I’ve never known any other animal apart from horses to need to be fitted with shoes. Why is this? And is this phenomenon strictly exclusive to domesticated horses? What about wild horses, then? If wild horses cope without them, why can’t domesticated horses?
In: 3395
Wild horses who can’t cope without them die 🙂
But the rest of the answer is – it’s multiple factors. The main one is environment and lifestyle – feral horses often live in places without lush pasture where they must travel quite a bit to forage enough food. These are also often rocky places, so they wear down their hooves naturally (less opportunity to grow incorrectly or in unbalanced way) and the hooves may get enough feedback from hard ground to grow stronger.
The second main factor is the type of movement and exercise horses are expected to do. In the wild, horses mostly move slowly and frequently, without a lot of hard impact from moving quickly. In domestication, horses are expected to trot and canter a lot, they jump or pull things, and the extra work means extra pressure on their feet and legs that a wild horse would only experience rarely.
Selective breeding for traits like height, strength, and speed, may also lead to weaker hooves if that’s not the main focus of the breeding (where in the wild, weak hooves are selected OUT pretty quickly because horses that can’t comfortably travel can’t survive)
Lastly, domestic horses may “need” shoeing to improve “performance” – to help encourage them to lift their feet higher or move in more even fashion, etc.
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