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Keeping it Natural

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23.01.2022 Due to an unforeseen roadside incident, where I was not in attendance of the Ute, my vehicle is unable to be driven. I will not be able to take any new bookings until it is fixed and for those who have a booking with me this week, will be contacted for a reschedule. My apologies for any inconvenience but as they say no hoof, no horse. Without wheels I cannot travel, but aim to be back in the saddle ASAP.

22.01.2022 So in about October last year I started trimming a donkey called Dotty in the first lot of photos is from when I very first met Dotty and as you can see her are in quite a yucky state and at no fault of the owner as the owner had a lot of trouble finding someone to trim her. But after 4 months of regular trimming we had a slight surprise today with Dotty’s right front hoof. In hindsight I should have gotten a few more pics but Dotty is a much happier Donkey and took off after her trim today with a couple of small pigroots

22.01.2022 OMG it won’t fit under the Xmas tree. But finally I’m back in the saddle and up and running. Back to work tomorrow after being grounded for 4 weeks

22.01.2022 Grrr Grrr Grrr I just can’t get a break this year First the motor in my Ute blows up back in may then get Ute back with a ‘new’ motor then have too do the timing chain in 5 weeks later then have a broken thumb and an almost broken foot and NOW my mechanic has grounded me again because one of the injectors is about to die for fk sake So for those of you who have ponies/ horses that need to be trimmed and are ABLE you are welcome to bring them to me

19.01.2022 YES I am still trimming at the moment. Hi Guys just thought I’d post something in light of our current national crisis. At the moment but I am still trimming as normal but taking as many precautions as need to ensure that we all as safe as possible. I will be using wipes and hand sanitizer before entering your property. If you wish for me to leave my vehicle off your property that is perfectly fine. If you wish for me to trim but don’t want to be to close I’m happy to tri...m by myself while you watch from a safe distance. In event that Victoria does go into ‘lockdown’ I WILL still be available for those horses/ponies that are an animal welfare case and have an on going need of regular trimming ( laminitic) or any emergency. If you are feeling unwell please let me know and we can rearrange for when you are better. I will let everyone know if I am unwell but please pray that I do not get sick

19.01.2022 Hi everyone hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and managed to catch up with your family and friends. I’d just like to update everyone on the some new developments that are happening this year at Keeping it Natural Barefoot Trimming. Firstly I have 4 horses whom only really see me first thing in the morning and sometimes at night. So I would like to be spending some quality with time with tihem. So I will be aiming to be travelling for 4 days a week to trim and trimming... from home on the other 3 days. If people are needing their horses trimmed and are able to float their horses your are more then welcome to come to me and if possible take advantage of the Ledcourt state forest right outside of my driveway for a trail ride. I will also be offering ground handling skill lessons as well as float loading training if need be to those who feel that they need confidence building on the ground with their equine friends and want a better connection with their horses especially in times when their horses are acting turds. As I have been often asked over the years if I can teach this. My horses are also available to be used for lessons. My trimming fees as of January 1st 2021 Trimming $60 per trim Ground handling lessons $50 per hour Per bookings for on going trimming will be a must Once it the dairy that will be your day and time. Unless life gets in the way such as car problems or personal life problems which at times none of us can avoid (may God bless my car )

18.01.2022 So it’s been a busy day here today first with George coming to have his feet trimmed and a chance to take advantage of the sand in the round yard and have a great roll. And then Vanessa and Ronnie coming in for their ground handling lesson this morning and then a nice relaxing trail ride this afternoon with a great view Grampians

16.01.2022 So I know have a set of temporary wheels to get round to trim all your horses and ponies. I want to give a huge massive Thank You of appreciation to Tania Decker for lending me her Land Cruiser while the Nav is out of action. It’s even parked in the Nav’s spot and the girls have given it the seal of approval

16.01.2022 There are times when I’m trimming that I tend to have an audience but today the audience was a little different. This herd of very curious cows and one steer where making sure their donkey friend Joseph was ok

