Horses, Laminitis & Hoof Health with Dr Luke Wells-Smith

Podcast #66

In this episode, Dr Nerida is joined by Dr Luke Wells-Smith, dual qualified  equine veterinarian and farrier, for a unique perspective on laminitis.

Dr Luke unpacks what’s happening inside the hoof during laminitis, the early warning signs horse owners can watch for, insulin dysregulation, digital pulses and hoof growth rings.

Nerida and Luke also get into nutrition, misleading “grain-free” feed labels, beet pulp, the microbiome, and why identifying and controlling the underlying cause of laminitis is so critical.

A fun and practical conversation for anyone wanting to better understand laminitis and protect their horse’s hooves.

You can find Dr Luke Wells-Smith at the Motion Equine Centre:
https://www.motion-equine.com.au/

Telehealth consultations with Dr Luke Wells-Smith:
https://motion-equine.com.au/telehealth

• Full Episode Transcript

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:03:13

  Dr Luke Wellsmith, welcome to the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:03:17

  Thanks for having me, Nerida. I've been really excited about doing this. We've spoken about it a little bit over the last six months, and yeah, it's finally come together, and it's awesome.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:03:29

  Yeah, it's great. I always love, I said to my partner Ryan this morning, I love talking to Luke, so I've been excited to have you essentially to myself for the next hour or so to ask you a bunch of questions, mainly around laminitis, but I want to start back at the beginning for you. So you're one of these cool humans who has.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:03:51

  a double, um… professional life, essentially. So, you started shoeing horses, I believe, at the age of 15, and then you also became…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:04:02

  a vet. So, um, I'd love to know, what can a farrier see that a vet might miss with a horse's hooves, and what might a vet see that a farrier might miss?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:04:07

  Yeah, I think that's a really good question because it comes from two different places, I suppose. And one of my friends at Rudin Riddle Equine Hospital in the US, Raoul Brass, I remember talking to him about it and watching one of his lectures and he sums it up.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:04:23

  Pretty well, I think a farrier is taught to look at the hoof from the outside in, whereas a vet is taught to look at the hoof from the inside out. And so you've got these two sort of different perspectives that have kind of got to come together because.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:04:40

  Both is important. The external hoof capsule gives us so many clues as to what's going on, whether that's in the healthy horse's hoof or the laminitic horse or the sport horse with a mismatched hoof confirmation. The external hoof capsule gives us so many clues.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:04:58

  But similarly, sometimes those clues are a little bit off, or potentially, uh, it doesn't quite map up, map with exactly what's going on with the horse. And so that's when, you know, learning to understand the internal anatomy and to look from the inside out is also important.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:05:16

  obviously, with the advent of digital x-ray machines, and that being widely used now, and being very, um, easy to come across, we can start to understand, you know, what's really going on inside the hoof capsule. And so, yeah, I think it's…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:05:31

  about bringing those two perspectives together. And, you know, we're both… both professions are kind of taught differently as well. You know, vets are very much focused on, you know, particularly the bones and any pathology within the hoof capsule, for example. You know, do they have.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:05:49

  arthritis of the coffin joint? What does the navicular bone look like? What does the pedal bone look like? Whereas the Tharias are taught to go, okay, well, let's look at the external hoof caps.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:06:00

  Um, does it have a long heel? Does it have a stretched white line? Does it have a, you know, a flat or a bulging sole appearance? Like, all of these things. And, you know, once you x-ray, then we can both get a bit of an understanding of where we're all kind of coming from. But, yeah, I think for me, it's like…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:06:13

  if I look back over my vet schooling, for example, and how I was taught to read x-rays at vet school was very much like, you know, what… does this horse have arthritis? Does this horse have, you know, pedal bone damage? Does it have navicular disease? But then, if I think about.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:06:29

  all the farriers that I've worked with over the years, and how they kind of understand it. Well, it's more about, you know, what's the heel length like? You know, what's the sole depth physically look like? What's the sole contour like? You know, what's the hoof angle? So.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:06:42

  I suppose it's more of the biomechanic side for the farrier and the living hoof tissue, and then for the vet, a lot of times it's the soft tissue structures internally and the bones and things like that, so…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:06:55

