QuarterHorses

A few of my riding partners use glue on horse shoes instead of the traditional shoes. I wanted to find out if other people are using the glue on shoe. The advantage is you can learn how to shoe your own horse and it is cheaper. I have the biggest challenge with finding qualified farriers.

cherokeemyluv

Those sound really interesting. I imagine it would depend on what you do with your horses. If you trail ride all over the place on rocky terrain you might have to replace them so much finding a farrier might be easier, but for average ring riding it might be ideal.

After a brief websearch Soundhorse and EponaShoe seem to be two decent examples. They seem to be a good alternative to traditional methods with nails. Soundhorse looks like a plastic mount for a traditional metal shoe and the EponaShoe reminds me of the bottom of my Nike sneakers and says it flexes with the hoof. They do offer racing shoes from Soundhorse, so perhaps they are more hardy than I thought. And at less than $100 including adhesives it could be a pretty good deal for a do-it-yourself farrier.

Thaworth

I could never imagine using glue on a horses hoof. It just seems like an unconventional way. I will stick to tradition.

alexis

I think I feel the same a good deal, but I can see the reasoning behind trying to use something that would be cheaper, if you can save money and it does not affect the need for what you are using it for, I am all for it. I guess I am stuck in the middle on this one and would love to hear more. I will try and research this a tad and get back with you all tomorrow.

Hudsons Bolt

Uhm...I'm new to horses and of the such...why would you want to put glue on the horses hoof? Wouldn't that bother them and eventually be hard to dry off and be like hard to balance and stuff?

dcrivers

Sounds to me like this could be a really good idea. The possibilities it introduces could be a major advance in adaptability. The first thought that comes to my mind is you would never have to worry about your horse throwing a shoe in an inconvenient location. You could carry spares and replace them on the spot. Also seems like the materials the shoes are made from could do some changing since they don't need to be nailed on.


I guess it doesn't hurt the horse, but it does sound a lot more pleasant to say you're going to glue the shoes on instead of driving a nail into your horses foot. I never really could get past the idea that it has to hurt. Or atleast be unpleasant.

Willow

Shoing a horse in the conventional way doesn't hurt the horse's hoof nor it's joints. A pro for glue on shoes is i.e. not enough horn material to drive the nail into, corrective shoing, brittle walls, white line problems, fractures, operations aso. Another reason I know off is if horses have to go on hard terrain for a short while, but only were used to softer grounds. The race horse industry is using them since years. Glue on shoes are most likely NOT being used on pleasure horses without any problems. In any way, no horse automatically needs shoes, when coming under the saddle!! Shoing a horse means, too, weakening his hoof material; going back to barefoot later on might take two years with problems on the way.

SpiritWind

Yeah, I never have a problem breaking from tradition. If there's a better way to do something, tradition is only valuable if it preserves something worthwhile. I don't know what's valuable about remembering a nail in a foot. lol
I know the ranch my grandpa used to work on didn't shoe all it's horses. I'm pretty sure they used nails on the ones they did shoe, but those horses were driving cattle over all kinds of terrain from soft ground up rocky surfaces. One of the horses had slid down a mountain and was missing all the skin on his side *shudder at memory*
But anyway, I would bet they used glue if it was a viable option for short term shoeing. Why not?

And you can file off or maybe use something to disolve the hardened glue later. I don't see any problem with such a method. I'm going to ask the guy who's horse I care for about it.

QuarterHorses

The glue on shoes are great for horses that don't grow much hoof. I have seen horses with nails hole everywhere. The holes crack and pieces come off, ouch!. You don't get nail holes and it is better for the hoof. In Thoroughbred the hoof seems to grow less and it works great for them.

I carry a rubber horse boot when I ride on the trail. It clips onto my saddle so if my horse throws a shoe 35 miles from camp I don't have to walk back.