What Is a Horse Hoof Made Of? Anatomy Explained

A horse hoof is made mainly of keratin, the tough structural protein that also makes up your fingernails, laid down as horn by living tissue at the top of the foot. That is the quick answer to what a horse hoof is made of. Horse hoof anatomy goes much further than one material, though: the horn capsule you pick out every morning is a shell wrapped around a living foot of bone, cartilage, tendon, blood vessels and nerves, and every part of it has a job to do.

This guide works through the parts of a horse's hoof from the outside in: the wall, coronary band and periople, then the sole, white line, frog and bars underneath, then the pedal bone, navicular bone, digital cushion, lateral cartilages and the laminae that hold the whole structure together. It also covers how fast the hoof really grows, whether black hooves are tougher than white ones, what a newborn foal's feet look like, and why a horse feels nothing when the farrier nails on a shoe but can be crippled by a bruise. Where a figure is given, the source is named so you can check it.

What Is a Horse Hoof Made Of?

The short answer is keratin. More precisely, the hoof is horn: dead, keratin-packed cells produced by living tissue inside the foot, pushed outwards and downwards as they harden. A University of Nottingham team describes the hoof as "composed of horn, derived from epidermal tissue which has been keratinised to a varying extent", with the horn "largely arranged into a series of parallel microscopic tubules, interconnected by intertubular horn" (Al-Agele et al., 2019).

Keratin alone does not explain why the wall is as hard as a fingernail while the frog feels like a rubber eraser. The difference lies in how the horn is built and how much water it holds. When researchers in Vienna measured horn at its natural moisture, wall samples averaged 22.7% water, sole samples 31.5% and frog samples 34.6% (Hinterhofer, Stanek and Binder, 1998, PMID 9674312). Water changes the material dramatically: in a study by Bertram and Gosline, the stiffness of hoof wall keratin rose from 410 MPa when fully hydrated to 14.6 GPa when completely dry (Journal of Experimental Biology, 1987, PMID 2442283).

That does not mean you can top the wall up with water. In Australian feral horses, wall moisture was about 29.5% whether the horses lived in wet, boggy country or constant desert, and in six domestic Quarter Horses a two-hour soak raised the moisture content of the sole but made no difference to the wall (Hampson et al., American Journal of Veterinary Research, 2012, PMID 22369538).

The hoof and the foot are not the same thing

Horse people use the two words loosely, but they mean different things. The hoof is the horn capsule: wall, sole, frog and bars. The foot is the hoof plus everything inside it, including the pedal bone, the navicular bone, the lower end of the short pastern bone, the digital cushion, cartilages, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels and nerves. So if you have searched for what a horse's feet are called, the everyday answer is hooves, and the vet's answer is the foot or the digit.

That digit is a single toe. Each leg ends in the third digit of the ancestral five-toed limb, which evolved into a single weight-bearing digit. A horse is standing on the tip of one enlarged toe on each leg, with the hoof wall doing the job a fingernail does on yours.

Horse Hoof Anatomy at a Glance

Use this table as a map of the parts of a horse's hoof. Each structure has its own section further down.

Structure	Where it is	What it is made of	Main job
Hoof wall	The outer shell, from toe to heels	Hard tubular and intertubular horn	Protects the foot and carries much of the load on firm ground
Coronary band	Top of the hoof, at the hairline	Living corium under the skin	Produces the wall
Periople	A band just below the coronary band	Soft tubular horn	Waterproof outer coat for new wall
Sole	Underside of the foot, inside the wall	Softer, flakier horn	Protects the pedal bone and shares load on soft ground
White line	Where the sole meets the wall	Soft horn formed at the tips of the laminae	Binds wall to sole; the farrier's nailing landmark
Frog	V-shaped wedge at the back of the sole	Moist, supple horn	Grip, shock absorption and feel for the ground
Bars	The wall folded forward at each heel	Wall horn	Brace the heels
Heel bulbs	Back of the foot	Thick skin and soft horn	Flex as the heels spread
Laminae	Inner face of the wall and surface of the pedal bone	Interlocking epidermal and dermal leaves	Suspend the pedal bone from the wall
Pedal (coffin) bone	Inside the front of the capsule	Bone	The skeleton of the foot
Navicular bone	Behind the coffin joint	Bone, with the navicular bursa	Pulley for the deep digital flexor tendon
Digital cushion	Above the frog, in the back half of the foot	Fibrous, fatty and elastic tissue	Absorbs shock at the heels
Lateral (collateral) cartilages	Sides of the foot, rising above the coronet at the heels	Cartilage, which can turn to bone	Let the back of the foot flex
Deep digital flexor tendon	Back of the leg to the underside of the pedal bone	Tendon	Flexes the digit

The Outside of the Hoof: Wall, Coronary Band and Periople

The hoof wall

The hoof wall is the hard, curved shell you see when the horse is standing. It protects the living tissue inside and gives the farrier something to rasp, shape and nail into. Farriers divide it into the toe at the front, the quarters at the sides and the heels at the back, where the wall turns sharply inwards to become the bars. The British Horse Society describes the wall as supporting "most of your horse's weight".

