Essential Tools for Hoof Repair

There are special tools used by farriers to take care of hooves and these make the job faster and more convenient. Choosing the right tool will allow you to keep the hooves of the horse perfectly balanced and this will improve the health of the horse as well.  

While farrier’s tools were originally forged in olden times, you can now purchase high quality tools and hoof care accessories from reputed online stores. There is a lot of training and education required to understand how to trim a shoe to a hoof or size it properly. If this is done inaccurately, there can be an injury to the horse. One of the tools that can be used at the beginning of the process is a hoof tester that allows the farrier to locate any sources of pain. This can be used to apply pressure in certain areas of the hoof and you will be able to find any abscess or injury that the horse has taken. However, with experience, a farrier will be able to tell whether the reaction of the hose is due to high sensitivity or an actual source of pain.

The farrier’s knife is used to cut out the additional sole and frog in the hoof. You can find right handed and left handed versions of the farrier knife so that they can use the right tool depending on the side they are working on. There is a skill required in using this knife as it is very sharp. Any mishap can injure the horse or the farrier. The rasp is a multifunctional tool and it is a little similar to a nail file. A farrier will use this to keep the hooves of the horse even and level. The trim can be finished by rasping off extra parts of the shoe. The edges of the hoof can be rounded using this tool as well. There are rasps that can be used by the owner called rider’s rasps. If there are any sharp edges that the hoof can experience when riding, they can use the rasp to round it off.

To ensure that the hoof wall is the correct length, a hoof nipper can be used to cut and remove a damaged hoof or sole area. The frog of the hoof can be trimmed using a hoof nipper as well. The overgrown hoof of the horse can be removed with these nippers and some farriers use this to round or bevel of hoof edge. This will minimize the amount of rasping required for the job. Hoof nippers come with straight handle ends. Horseshoe pullers can look identical to hoof nippers to the untrained eye but these actually have rounded balls and the ends of the handle and they are larger in size. This can be used to pull the shoes off the horse. But to use this tool, the nails have to be unclenched with a clinching block. If you pull the shoe while the clinches are still holding, you may do some damage.