will not want to land on the heels. Making sure the horse is getting good hoof care every 6 weeks to rebalance and create a hoof that the horse will want to land heel first on which will help correct those issues is your first step. If the horse already has thrush, or is at high risk for getting it because of these factors, a routine of cleaning the hoof and applying various topical treatments such as oil of oregano, tea tree oil, (or a mix!), no thrush, MTG ( yup, it works for thrush too!) are all great preventatives, and using them as treatments can work too. Avoid anything you wouldn't put on your own skin! The areas that get thrushy are VERY sensitive, if you wouldn't put it on your own cuts or chapped hands, don't put it on your horse's feet! For exceptionally deep thrush infections in the frog, use a mixture of athletes foot cream and polysporing triple action and use a narrow tipped plastic syringe to get it deep into that crevice. Some horses can be SO sore from the thrush that just picking out their feet can make them flinch or not want to hold their foot up, so be gentle but thorough and try and get whatever treatment you are using into all the nooks and crannies of the frog.

Good luck, it's an uphill battle this time of year for many of us, but follow those 4 guidelines and you will be ahead of the rest!

Just for some reference, since many people don't know what "thrush" really looks like... here are some examples... good and bad. Many people think of thrush as simply the black smelly stuff that they sometimes pick out around the frog or white line.. but what they often don't notice is the deep crevice that thrush can create in the back of the frog that is extremely painful for the horse.

Healthy hoof, no signs of thrush anywhere in the hoof. Notice the frog is solid and the center area of the frog is shallow no crevices for bacteria to hide and eat away at the frog.

These are "winter" hooves... you can see that they are moist from the wet weather, but the soles and frogs are still callused and solid

Here is a hoof of a horse living in a mulch based paddock. He was also suffering from lack of trimming... but you can see that the frog is weak and disintegrating. The wood based paddock is too soft to promote a healthy callus, and the material is eating away at the frog.

Next is what we see when a horse likes to pee and poop where he eats. The mixture of rotten peed/pooped on hay is completely rotting away his frog and has created a very deep and sensitive central sulcus. This horse also has chronically contracted heels because of the pain from the thrush. The center is deep enough to sink your entire hoof pick into.

Front

Hind

This is a mare who actually lives in a very clean and dry environment, however years past of improper hoof balance and a chronic thrush infection that didn't receive treatment create this very deep central sulcus and contracted heels. Look for new pics of this hoof in the future!

Then we get to the worst of the worst. An infection that is so nasty that the tissue bleeds on contact. The hole head of the hoof pick can fit into the frog of this horse, but just the act of trying to clean it out caused the skin to peel and bleed. You can see in the second view that thrush is also feasting on the sole callus causing it to be black and "chalky"... the smell is indescribable.

But lets end on a positive note.... this hoof belongs to a gelding who had a chronic thrush infection... his frog looked similar to the mare in the 7th photo... but with regular trimming to rebalance the hoof and diligent treatment you can see that the frog is filling in! YOu can see the line of scar tissue into the hairline where the crevice used to go right down into but it filled in with new healthy tissue.