10.01.2022 Hi Everyone this lovely lady is Lorna. Lorna is a 13 year old unhandled Appaloosa brood mare. So she has spend her entire life in a paddock with a stallion and never had a hand laid on her. I first meet Lorna some months ago. She had arrived at her new home in foal and with a foal at foot and in rather poor condition. But Lorna her was lame she seemed ok at first but progressively got worse presenting as laminitic. Which is where I can in. Upon seeing Lorna and watching her ...move around she definitely appeared to present as laminitic and as much as her front feet pained her the problem was not coming from the front end but rather it was in the back end. As by the time I first meet her she could barely walk and was her trying to turn was extremely painful to watch. It’s turns out that Lorna had a fractured pelvis in 2 places and because her feet had never been trimmed before her feet were quite long and very under run was developing stress laminitis. This was confirmed by a vet and yes she was given pain relief for the duration of her pregnancy. So poor Lorna was in a bit of trouble. But under the circumstances for an unhandled horse she was an excellent patient. She was caught haltered and had her front feet trimmed all within a couple of hours. In the short term the trim helped Lorna amazingly allowing her to bare weight on her feet relieving pressure off the back feet and most importantly her pelvis. So 4 weeks before Lorna was due to foal a discussion was had about trimming them again under normal circumstances she would have had them trimmed. But as the foal grow so did the pressure on Lorna’s pelvis and she was back to not being able to walk again. But at that point her front feet really weren’t toooo bad so we decided to wait till after she foaled . Which brings us to the pictures. Since foaling which was text book, Lorna is walking and trotting like normal so it was time to trim those front feet and again for an unhandled horse she would put may very well handled horses to shame. But what I want people to know and to learn from Lorna is that you don’t have to be pony fat to develop laminitis and laminitis is not always brought on by food. Stress laminitis is brought by unfortunate circumstances. See more

07.01.2022 Just for something different

07.01.2022 Hi Guys I haven’t post here for a while but I’d like to share with you in this post about a condition called PSSM or Muscle Myopathy. Horses with this condition basically have a mutated muscle genes which prevents the muscles from working correctly. This a hereditary Glycogen storage condition and their muscles struggle remove lactic acid which builds up causing them to stiffen and or have acute tying up episodes. Horses with this condition are often misunderstood. People of...ten think that they are just stiff and try working the stiffness out of the horse only to find their horse will explode bucking rearing kicking out dangerously and even biting. Unfortunately if a Pssm horse is pushed to hard it will result in an acute tying up episode which could be just severe stiffness and or muscles spasms or just in general look like they have laminitis. Each horse’s symptoms are different. Ok so if you have watched the video already this is Midnight she is an 18yr old Standardbred Mare she is also my own personal horse and 4 weeks ago she was struggling to walk. Up until the last 3 years she has managed with her condition quite well. Now when I found out about her condition when she was 7yrs old there was not a lot of information around so we have doing the best we could with what was available. But In the last 12 months her condition has deteriorated quite a lot especially when she was trimmed it would cause her to have an tying up episode which would take her 2 weeks to recover from a normal standard everyday trim which was literally do my head in as my day job is barefoot trimming. As a trimmer all I saw was laminitis not once did I stop and think that an 8 weekly trim would change her angles to such a degree, even if it was just what we would think is normal amount of hoof to remove in that amount of time, was just to much for Midnight’s muscles to handle. So a lesson was learnt for me. So how to manage this condition comes down to diet (expensive much ) muscle warmth and and exercise as much as she hated my for it you can see that she is now trotting somewhat freely and today we actually got a3 beat canter as well which is huge because she usually just this weird bunny hopping thing . So this is what I do on my days off or as today was a short day came home and played with ponies.

