Crossing Georges Creek just south of Ebor in NSW. I think we crossed that creek something like 30 times on that day and all on rock.



En liten engelsklektion igen för er som är intresserade av att rida i naturen och barfotagång.Har tagit det från Cynthia Coopers hemsida. Har länkat den som Cynthia Cooper.De skriver även om Bitless Bridle som M mailade mig om. Det kommer ett nyhetsrev varje månad. Man kan beställa att få på mailen. Alltid kul att läsa.Det har varit folk från Sverige hos henne, skulle vara roligt att få kontakt med nån sådan.


Barefoot for 3,500km of the Bicentennial National Trail!

By Joan Rylah.





Rod and Joan leaving Irvenbank in far north Queensland.



Six horses and two people trekked the Australian Bicentennial National Trail last year. Travelling from north to south with three horses that had been barefoot since 2001, and three horses just purchased in Far North Queensland three weeks before we set out.



One of the new horses had just returned to barefoot and the other two had been completely neglected for many years.

The horse that had just returned to barefoot, Milo, had four white feet and had lived his recent life in the sandy wetlands at Jullaten in the canefields near Port Douglas.

Consequently, he had very soft and very flat feet and wouldn’t even trot on smooth bitumen. The other two, Mitchy and Clancy, were living on good granite sands up on the Atherton Tablelands and so while they had had zero foot care for years (they couldn’t be caught but had some basic supplement feeding) the pebble-sand was a perfect medium for good hoof quality.



All six horses completed our trek with not one day of lameness, puffy swellings, no splints, nothing wrong at all. Their legs and pasterns are as clean as the day they were born. Now that’s pretty amazing! If anyone has seen other horses that have completed The Trail you will see dreadful legs and an unsound animal. The Trail is no walk in the park, its hard, hard going for shod horses with packs on.


Here are the lessons that were made clear to us:

~ It is all about removing any flair, as soon as it appears. Nothing makes a horse walk slowly, resist trotting, hang back in the string etc. more quickly than flair. That includes the other challenges that came up like some eleven hour days, heavy loads and months on the road. It was all about being vigilant and proactive to just give a quick rasp of any flair and away they would go again.

~ Sharp, large aggregate rock (the type they seem to universally put on forestry roads, it seems) was the most difficult terrain for the horses. We used front boots whenever we came to this. I think this surface is so tough because it tends to be loose rock on a very hard road-base. It just chews away wall and makes their soles tender very quickly.


~ Travel slowly wherever the horses indicate they need to be slow. Believe what the horses are telling you! They are not shirking their duties – they’re telling you it’s tough.

~ When wear is greater than growth you need front boots. This particularly applied in the first couple of months. We seemed to go through periods of a week or so of needing boots for a particular horse. We think the relevant factor was the quality of hoof wall that was coming down to be the bearing surface. Poor quality, then rapid wear and growth not keeping up. We saw this in the three ‘new’ horses but hardly at all in our Tasmanian ones. Our Tasmanian horses have been on good diets with supplements all their lives with us (two years being the least period) and barefoot of course.

~ The amount of hoof growth does compensate for wear but this did not equalise until after about three months on the road.

~ The horses need supplement feed for the whole trip. The tropical grasses are high bulk and poor quality and in the drought country (90% of our travels) there is insufficient grass (and water), so we fed straight oats with dolomite, sulphur and copper.

~ Molasses, for adding to water, is absolutely crucial. Molasses is hard to pack (bulky and it leaks) but keeping horses hydrated was a life and death situation in the heat. And it affects their feet – we found to our surprise. Walls dry and one starts to see the surface cracking which we guess would have led to true splits/cracks if not addressed.



We didn’t need hoof knives or any of the other gadgets we use at home. It was dead simple trimming. Something we didn’t expect to see was the huge increases in wall thickness. My warm-blood cross ended up with walls nearly three-quarters of an inch thick (not including the white-line which have now returned to their usual thickness after nine months at home) and tough as nails.

We met many other short-term trekkers along the way. We saw some pretty shocking legs, feet and poor horses. Success on the Trail is not simply barefooting, it’s the whole deal.

The Trail has never been done barefoot before and every person was highly sceptical that it was possible. This was particularly so for the experienced trekkers who know the Trail and what long-term trekking involves.



Carrying heavy packs was thought to be the straw that broke the camels back, but that is only partly correct in our view. It is the flair that breaks hoof and destroys the horses’ legs – whether barefoot or not. And shoes that increase the concussion, create less grip and are totally un-forgiving on the rocky surfaces that make up almost the entire track.



As an example we saw a little arab with newly shod feet that had been trekking for only a week, it had swellings from the coronet to nearly the top of the cannon, sore splint bones and was struggling to keep going. There were a number of things that we could see: high heels, shoes nailed all around the hoof so no expansion possible, the horses were being pushed much harder over rocks than we would, no electrolytes or molasses given when these horses were showing signs of dehydration, no supplement feed only what they could get over night. It only had a few more days to go but it was going to be a sad and sorry sight by the time it got home and I guess would carry injury for the rest of its life.



In conclusion, our barefooting success on The Trail came from eliminating flair by having a correct trim, supplement feeding to keep high hoof quality and hydration through giving molasses water whenever they did not drink sufficiently.