Natural hoof care

Natural hoof care is the practice of keeping horses so that their hooves are worn down naturally and so do not suffer overgrowth, splitting and other disorders.Horseshoes are not used but domesticated horses may still require trimming, exercise and other measures to maintain a natural shape and degree of wear.

Within the natural hoof care philosophy, the term barefoot horses refers to horses which are kept barefoot full-time, as opposed to horses who are fitted with horseshoes. The hooves of barefoot horses are trimmed with special consideration to a barefoot lifestyle. The barefoot horse movement advocates a generalized use of barefoot horses, both in non-competitive and competitive riding, often coupled with a more natural approach to horse care. Horses are kept barefoot in many parts of the world, including South America, Mongolia and other industrialized and non-industrialized cultures.

Horses were ridden and used for work by man for thousands of years before horseshoes were invented. The Ancient Greeks did not shoe their horses, and Xenophon in his classic work on horsemanship wrote, "naturally sound hooves get spoiled in most stalls," and advised measures to strengthen horses' feet:

More recently, Jaime Jackson, who studied wild and domestic horse hooves, promoted the modern variant of natural hoof care in The Natural Horse: Lessons from the Wild (1992).

While horses have been used without shoes throughout history, the benefits of keeping horses barefoot has recently enjoyed increased popularity. Not only does the horse benefit with a healthier hoof in some cases, it can be less expensive to keep a horse barefoot, and many owners have learned to trim their horses' hooves themselves. As the health and movement benefits of barefooting have become more apparent in horses that have completed transition, horses are being competed barefoot in various sports (including dressage, show jumping, flat racing, steeplechase racing, trail riding and endurance riding).

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