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?
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well, horses hooves are like a nail, it grows out and like our nail can be degraded through work
domesticated horses are usually work horses, they pull, work hard, and would work through their hoof, very possibly damaging their foot/leg
wild horses, like the unemployed, are happier, dont do much more than they have to, and dont work through their hooves faster than a hoof can grow, they dont need shoes, since they do their own pedicures
It’s important for the comfort of the horse that their hooves wear down properly. In the wild, their hooves experience wear from stoney and sandy surfaces.
Domesticated horses can suffer from two very different scenarios. They might not be exposed to any surfaces that can adequately wear down their hooves. In that case, their hooves can grow out of control, and, without correction, can cause permanent damage to some of their foot bones. The hooves can curl, and walking on them can be quite painful.
On the other hand, working horses can be exposed to hard surfaces like concrete while either pulling or carrying a load. This can cause excessive wear to the hooves.
Either way, regular visits from a farrier to shape and shoe the hoof keeps the horse healthy and pain-free.
Cows and Oxen are occasionally shod, as well. Sometimes sled dogs wear booties to protect their foot pads, as well.
Domesticated horses often do a lot of specialised work which may put extra strain on their hooves. They may be used for farming, or be ridden very long distances, and they were often ridden on hard packed roads or cobble streets or paved roads which are unusually hard compared to the environments horses typically inhabited.
That doesn’t mean though that the hooves of horses in the wild don’t get injured. If that happens, they’re pretty much dead. In fact back when there were wild horse populations, probably most of them died due to injury at some point rather than old age.
It is less of a consequence of domestication and more of building roads.
Horse hoofs normally grow at about the same rate as they wear down under normal horse activity.
If you do things with horses that make them wear down their hoofs at abnormal rates you ave to help them.
A horse that doesn’t get to run much on anything but soft earth will need to have their hoofs cut similar to how a human who doesn’t wear down their fingernail by normal primate behavior need to cut their nails.
A horse that has to walk a lot on hard stone and concrete and asphalt and packed earth will wear down their hoofs faster and requires horse shoes to prevent them from wearing the hoofs too much.
Horses are evolved to spend their lives running though the Eurasian steppe not being confined to a paddock or walking all day on modern roads. We have to help them with that.
A wild horse (which is just a horse descend from domesticated horses that currently doesn’t have an owner) will do fine if it lives in the sort of lifestyle and environment it was originally evolved to live in.
Others have mentioned that domestic horses work, and therefore need help to compensate for unnatural wear. But breeding absolutely plays a part. Feral/ wild horses with poor hoof quality simply die. Domestic horses with poor hoof quality can still be allowed to breed if humans think they have other qualities that are worth breeding for, since hoof quality to some extent can be remedied by shoes.
Horses hooves are like dogs claws, they naturally wear down with use.
If a horse in the wild has to deal with grass, rocks and grit it’s hooves will wear down at a normal rate, if a horse is used for riding on roads or tracks, it can cause the hooves to wear down to the point where it hurts the horse, so a farrier will keep the hooves trimmed and nail shoes to them to keep them safe
A lot of wild horses will suffer with hoof issues but you won’t notice it until you walk through the woods and find the remains of a horse that has died of starvation because it can’t walk to find enough food/water.
FWIW, I have encountered on the order of 2500 horses in the last 25 years, and maybe 5 of them required shoes for foot health reasons.
Horses that spend a lot of time walking on concrete will wear them.
Some types of show horse will have them for a number of reasons.
Domesticated horses do great without shoes, except in a few specific circumstances.
Three reasons. Protection, correction, and traction. To protect their feet from hard surfaces. To correct or fix problems with their gait (how their foot and leg move when they walk). To provide traction (grip) on slippery surfaces like roads or ice.
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.
Wild horses, on average, run or walk between 50 – 65 km daily (30 – 40 miles).
In short wild horses run and walk a lot daily so their hoofs wears naturaly.
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