Aan de hand van het topic op paardenpraat ben ik maar eens gaan spitten op internet, en las net dat er in de VS een heel interessant onderzoek wordt gedaan naar het effect van verschillende bekapmethodes!
Citaat:
Farriery Study
As part of her ongoing research in the field of equine biomechanics, Clayton is conducting a study of the effects of a specific type of hoof trim in conjunction with Robert Bowker, VMD, PhD, director of the Equine Foot Laboratory at Michigan State University. This study is supported by the Bernice Barbour Foundation. According to Clayton, "The hoof is important in locomotion since it acts as the interface between the horse and the ground. Over the past few years, some new ideas have evolved as to how the hooves should be trimmed."
Bowker's research involves the structure and function of the hoof. He has observed that in wild horses, sole thickness is about twice that of domesticated horses. Also, the heel and frog of the wild horse's foot make full contact with the ground, allowing these structures to act as part of the support apparatus and to provide the horse with information about the nature of the ground's surface. Having identified these traits, Bowker developed a unique farriery method called the "physiological trim," which mimics the natural patterns of weight-bearing that occur in the hooves of wild horses. The physiological trim permits the tissues of the foot to optimally dissipate the shock of ground impact, so that less energy is transmitted to the bones of the feet and legs.
For the farriery study at the McPhail Equine Performance Center, Clayton kept a group of unshod riding horses on pasture during the University's summer break without trimming their feet. "This gave us a lot of foot to work with, to trim down the way we wanted," Clayton notes.
At the end of the four-month period, the horses were brought back to the barn for farriery work. "We took Dr. Bowker's physiological trim and applied it to these horses," Clayton explains. "We leveled the hoof by trimming to the live sole, then beveled off the front of the toe to facilitate break-over, and lowered the heel so that the heel and frog made good contact with the ground. We wanted to stimulate the frog to grow, because a big, thick frog provides better support for the coffin bone."
The horses involved in the study are ridden five days a week as part of a University riding lesson program. Clayton and her team take photos, perform foot X rays, and conduct gait analysis on each horse before and after maintaining the physiological trim for four months. These tests allow the researchers to determine the relationship between external changes in the hooves and internal structures of the foot.
"We look at how the outside shape of the foot is changing, and we determine how this affects the bones of the foot and the mechanics of locomotion," says Clayton. "Horses' feet have been trimmed a certain way for quite a lot of years, but there is limited information describing the effects of different trimming methods on the function of the foot during locomotion. That's what we're doing in this study--we're looking at the effects of different trimming methods on hoof mechanics."
http://www.thehorse.com/viewarticle.aspx?ID=6041