Inside, the wall is built like a bundle of drinking straws set in glue. Hollow horn tubules run from the coronary band down to the ground, bonded together by intertubular horn. The tubules are not evenly spread: a study of hoof wall sections found tubule density was lower at the inner edge of the wall than at the outer edge (Lancaster, Bowker and Mauer, Journal of Veterinary Medical Science, 2013, PMID 23370605). The wall is stiffest on the outside too. Kasapi and Gosline measured stiffness falling from 0.56 to 0.30 GPa from the outer wall inwards, and found features in the structure that appear to divert cracks before they reach the living tissue (Journal of Experimental Biology, 1997, PMID 9202450).

That fibre-reinforced construction is why a sound wall can flex slightly without breaking, and why cracks, when they do form, tend to run down the line of the tubules. Our guide to hoof cracks in horses covers what happens when the structure fails.

Anatomists describe the wall in three layers. From the outside in:

• Stratum externum, the thin outer coat. Horse & Hound's vet library calls it perioplic horn, because it comes from the periople (H&H, 2019).
• Stratum medium, the thick middle layer that makes up the bulk of the wall.
• Stratum internum, the inner, lamellar layer that interlocks with the living tissue on the pedal bone.

The coronary band

The coronary band, or coronet, is the ridge where the hairline meets the top of the hoof. Under the skin sits the coronary corium, a band of living tissue packed with blood vessels and tiny projections called papillae, and the wall's horn tubules grow down from those papillae. The BHS describes the coronary band as the area that "creates new hoof growth and sends nutrients to the wall", and warns that if it is damaged, "it can affect how the hoof grows".

In practice that means a wire cut, a tread from another horse or an overreach at the coronet can leave a groove, crack or ridge that grows all the way down the wall below it. Any injury at the coronary band is worth showing to your vet, even if it looks small.

The periople

Just below the coronary band is the periople, a soft, pale band of horn that is easiest to see when the hoof is wet. The Nottingham team describes the junction of hoof and skin at the coronet as "protected by a waterproof band of soft tubular horn, the periople". As the wall grows down, the periople spreads over it as the thin outer coat, and rasping the face of the wall removes it.

The heel bulbs

At the back of the foot the wall gives way to two rounded heel bulbs, covered in thick skin and soft horn that blends into the frog. The BHS describes them as the parts that "allow the hoof to expand and contract". They sit over the back of the digital cushion and are a classic site for overreach injuries from a hind foot.

Parts of a Horse's Hoof Underneath: Sole, White Line, Frog and Bars

Pick up a foot and clean it with a hoof pick and you are looking at the solar surface. This is where most everyday hoof problems show first, so it pays to know what normal looks like. Our step-by-step guide to cleaning a horse's hoof covers the technique; this section covers what you are actually looking at.

The sole

The sole is the plate of horn covering the underside of the foot. It is keratin too, but softer and flakier than the wall, and it sheds naturally as new horn is produced by the solar corium above it. A healthy sole is usually slightly dished (concave), and it gives the pedal bone a protective layer underneath.

How much weight the sole carries depends on the ground. The BHS says the sole is "not designed to bear full weight, which is primarily supported by the hoof wall". On firm ground that holds. In a Texas A&M study of unshod horses, every unshod, untrimmed horse standing on a flat, solid surface carried its load on the wall in a 3-point or 4-point pattern, but on a deformable surface the load was "principally solar", and the ground contact area rose from 24.2 cm² on the solid surface to 69.4 cm² on the deformable one (Hood, Taylor and Wagner, American Journal of Veterinary Research, 2001, PMID 11400847). On a surfaced arena or soft grass, the sole and frog are working.

