Bright Raven":14e9u9b2 said:
Farm Fence Solutions":14e9u9b2 said:
When I was in shoeing school, we put the hooves of several horses in a metered shop press. Black and white hooves from the same end of the same animal kind of thing. It was a dead split. Half the time, a black hoof would fail first, half the time white. Of course, there was no way to gauge sensitivity, but we did figure out how to gauge the pressure it took to shove a coffin bone out the bottom. Later in life, I talked a vet into doing it while watching with a fluoroscope after the necropsy was complete. It was very interesting to see the failure of the sensitive and insensitive lamina in real time. I would bet that the results of our experiments will never be officially recognized, but that's the conclusion we came to, right or wrong.
Edit to add: The horses were dead before we took their feet off and put them in the press.
I hope so. :cboy:
I recently saw a picture shared of a live horse who had just experienced a failure, where the coffin bone had pierced the sole (about 1/2 inch was visible)... as a horse owner, it was heart wrenching to see.
As to the original point, I see a difference in strength with our goats as well. I have observed that the dark horn stays harder and maintains its shape much better. With our dark hoof goats, we have to wait until we have a stretch of wet weather to soften them enough to trim them, this is not the case with our white hoof goats (except in the case of our bucks, they have to be softened to trim no matter the color!). Aside from using a grinder on a mature buck, we trim with a manual shears, so it is quite obvious when the horn it much harder or thicker. It is possible that the difference is more noticeable in goats because they have more depth of heel and more vertical hoof walls.