Madam's right front frog and sole

Superficially the first foot (24/01/09) looks better. After all the sole has no bruises. But check out the frog, its very narrow and there is a deep groove in the central sulcus and a big hole on the right. Plus if you divide the foot top to bottom at the widest point you can see the split is 50/50, where it should be 1/3 top and 2/3 bottom.

The second picture shows bruising, but its too late to fret, those bruises will have happened about 2/3 months ago, when we had a mix of soggy and then frozen ground. You can see the frog is improving. It looks wider, generally more robust and the central sulcus is filling in. You can also see that the foot is on the way to the correct proportions.

Both feet are rather flat, but I am hoping that the obviously shedding sole in the second picture means that we will soon have some more concavity. Also note that in the second picture the heels are wider and the buttresses have more substance. We CleanTraxed the front feet today. We can only wait and see if it speeds up the improvement in frog health.

We think the real issue for Madam is diet. She has given us so many indicators, but it is no simple thing to sort out. We change one thing at a time until we hit what works for her. Big no noes are sugar/molasses in any form and actively growing grass. We are experimenting with alfalfa as legumes can be a problem for many quarter horses. I also need to check out the iron content of their water supply as iron can be a problem too.