A flat or dropped sole, or a sole thin enough to give under thumb pressure, is worth raising with your farrier. Sole bruising is also common. In a Dutch study of 942 randomly selected horses examined by certified farriers during routine trimming, sole bruises were found in 24.7%, one of the four most frequent findings along with thrush (45.0%), superficial wall cracks (30.4%) and growth rings (26.3%) (Holzhauer et al., Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 2017, PMID 28460750).

The white line

Where the sole meets the wall you will see a narrow band, usually pale yellow rather than white, called the white line. It is soft horn formed at the tips of the laminae, and the BHS describes it as the part that "holds the hoof together and acts as a barrier to keep out dirt and germs". It is also the landmark the farrier works from when placing nails, because it marks the inner edge of the insensitive wall.

Because it is softer than the wall on either side, the white line is a weak point. Dirt and microbes can work their way up it and separate the wall from the inside, which is white line disease, known in the UK as seedy toe.

The frog

The frog is the V-shaped, rubbery wedge pointing forward from the heels. It is the wettest horn in the hoof (see the Vienna figures above), which is why it feels soft and springy. The BHS says it "helps absorb shock and pushes blood back up the leg when your horse moves", and it also provides grip. Our frog glossary entry goes into more detail, and frog pressure explains why farriers pay so much attention to it.

A healthy frog is firm and well formed. A shrunken, ragged or smelly frog is often the first sign of hoof thrush.

The central sulcus and collateral grooves

The frog has a groove down its middle, the central sulcus, and a deeper groove on each side where it meets the bars, the collateral grooves. A healthy central sulcus is shallow and open. When it becomes a deep, narrow crack between the heel bulbs it traps mud and manure, and that is exactly where thrush takes hold, so it deserves particular care with the hoof pick.

The bars and the seat of corn

The bars are the continuation of the wall where it folds forward at each heel and runs alongside the frog. They brace the heels and add weight-bearing surface at the back of the foot; the University of Missouri Extension guide lists "the wall, bars and frog" as the weight-bearing structures of the foot (McClure, 1999). The angle between the bar and the wall at each heel is called the seat of corn, and it is where the bruises known as corns usually appear.

Inside the Hoof: Bones, Tendons and Soft Tissues

If the capsule is the shell, this is what it protects. Most of these structures cannot be seen or felt directly, which is why foot pain so often needs nerve blocks, X-rays or an MRI scan to pin down. The bones of the lower leg run in a chain from the cannon bone through the fetlock to the long pastern bone, the short pastern bone and finally the pedal bone inside the hoof.

The pedal bone (coffin bone)

The pedal bone, also called the coffin bone, the third phalanx (P3) or the distal phalanx, is the main bone inside the hoof and is shaped like a smaller version of the hoof itself. The BHS describes it as having "a strong, slightly curved shape that fits the hoof" and helping to "spread your horse's weight evenly". It is suspended from the inner face of the wall by the laminae rather than sitting on the sole, and the deep digital flexor tendon attaches to its underside.

When the laminar attachment fails, as it does in laminitis, the pedal bone can rotate or sink inside the capsule. Our guide to founder in horses explains that end of the disease.

The short pastern bone and the coffin joint

Only the lower part of the short pastern bone (P2, the middle phalanx) sits inside the hoof. It meets the pedal bone at the coffin joint, the lowest joint in the limb, with the navicular bone completing the joint behind. We cover it in depth in our guide to the coffin joint in horses.

The navicular bone

The navicular bone, or distal sesamoid, is a small, boat-shaped bone tucked behind the coffin joint. The deep digital flexor tendon passes over its back surface on its way to the pedal bone, with a fluid-filled sac, the navicular bursa, in between. The BHS explains that the bursa "allows the deep digital flexor tendon to slide smoothly over the bone". Pain from this region is at the heart of navicular syndrome.

The tendons

Two main tendons reach into the hoof. The common digital extensor tendon (the long digital extensor in the hind leg) runs down the front of the leg to the top of the pedal bone and straightens the digit. The deep digital flexor tendon runs down the back of the leg, over the navicular bone, to the underside of the pedal bone and flexes the digit. The superficial digital flexor tendon ends higher up, on the pastern bones.

The lateral cartilages and sidebone

The lateral cartilages, which the BHS calls the collateral cartilages, are two curved plates attached to the pedal bone, one on each side of the foot. They rise above the coronary band towards the heels, where you can feel them as firm, slightly springy plates. The BHS says they "help the hoof expand and contract with movement".