04.01.2022 Why do ‘cresty’ necks suddenly go rock hard? This information is relevant and useful to people who own horses with Equine Metabolic Syndrome and are in danger o...f laminitis or whose horses are intermittently ‘footy’. Understanding this has helped with rehabilitating, not only all the ponies at Jen Heperi’s Mini-HaHa Rescue Haven but many more horses and ponies all around the world. We learned from Dr Deb Bennett PhD (who has conducted many dissections), that the horse's "crest" is made of fibro-fatty sub-cutaneous (adipose) tissue similar in texture to high-density foam. Have you ever wondered how it is that the ‘crest’ of the neck can harden so rapidly? Sometimes overnight? The actual reason is because it goes ‘turgid’ (it fills with fluid). Like foam, the crest tissue can take up water like a sponge; so it swells and hardens because fluid ‘leaks’ into it, filling the interstitial spaces until it is hard as a rock, and ‘softens’ when electrolyte balances are corrected thereby allowing fluid to be resorbed. When the crest swells with edema, other parts of the horse's body like the abdomen and the hooves (significantly the digital cushion is made of similar material, it is a thick wedge of fibro-fatty subcutaneous tissue) -- are liable to be in trouble, too. Hardening of the ‘crest’ coincides with not only spring and autumn growth spurts but also potassium and nitrogen spikes in autumn and winter grasses. It coincides with early signs of laminitis which are ‘stiffening’ of gait and being ‘footy’. It is a sure indication that one cause of ‘pasture related laminitis’ is as much to do with mineral imbalances, (particularly potassium and nitrogen excesses concurrent with salt deficit) as sugars and starches. It explains why short Autumn grass can cause laminitis when analysis shows soluble sugars + starch content is only 7.5% while potassium is 3.4%, sodium only 0.154%, nitrogen 5.8%, nitrates 2290mgs/kg (far too high, in mature grass/hay they are undetectable). It is one of the many reasons clover is such a ‘no-no’ for EMS/laminitis equines and a likely explanation why there are some insulin resistant/elevated insulin horses that can't tolerate Lucerne (alfalfa) and is why Lucerne can perpetuate laminitis when everything else is being done ‘right’. People who own horses with EMS are aware they need to pay attention to this vital sign: that just before a horse has a bout of laminitis, the normally soft and spongy crest stands up firm and hard. Then they can immediately reduce potassium/nitrogen intake by eliminating short, green grass replacing it with soaked hay and make sure they add salt to feeds and not rely on a salt lick. If action is taken quickly enough in these early stages, laminitis can be averted, you can ‘dodge a bullet’. Soaking hay for about an hour not only reduces sugars but also reduces potassium levels by 50%. Therefore a very important aspect of EMS and laminitis is that identifying and addressing mineral imbalances (particularly high potassium/nitrogen & low salt) are equally as important as sugar and starch content when rehabilitating individuals and assessing suitability of forage for these compromised equines.

01.01.2022 Hi guys would just like to share a bit of a success story with you. The horse below is a Gypsy Cob mare named Finn. Unfortunately for Finn she found her way into the chook shed and helped herself to the chook food . The result was impaction colic which she did recover from but shortly after went down with an acute case of laminitis. The last time I saw Finn was on the 15th of March this year and her pedal bones at that point in time where threatening to come through the bo...ttom of her soles. Lucky for Finn her owner went against all the advice of the vet ( and most of us KNOW what that advice was ) and sent her over to Andrew and Nicky Bowes rehabilitation centre for laminitic horses/ponies. While Finn was in hospital her pedal bones did penetrate on all 4 feet ( all 4 pedal bones penetrating is not a common thing usually it’s just 2 ). Now I here you all saying OMG she should have followed the vets advice and had her put to sleep, the horse how could you put her though that ect ect ect. What most people don’t know is that once the pedal bones penetrate the sole the pain stops. It then becomes a matter of keeping the hoof clean in nappies and boots to prevent infection and then wait for the sole to heal with the correct laminitic trim. The success here is that are 3 months Finn is now home with her more than over joyed owner, who has even taken Finn for a ride down the road. And today I had the awesome pleasure of been greeted at the gate by A very different and happy Finn who followed me to the shed and quite happily stood for her trim without a halter or lead in sight. Oh and I’m also pleased to report that her soles have completely healed and she is running around the paddock without boots. The Moral to THIS story is that there is life after laminitis. See more