  Hmm…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:06:57

  Um, that's… that's kind of the way that… that I look at it. But once you have both perspectives of both sides of the coin, well, then all of a sudden you can really put those two ideas together and come up with a real plan for the horse. Um, and certainly a lot of things, you know.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:07:12

  Particularly with laminitis, we really are looking at the hoof capsule on X-ray. Yes, relative to the bone, but if you disregard a few really important things with on a hoof X-ray, with the laminated course, particularly in the early stages of them developing laminitis, it can be a really tough lesson to learn later on.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:07:34

  So it's like the ultimate form of pattern recognition, really, for having having both, because so much of what we do with horses is pattern recognition. You know, you start to go, I've seen this before, like this is this is this. But being able to put those two.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:07:49

  professions together, you can see both the external patterns and the internal patterns and put them together.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:07:55

  Yeah, for sure, and it's, you know, like, people think because I'm a vet, I must just, like, x-ray every single horse. No, we don't do that, and, you know, well, it might be great to be able to do that on every single horse, but ultimately, budget and even time constraints make it difficult to x-ray every single horse every time you shoot them, but…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:08:10

  Mmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:08:13

  Once you do, you know, trim and shoe horses, particularly with X-ray guidance a number of times, you then do start to understand, okay, well, if I see this particular confirmation, if I see this deviation of hoof wall, if I see.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:08:29

  this distance from the coronary band to the ground surface, well, then I can start… and then I x-ray it, then I go, oh, well, I can start to understand and see, you know, when I… just looking at a horse physically, I can start to get a bit of an understanding of which way they're gonna go.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:08:45

  Mmm, yeah, it's… it's such a superpower. I love… I love your… I love your combination of professions. So what… what was it that made you choose that path of farrier and vet?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:08:56

  I think,

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:08:58

  Apart from insanity, I have to say.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:08:59

  You know

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:09:01

  Yeah, like, sort of, it is.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:09:05

  I don't know, like, I don't do this, but I have tried it, and I think, like, I sort of like in chewing horses to chewing tobacco, like, the first time you do it, you just, you know, feel extremely sick, and you think, why would anyone kind of want to do this, you know, like, it's, you know, so painful and physically difficult, and.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:09:23

  you bleed all the time, and you're always hitting your hands, and but it is very addictive, you know, like, um, you know, when, when you see a horse come in, and, and one of the things that you do start to realize as you get older is you can't fix them in the first shoeing, for example, you have to live with some degree of hoof capsule distortion, you can't.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:09:45

  polish them up and make them look pretty, but in the 1st instance. But if you're patient and persistent enough, you can, you know, create situations where these horses not only physically are better, but you know their hooves look a lot better as well, and that you know that ability to be able to do that is really addictive. But in the beginning it's a it's a it's a huge learning curve, and and I've been really.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:10:08

  I think, lucky to have really good mentors. I've always sought out a lot of different people from not just in here in Australia, but overseas, but, you know, worked closely with some people that really sort of guided me in the right direction.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:10:23

  I suppose where it all kind of started was, um, my grandfather had trail riding horses, and, um, he… he sort of got me into horses, and as he got older, he said, well, you know, one of the things that you need to do is… is to start shooing my horses, so you can come here and ride them with me, so…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:10:41

  That's where it all kind of started, and then he hooked me up with a friend of his who was, you know, a farrier and a teacher, and kind of started from there, and then just did more and more, and then got into vet school, and.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:10:44

  Oh, well.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:10:57

  I suppose the whole reason for going to vet school is, you know, I like challenges, I like solving problems, I really like first principle thinking a lot of times, and trying to solve things for people, and also being outside. Like, I didn't want to be stuck in the office all day, I wanted to be outside.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:11:12

  doing things with my hands. And so, this ultimately was the ultimate career for me, to be able to do all those types of things. And so…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:11:20

  Yeah, well, so much gratitude to your grandfather then for insisting that he choose your horses because the horse was very, much better off for having you in it and doing what you do. Luke. So you graduated vet school in 2010.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:11:21