These cartilages can turn partly or wholly to bone, which is sidebone. It is very common in heavy and coldblooded types and runs in families. In a radiographic survey of 462 Finnhorses, 22.9% were completely free of sidebone and 17.8% had advanced or extensive ossification (Ruohoniemi, Tulamo and Hackzell, Equine Veterinary Journal, 1993, PMID 8223379). Among young Norwegian coldbloods, 46.3% of one frequently used stallion's offspring had significant ossification, against 3.5% of the offspring of four other popular stallions (Holm et al., Equine Veterinary Journal, 2000, PMID 10743972). It is not only a heavy-horse finding either: a University of Pretoria study of South African endurance horses found ossification of these cartilages in 69% (Hollenbach et al., Journal of the South African Veterinary Association, 2022, PMID 36412079).

The digital cushion

The digital cushion is a wedge of fibrous, fatty and elastic tissue sitting above the frog and between the lateral cartilages, filling the back half of the foot. The BHS describes it as acting "like a shock absorber". Its make-up varies between horses. In a Michigan State University study, the cushion was mostly fat and elastic tissue in feet with thin lateral cartilages, but fibrous and fibrocartilaginous tissue in feet with thicker cartilages (Bowker et al., American Journal of Veterinary Research, 1998, PMID 9706199).

The Corium and the Laminae: How the Hoof Hangs on the Bone

Between the horn and the bone is the corium, the living, blood-rich dermis that feeds the horn and produces it. It is usually described in five regions, each named after the horn it makes: the perioplic, coronary, lamellar, solar and frog corium. Everything that bleeds or hurts inside the hoof is corium or deeper.

The most important junction in the whole foot is on the inner face of the wall. Here, leaf-like epidermal laminae on the inside of the wall, the insensitive laminae, interleave with dermal laminae on the surface of the pedal bone, the sensitive laminae, like the pages of two books pushed together. There are hundreds of these primary laminae around the foot, and each carries many microscopic secondary laminae, which multiplies the surface area of the bond many times over. The BHS summarises their job simply: they "attach the hoof wall to the pedal bone".

That interlocking bond is what suspends the pedal bone, and the horse's weight, from the wall. When it weakens or tears, the result is laminitis. The laminitis and founder entry in our disease library sets out the causes and warning signs. The BHS notes that problems can happen if the white line "becomes weak or stretched", so a widening white line is worth pointing out to your farrier.

How Fast Does a Horse's Hoof Grow?

The wall grows down from the coronary band all the time, and the measured rates are slower than many online figures suggest. In a Zurich study of Lipizzaners, the wall grew 7 mm every 28 days, "giving a wall renewal period of 11 months" (Josseck, Zenker and Geyer, Equine Veterinary Journal, 1995, PMID 7556044). In a controlled trial at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies in Edinburgh, ponies that were not given biotin grew 30.69 mm at the centre of the toe over five months, and the older ponies grew significantly less horn than the rest (Reilly et al., Equine Veterinary Journal Supplement, 1998, PMID 9932094).

Growth also changes through the year. In young horses, hoof growth was greatest in summer and least in winter (He et al., Journal of Equine Veterinary Science, 2020, PMID 31952631). One thing that did not make a measurable difference in a controlled study was mild exercise: 17 weeks of it "caused no significant changes in hoof wall growth" (Faramarzi et al., American Journal of Veterinary Research, 2009, PMID 19878018).

Put together, the toe of an adult horse takes the best part of a year to grow out. The BHS gives "about 9-12 months" from the coronary band to the toe. A Horse & Hound guide approved by Karen Coumbe MRCVS gives 10 to 12 months at the toe and "around three months" at the heel, where the wall is much shorter (H&H, 2019). Foals are quicker: in a study of Thoroughbred foals led from Myerscough College, the hoof they were born with had grown out at a mean age of 145 days (Curtis, Martin and Hobbs, The Veterinary Journal, 2014, PMID 24821362).

What rings on the hoof wall tell you

Because new horn takes months to reach the ground, the wall is a record of the horse's recent past. Farrier Ben Benson AWCF told Horse & Hound that rings can come from changes in environment that speed up or slow down horn growth, from direct trauma, or from concussion, and that they "become visible only some time after the event which caused them" (H&H, 2024). He also advises having a farrier or trimmer check the foot balance where there are oblique or diagonal ridges. Rings that are uneven, or clearly wider apart at the heel than at the toe, are worth showing to your vet as well as your farrier.

How the Hoof Absorbs Shock and Moves Blood

Every stride, the hoof capsule deforms slightly. The heels spread as the foot takes weight and spring back as it leaves the ground, and the frog, digital cushion and lateral cartilages all take part. Exactly how this works is still argued over, and it is worth knowing that before you believe any single tidy explanation.

