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These are the kinds of problems that can occasionally happen in late August around here but its only mid June now. We did have some pretty nice weather for a bit, but then it went straight to this crap you see below. The humidity is insane.

I am drenched by 8am. That's with all fans running at gail force, too.

No fan, no farrier, but I do bring my own and believe me, I got the fan thing going on these days. Sometimes I think living the lifestyle of shoeing horses is as hard won a skill as learning to shoe the horses. Lifestyle is all part of any trade or art, I suppose.

We had been without power last week and it was a real live heat emergency around here.

A storm knocked power out in large numbers and people were already cancelling ahead of this heatwave.

Not good. So, when I finally got to this shoeing this week we were all a week behind and it was bad out here.

The weather has been insane here for the last several weeks and then add what must have been the greatest fly season in a really long time. There are Horse flies and Deer flies like I'm not sure I've seen, especially this early.

This horse, like most right now have crazy amounts of foot and horses with strong feet like this can just be trimmed past the damage. Again, I've never seen feet this long. This is a long and hard 6 weeks, but that's it. Crazy growth.

This does often happen (although maybe not this much) when the heat and humidity amp up like this. I wonder if it could be a proper response to harsh fly conditions like we are seeing here.

Then there is this other problem going on right now which limits my ability to just drive around fixing shoes like I always have prided myself in doing before. I try really hard to get shoes on in 24 hours. The price of fuel these days change the possibility of that.

I'm starting to think about how to produce and run biofuels. @steelbak and @diggndeeper.com. We could make markets using Open Source Software, blockchain tech and good hardware to build robust communities with open trade and information. We have the tools @diggndeeper.com

Anyway...

I was talking about long, hot, humid days of dealing with horses busting their feet up.

A lot of feet were too bad to nail a shoe back onto. I had 8 horses missing shoes - a new record by a mile.

I had five off at Chili Rodgers once. That was the previous record.

Before

Looks worse than it is.

Nailed up fine because there was plenty of nice growth.

Yikes

That just isn't gonna get a shoe nailed back on for a few weeks - if we are lucky.

Not lame, but yet another heel blew out. I saw a couple others do this last week.

A lot of TB's aren't fairing as well because the hoof integrity just isn't there to withstand this kind of stomping. It went from slop to hard and then swamped with flies, heat and humidity in a very fast shift.

The weather problems are then amplified by riders suddenly at camps and shows at a peak right now. These horses feet are taking a beating in crazy numbers. But, as we all know, TB's don't hold shoes well.

Of course night turnout is best for horses right now, but that doesn't mean its great. The reality is sometimes, like now, there just are no good answers. Its just terrible out there.

Posted from my blog with Exxp : https://farrierservices.net/its-a-frickn-hoofpocolypse/