  That's fine, Marissa.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:11:24

  Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:11:35

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:11:36

  Looking back over that 16 years since then, what has changed most profoundly in your understanding and management of laminitis? Because lots has happened scientifically in that time, but…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:11:47

  Oh, for sure. Like…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:11:49

  I still remember, you know, some of the lectures that we had on laminitis and in particular equine metabolic syndrome, which, you know, yeah, we call it insulin dysregulation or, you know, whatever you want to call it. But I still remember those conversations and those lectures and.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:12:07

  it was almost like it was this new disease, you know, it was like, EMS is this new thing that no one's ever really heard about, you know, it's sort of these fat ponies, but, you know, and we think that it's kind of linked to laminitis, but no one was, like.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:12:22

  kind of sure for certain that's what was really going on. We just kind of had this suspicion. Obviously, we knew at that point about equine Cushing's disease, quite well established. We obviously had, you know, pergolide as a treatment for it, but.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:12:23

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:12:37

  Equine metabolic syndrome, in particular, just seemed like this, you know, it was just this new thing, um, and…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:12:43

  Which is, which is not like we can probably even, you know, sort of understand that even prehistoric horses probably had some form of insulin dysregulation. You know, the, the fossil record shows that, that prehistoric horses had, you know, lamella changes and changes to the tips of their pedal bone and, and, and were suffering from laminitis.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:13:04

  you know, well before cavemen. So, I think, you know, the fact that we were 15, 16 years ago, only kind of like, oh, maybe this is a thing.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:13:07

  You know well.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:13:15

  And really, it's like a huge problem. And it's it's it's kind of everywhere. I think. Actually, we're probably seeing we're probably actually seeing we probably saw, you know, in the last 10 years we saw a spike.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:13:29

  It got really bad. And I think we're actually on the other other side of that now. I think we're starting to see because of all the education that's been coming out and, and people talking about it more and some new diagnostics, I think we're actually on the other side where I think it's going to become more prevention than it is a cure. And I think we're going to start to see a big change.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:13:53

  I'm happy to hear you say that, because it… you brought, like… I still remember being at conferences when the original research, where they were infusing the horses with the insulin, and essentially making their feet fall off.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:14:07

  Um, and realizing that insulin had something to do with laminitis, because prior to that, it was acidosis, or, you know, it was past your laminitis, but we didn't really understand. But I'm very happy to hear you say that you feel like we're getting to the point where there's enough understanding.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:14:23

  and enough awareness in the… in the equine community that… that you're seeing it drop off. I mean, it's still…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:14:30

  Prevalent, for sure, but…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:14:33

  Yeah

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:14:33

  You know, the fact that a lot of horse people with laminated horses these days, if you said to them non-structural carbohydrate, a lot of them would know what we're talking about now, whereas 10, 15 years ago, I mean, even we as professionals didn't really have a good handle on what that was.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:14:48

  Yeah.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:14:49

  So, good. I mean, I'm really happy to… I'm happy to hear that, and I hope you… I hope you're right. See, um, this sort of feeds nicely into the next question, is that laminitis is a spectrum, so, you know, this awareness.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:15:04

  Like, if horse owners do have an awareness of what it looks like in the really early stages, then they've got a chance of doing something.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:15:11

  Um, to prevent it. So what does that very early, um, I would call it subclinical laminitis, I don't know whether that's the right terminology, but what does it look like, um, before we see the classic laminitis, you know, before they get to the point where they're standing out in their paddock, rocked back on their hind legs, trying to take the weight off their front.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:15:31

  I think there's there's really 3.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:15:35

  Phases of laminitis, one you've alluded to, the first phase, which is the subclinical phase, second is the acute phase, and then final is the chronic phase, and we can probably debate when each one of those starts and finishes, but ultimately the subclinical phase.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:15:53

  there is no clinical sign at that point in time. They're not shifting weight, they don't have an increased pulse, they're not laying down, they're not reluctant to move, not really lame.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:16:05

  in the subclinical phase, I like to describe it as when they're being exposed to a risk factor for developing laminitis. And there's three risk categories that I talk about. One, which is what most of this podcast is going to be about, is metabolic-associated laminitis, counts for.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:16:12