For years, the favoured idea was that the frog pressed up into the digital cushion and forced the heels apart. When a University of Copenhagen team put a pressure transducer inside the digital cushion of trotting horses, the pressure dropped during the stance phase, and they concluded that "the pressure theory of hoof function must presumably therefore be rejected" (Dyhre-Poulsen et al., Equine Veterinary Journal, 1994, PMID 7988538). A Swedish study then found that some heel expansion still happened when the frog and sole were unsupported (Roepstorff, Johnston and Drevemo, Equine Veterinary Journal Supplement, 2001, PMID 11721569).

Blood flow is part of the same debate. The BHS says the frog "pushes blood back up the leg", and the Michigan State study above proposed a "hemodynamic flow hypothesis", in which blood in the vessels of the foot helps to dissipate the energy of each footfall. It is a hypothesis, so treat the popular description of the hooves as a "second heart" as a figure of speech. The practical message holds whichever mechanism is right. The BHS advises that "movement boosts this circulation and supports hoof growth", and that for stabled horses "daily turnout and/or regular exercise is essential".

Shoeing changes the mechanism as well. In a comparison of shoe types, a conventional shoe allowed significantly less heel expansion than a barefoot hoof in every gait tested (Brunsting et al., The Veterinary Journal, 2019, PMID 30902192). That is one factor among many in the shod-or-barefoot decision, not an argument on its own.

Front Hooves vs Hind Hooves: Why Hoof Shape Differs

Front and hind feet are built for different jobs. The front legs carry more of the horse's weight and the front feet are typically rounder and wider, while the hind feet are narrower and more pointed at the toe. The walls differ too: the University of Missouri Extension guide notes that "in the front feet, the wall is thickest at the toe; in the hind feet the hoof wall is of a more uniform thickness". The BHS's essential hoof care guide gives a hoof slope on flat ground of "about 45 to 50 degrees in the front hooves and 50 to 55 degrees in the hind hooves, to be in line with the pastern".

Conformation above the hoof shows up in the feet. A horse that toes in or toes out lands and loads its feet unevenly, and over time the capsule can change shape to match, with one side of the wall more upright and the other more flared. It is one reason horse conformation matters to hoof care as much as to performance, and why your farrier will want to see the horse stand and walk.

What wild horse hooves can and cannot tell us

Wild and feral horses are often held up as the model of a perfect foot. The research is less flattering. In Australian feral horses, harder ground and longer travel distances were associated with short hoof walls and minimal flaring (Hampson et al., Australian Veterinary Journal, 2013, Part A, PMID 23356367). But examination of 100 left forefeet found 377 gross foot abnormalities, and across the three populations examined under the microscope, the prevalence of chronic laminitis ranged between 40% and 93% (Part B, PMID 23356368). The authors concluded that the feral foot may not be an appropriate benchmark. A wild hoof is shaped by its ground and its life, for better and for worse.

Does Hoof Colour Matter? Black vs White Hooves

Horse hooves can be black (pigmented), white (unpigmented) or striped. Colour follows the skin at the coronary band: as Horse & Hound's vet library puts it, "pink skin means white horn, coloured skin means brown horn". A white leg marking that runs down to the coronet therefore usually means a white or striped hoof below it.

The belief that black hooves are tougher is old and persistent, but it has not stood up to testing. In a University of Guelph study of hoof wall stiffness, "contrary to popular assertions that white hooves are mechanically inferior, horn pigmentation had no detectable effect on stiffness" (Douglas et al., Journal of Experimental Biology, 1996, PMID 8708582). Horse & Hound's guide, approved by Karen Coumbe MRCVS, agrees there is "no scientific evidence to support the belief that white hooves are softer than pigmented hooves".

What white hooves do is show bruising. In the Dutch study of 942 horses, sole bruising was recorded more often in white hooves than black (odds ratio 5.0), and farrier Ben Benson AWCF has pointed out that "black feet do bruise as often and as much as white feet, but it is just more difficult to spot". If your horse has white feet, you are simply better placed to see a bruise.

Newborn Foal Hooves: The Soft 'Slippers'

A newborn horse's hooves look startling the first time you see them. The soles are covered in soft, pale, rubbery tissue, often called foal slippers or golden slippers, and more formally the deciduous hoof capsule. It is also widely called the eponychium, but a 1991 Berlin study pointed out that the same word is used for part of the adult hoof, used the Latin capsula ungulae decidua to clear up the confusion, and found that most of this deciduous horn consists of sole and frog (Bragulla, Anatomia, Histologia, Embryologia, 1991, PMID 1877762).

