I would like to thank Randy Bickel and Sue Mallery for providing this feral hoof cadaver to me.
Notice the perfect wall connection, the wall follows the same angle from the coronet all the way to the ground.
All horses should have this perfect connection, if there is any variation in the angle there is problem.
Keep in mind this hoof has not been touched by farrier tools, the frog, bars, sole and walls were all worn this way naturally by the horse.
Notice how the sole has a nice concave bowl shape.
See how the horse worn the hoof wall into a nice rounded shape, this helps keep the wall from cracking and splitting.
Again you can see the perfect wall connection and see how the mustang roll goes all the way around the hoof.
Take a good look at this heel and notice there is nothing flat about this heel,
there is about a 1/4 inch of material under this heel if I was to rasp it flat it would have
severely injured this horse. For those of you with the Pete Ramey video set be very careful about
applying a heel bevel! If anyone has questions about this feel free to call or email me. See also how
having the heel this way gives the horse a nice landing pad for a good heal first landing.
Here is a cross section of the hoof notice how the hoof wall and the cofin bone are at the exact same angle.
In this picture I wanted to show sole thickness, but I got my ruler a little too far to the left.
The thicker portion you see at the left is the frog, the area the ruler is covering up is the sole
and as you can see from the ruler it is only about a 1/4 inch thick. A horses sole thickness is uniform all the
way around the hoof. Other than cleaning out dead flaky material the sole should never be pared away.
Here you can see that from the lowest point of the sole to the highest point is around a 1/2 an inch,
this can vary depending on size and shape of the coffin bone. My point again is do not pare live sole,
it can be vary damaging. There can be various reasons why your horse has no depth at all over pairing, founder or
damaged coffin bone are among few. X-rays may be required in order to determine the reason.
Keywords: mustang feral horse hoof feet cadaver natural wild