Ridecamp: Re: [RC] horseshoe technology: Easywalker

Ok,
They look really cool, pretty colors, obviously different synthetic
compounds vulcanized into one unit. Kind of similar to the popular
running shoes being sold to humans in today's market. Flexible no doubt
seeing the lack of any metallic compound embedded within the synthetics.
Nails must be clinched with a special clinching / countersinking tool.
May flex enough to allow dirt, gravel, and other debris to become lodged
between the shoe and the hoof, possibly inducing gravel abcesses of the
white line. Shock absorption qualities? Who knows? Here's some old data
from FlexStep, remember those? The shock absorbing horseshoe that came
out around 1983? They wired a horse with aircraft strain gauge, placing
the sensor between the shoe and hoof,  then measured the force of the
impact the hoof received over a variety of surfaces at different gates.
They discovered that a horse galloping on hard packed dirt received a
greater impact than horses galloping on macadam. This impact was 310 G's
per hoof and it lasted for a duration of 1.4 msec. This happened every
time the hoof hit the ground. Translated, that equaled a 310,000 pound
impact to each hoof on a 1000 pound horse. The FlexStep shoe reduced
this impact by 7% to 15% depending on the horse. At 15% the impact fell
from 310,000 pounds per hoof to 263,500 pounds per hoof. A decrease of
only 46,5000 pounds. Not too much considering that the shoe itself added
almost 0.75 inches of length to the hoof due to it's thickness. My
personal findings in this field have been this, anything man made nailed
to a hoof in a sufficient enough quantity, That will significantly
decrease impact, Is very impractical if not impossible. Mainly due to
the size of the numbers your working with here and the quantity of
material need to make a drastic difference. Here's what I think to be a
fair analogy, It's kind of like me giving you a piece of rubber to hang
around your neck to cover your chest with while allowing me to shoot you
with a high powered rifle round, which will only hit with a 2498 pound
impact. That piece of rubber probably won't significantly deaden the
impact enough to prevent any damage to your body. Personally I'd prefer
a 0.375 inch thick steel plate covering my chest. You may try to argue
that a hoof isn't traveling 2753 feet per second nor does it have a
ballistic coefficient of 0.304, none the less, a 310,000 pound impact is
far greater than a 2753 pound impact, and a piece of rubber won't make
much difference when things start colliding with this much force.

Rob

Rob Kalb
Rob's Equine Hoof Care
Phelan CA


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