It is there to protect the mare. A UK-led paper on Thoroughbred hoof development explains that rigid hooves would risk damaging the uterus during pregnancy and the birth canal during foaling, so the fetus develops soft, protective "slippers" that are then shed rapidly once the foal is up and moving (Hobbs et al., Animals, 2022, PMID 36428348). They wear away on their own. They are not something to trim or peel off.

A foal's feet change quickly after that, and they are worth a look from your vet at the first check and from a farrier early on. Foals born with crooked legs need attention soonest, because trimming is one of the tools vets and farriers use when managing angular limb deformities while the foal is still growing. Our guide to newborn foal care covers the rest of those first 24 hours.

Horse Hooves vs Cow Hooves

Plenty of people wonder what a cow's hoof is made of too, and the answer is the same material: keratinised horn produced by living corium over the bone of the toe. The difference is the number of toes. Horses are odd-toed and stand on one digit per leg. Cattle, like sheep, goats and deer, are even-toed and walk on two main claws, together called a cloven hoof, each claw with its own wall and sole.

Can a Horse Feel Pain in Its Hooves?

Yes, but not in the horn. The University of Missouri Extension guide puts it plainly: "The hoof wall does not contain blood vessels or nerves." That is why trimming, rasping, nailing and hot shoeing cause no pain when they are done correctly. A horseshoe nail placed too close to the white line is a different matter, because it can press on or pierce sensitive tissue, which is known as nail bind or a pricked foot.

The living structures inside are richly supplied with nerves. Because the horn capsule cannot swell, any inflammation, pus or bleeding inside it builds pressure quickly, which is why a hoof abscess can make a horse look as though it has broken a leg, and why laminitis is so painful. Common sources of foot pain include:

• Bruising of the sole, or a corn at the seat of corn
• A hoof abscess, often after a bruise or a crack lets infection in
• Laminitis, which damages the laminar bond itself
• Penetrating injuries from nails, flints or glass
• Navicular syndrome and coffin joint disease
• Deep infections such as canker, and keratomas, which are benign growths of the horn that press on the tissue beneath

Sudden, severe lameness in one foot, a hoof that feels hotter than the others, a stronger digital pulse at the back of the fetlock or a horse that will not put a foot down are all reasons to call your vet the same day rather than wait for the farrier. Our guide to lameness in horses explains how vets narrow down the source.

Keeping Every Part of the Hoof Healthy

Knowing the anatomy makes daily hoof care make sense. The BHS essential care guidance, supported by Nigel Brown AWCF on behalf of the British Farriers and Blacksmiths Association, sets out the basics:

• Pick out the feet "at least once a day" to check for stones, debris, cracks, splits, thrush and, where applicable, loose or worn shoes.
• Book the farrier regularly. The BHS gives "usually every four to six weeks for shod horses, and sometimes longer for barefoot horses", adding that your farrier will weigh up workload, surfaces, clinical history and hoof quality.
• Feed for the feet. The BHS says a balanced, high-forage diet supports healthy hoof growth, and that biotin "helps strengthen hooves, especially if quality is poor".
• Keep the horse moving. Turnout and regular exercise support circulation in the foot.
• Watch the weather. The BHS notes that dry weather can make hooves brittle and wet conditions can soften them and make infections such as thrush more likely.
• Look at the whole foot each time. Heat, a stronger digital pulse, a new crack, a smell from the frog or a stretched white line all mean something has changed.

In Great Britain, shoeing is a regulated profession. Under the Farriers (Registration) Act 1975 it is unlawful for anyone who is not registered to carry out "farriery", which the Act defines as work preparing the foot "for the immediate reception of a shoe", fitting the shoe "by nailing or otherwise", and finishing off that work. The Act covers England, Wales and Scotland and "shall not extend to Northern Ireland". You can check a farrier on the Farriers Registration Council register, and the Council says registered farriers carry an annual Registration Card. In South Africa, farriery is not among the professions registered by the South African Veterinary Council, so ask about a farrier's training and whether they belong to a body such as the Southern African Association of Professional Farriers.

Whether your horse is shod or barefoot is a decision to make with your farrier, based on the horse's feet, workload and ground, and our guide on why horses need shoes sets out both sides. For everything else, from feeding to rugging, browse our horse care guides.

Frequently Asked Questions