I saw a video of a horse that had been left in an abandoned property; its hooves had grown crazy long and curling around like goat horns. My question is, what stops this from happening to wild horses that this one in captivity could/would not do?
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Wild horses run around constantly, on rocks and fields and valleys, and this wears down the hooves naturally and healthily for the horse.
If a horse is forced to work on roads and pull heavy loads and have riders it can overwork the hooves and cause issues. This is why we shoe horses when we use them beasts of burden.
If a horse is kept confined and can’t run and play naturally, the hooves will keep growing and eventually deform like the mentioned. The deformation can change the gait (walking motion) of the horse and cause damage to bones and muscles and eventually require 200 grains of the old horse cure-all.
Horse hooves are made of the same stuff our nails are made of—keratin. In the same way we clip and file our nails, the hooves of wild horses are filed down by constant movement, particularly over hard surfaces like rock.
The domesticated horse in your scenario is likely limited in its ability to have its hooves worn down due to limited space in its enclosure and the fact it was, I’m assuming, on dirt or grass, neither of which are hard enough to file down the keratin.
Running and walking and moving in general. Every step grinds the hoof down a tiny little bit, just like your hands get rough and feel worn after working a lot. Because of this, a horse usually needs hooves that never stop growing or they’ll wear down very quickly.
That is also one of the reasons for putting iron on hooves, because the rocks on roads and in cities were too abrasive for the natural growth to keep up at the amount horses were used.
Horse hooves are compareble with human nails. They will continually grow. In the wild, a horse will walk kilometers a day for food and water, on different kinds of ground. By doing so, the hooves will worn down naturally. Horses in captivity dont always have the possibility to walk enough to worn down the hooves, so they need human interference by providing movement or fixing the hooves by a farrier. Cases like you mentioned dont happen over night, it can take months, even years
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