Chemical composition of horse hooves with functional qualities for competing barefoot
Authors: Ellinor Spörndly-Nees, A. Jansson, Mette Pökelmann, J. Pickova, S. Ringmark
Journal: Journal of Animal Science
Summary
# Editorial Summary: Chemical Composition and Barefoot Racing Capability in Horses Barefoot harness racing presents both opportunity and welfare risk, yet trainers currently lack objective criteria to determine whether individual horses possess sufficient hoof quality for sustainable unshod competition. Researchers from Sweden compared hoof wall composition and digital cushion fatty acid profiles between harness racers that successfully competed barefoot and those that required shoes, analysing macro- and microelements, amino acids, and lipid content from both postmortem and live horse samples. Horses capable of sustained barefoot racing demonstrated significantly lower copper concentrations in the hoof wall (17.5 versus 32.8 mg/kg dry matter) alongside higher arginine content and modest elevations in nitrogen and sulfur; the digital cushion's fatty acid composition showed no meaningful differences between groups. Whilst these findings suggest that arginine, sulfur, cysteine, and proline—all critical for keratin synthesis and disulphide bond formation—may contribute to hoof capsule resilience, chemical analysis alone proved insufficient to reliably distinguish barefoot-capable horses from those requiring shoes, indicating that hoof quality depends on multiple factors beyond measurable biochemical composition.
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Practical Takeaways
- •Hoof mineral and amino acid profiles may influence barefoot durability, but no single chemical marker reliably predicts which horses can race barefoot sustainably
- •Copper status and sulphur-containing amino acids (cysteine) warrant investigation in your barefoot candidates, though current chemical testing is not a practical screening tool
- •Individual hoof quality assessment must remain based on functional performance and traditional evaluation methods rather than laboratory analysis
Key Findings
- •Barefoot-racing horses had significantly lower copper concentrations in hoof wall (17.5 vs 32.8 mg/kg DM, P=0.02) compared to shod horses
- •Barefoot-racing horses showed higher arginine in hoof wall (10.51 vs 10.34 g/100g DM, P=0.03) and trends for higher cysteine and proline
- •Higher nitrogen and sulfur concentrations were found in barefoot-racing horses, suggesting structural protein differences
- •Chemical analysis of hoof wall and digital cushion fatty acids cannot definitively predict suitability for barefoot racing