I seem to always be managing cracks on the hooves of my team of Belgians. My light horse farrier took a look at them and said he felt they were superficial.

Hoof supplements for 4,200 lbs of horse can be expensive and keeping shoes on is a chore.

Assuming they are superficial, do I need to be concerned?

Thanks

In some horses, there are almost always surface cracks in the stratum externum, or outside layer of hoofwall. These are rarely a problem, other than to the owner. If you do want them to improve, I would really suggest Farriers Formula from Life Data Labs. Your farrier can get it for you. Shoes will not necessarily help these types of cracks.

My trimmer said the drafts need to be trimmed every 5 weeks. Flare is the problem and long toe. My one Belgian had a crack. Took about a year to get out.Yes, is also used a lot of biotin $$$$$$ hundreds of dollars. He has wonderful feet now.

I've been told that cracks are caused by imbalances in the trimming - so flares, uneven trims etc... anything that could cause the horse's weight to be unevenly distributed on the foot.

Whenever I find cracks in my horse's feet, I also find that I've incorrectly trimmed the last time, or for some reason the horse is growing it's foot unevenly.

If you have a very stubborn flare, or a section of your horse's foot grows faster than the rest (common in horses who don't wear evenly) you can take a rasp and fix it up in-between trims. Within a few months you should see an improvement.

Worse comes to worse, have your farrier out every 2-3 weeks until the problem is solved.