Just saw this abstract and found it worthy of posting and consideration. http://www.thehorse.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=20607 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22369538
Jesus Rick! I need that research money! I need a new set of tires! the only thing i have seen is the caudual portion of the foot is more convex in a soft, wet or loamy enviroment.......empirical at best.....
"10% of what"? A "foot changes to enviroment" or "the horn of the foot" changes 10%?... Both studies are about "horn" not the entire foot........ A rolled eyes and sqeewwh is not a learned and proffesional answer.......
The 10% range of variation has to do with the reported Standard Deviation +/- 5.1% , +/-5.8%, and +/-2.9% It is one study "Effect of Environmental Conditions on Degree of Hoof Wall Hydration in Horses" reported in two articles.
One has to wonder about the samples which they collected and how careful they were to measure inner vs outer wall or whether it was wall horn from the toes or quarters: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/199/8/1829.full.pdf
hoof wall, glad you re-read. An average of 4+-%. Duh, piss and stand in it for 5 minutes Bloomer. epitheials will absorb+-95% is intack.....really.
Never called ya "Stupid; this is the exception. But you didn't average with presented abstracts/studies....a good researcher takes all figuges as total and then averages to accumalate a reasonable outcome. Thus, our accumalative experiences may "play a part in the interpetation(s)".... As I say about hoof conditioning, " Oil goes into you car lady".....
LOL! Which species? Which direction? Which horse? Not to stray from the thread too far with my analogy - there is a lot more published data on the mechanical properties of wood at various moisture levels, but you have to pick a species. http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/research/centers/woodanatomy/ In a more general sense, wet horn is soft, dry horn is hard. The same is true of wood. Some individual domestic horses seem to be more susceptible to high moisture environments and large changes in environmental moisture than other individuals. The same is true of various wood species. In a study of feral horses, where would one find living specimens with moisture susceptible horn?
My question is why do they keep doing these studies on dead feet? I've never seen any dead tissue that acts/reacts the same way to stimuli as it would have while living. Has anyone seen any research showing that hoof tissues do? I sure haven't been able to find any.
David, I think the study was done on live horses, but my point is that bad footed feral horses don't live long enough to reproduce. So the samples taken should not be compared to domestic horses that are the product of human selective breeding and coddling vs. survival of the fittest.
Tom, The abstract says that the the soaking portion was done on live horses. However, the part of the study using feral horses used"...hoof wall samples from routine feral horse-culling operations in New Zealand and Australia..." to me that says hooves cut from dead horses. That's why I asked about all these studies using dead hooves. To your point, I completely agree. Domestic animals are completely different than animals who are subject to the natural, survival of the fittest, laws. David
To my recollection (not for sure on this) of Dr. Chris Pollitt's story from a lecture I attended few years ago they cull the herds by shooting "in the bush" with high powered rifles as opposed to rounding them up. It would make logical sense if they took measurements of the samples immediately following lights out. But since the article says the measurements were taken "in vitro" who knows how much time elapsed before they got them to "the lab." What I can tell you of my own experience with fresh cadaver limbs - they dry out very quickly once they no longer have a pulse. "Fresh" means taken immediately after a horse is euthanized as opposed to picking them up from a rendering plant after they have "seasoned" for a day or two.
Deal with the "Fresh" of what is presented each day. Give counsel and move onto the next project. If counsel is not "heeded". "How does the world tune an adult? through their pocket books." Therefore a parlay of factiods of N vs. D is a futile discussion...........