  Mm-hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:16:22

  potentially up to 90% of all laminated cases.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:16:26

  The second risk category is what we term sepsis associated. So that might be a horse with has developed diarrhoea. There might be a mare post foaling that's retained their membrane. They've just got some form of septic focus, and a lot of times we'll see these within the, you know, hospital setting, not necessarily out in the field, but.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:16:47

  horse gets sick, goes to hospital, and then develops laminitis secondary to that. And then the final risk factor is this support limb laminitis. So, you know, the horse has, you know, fractured its leg, for example, it's gone to the hospital, we've repaired it, and it's, you know, overloading the other limb, and they develop support limb laminitis. And so.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:17:06

  they're the sort of 3 risk categories, and in any particular case they may have 1, 2, or 3 risk categories all going at one time, and depending on how many risk categories you've got going on. Sometimes there's a bit of a predictor of of how kind of bad they are. So.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:17:22

  In the subclinical phase, you're just, your horse is just being exposed to, um.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:17:28

  you know, a risk factor. And so that if we talk about the metabolic pony, for example, that might be where we're coming through winter, the grass is starting to grow as we come into spring, the day is starting to warm up. That pony is being exposed to a lot more non-structural carbohydrates, and its insulin, its blood insulin is starting to increase as a response to that.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:17:51

  And over, potentially, a couple of weeks or a month, depending on what that horse's insulin sensitivity naturally is like, that's when we start to, you know, increase our risk of developing into the acute phase. And so, once we hit the acute phase, that's basically as soon as we can see any sort of clinical signs.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:18:11

  Weight shifting, increased digital pulse, reluctant to pick up one leg over the other, um, you know, laying down, laying at the, you know, lameness spectrum is pretty big from doesn't want to get up, obviously very severe, to.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:18:27

  Might just be slightly lame on the turn on the hard circle, maybe it's a little bit scratchy at the trot while it's getting around, so not necessarily always like that laminitic pony that you kind of imagine.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:18:38

  And then, depending on who you talk to, and, you know, I think in real life, you know, in day-to-day life, this is not necessarily as easy as we kind of think, because some horses have had chronic laminitis for a long time, and they have an acute episode on top of that, but.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:18:55

  Basically, the textbook says if you've been having laminitic signs for 72 hours and after 72 hours you're already in the chronic phase and chronic phase.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:19:05

  Yeah, right.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:19:07

  Depending on the case and the severity of the risk factor and the number of risk factors that that horse has been sort of subjected to will determine almost like the severity and how long the chronic phase can go on for.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:19:22

  you know, I've seen horses that have had a septic focus have developed laminitis, you know, clinical signs in hospital, and we think that that horse is going to be in a lot of trouble.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:19:33

  Two weeks in hospital, it goes home, never shows any changes, is completely fine.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:19:39

  Don't know why. Other horses develop a septic focus.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:19:43

  develop laminitis, and then we might be putting them down 72 hours later. So you don't kind of know sometimes in those cases which way they're going to go. With the metabolic cases, they're a lot more predictable. We know research now is coming out about.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:19:59

  if your horse has a high insulin for extended periods of time, it just significantly increases the chances that they will develop laminitis in the future. And so…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:20:12

  um, you know, the longer that they have a high insulin for, the more likely they are going to have an acute episode, and then they're going to tip into a chronic episode after that. So.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:20:22

  Hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:20:24

  I think, yeah.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:20:24

  So…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:20:25

  Oh, sorry, you go.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:20:28

  the clinical signs then kind of change. Like, once you hit chronic phase, you know, the hoof capsule signs within the acute phase are almost zero. Like, you won't… if the horse has never had laminitis before, that hoof capsule will look pretty healthy, pretty normal, you know, different, again, if the horse has.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:20:45

  Had chronic laminitis in the past and they have an acute episode, but then once they move into the chronic phase, the hoof capsule changes based on a lot of, you know, a lot of different factors, but a lot of it comes down to the ultimate confirmation of the horse.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:21:00

  and how that horse's foot started. If it had a very healthy hoof to begin with, and doesn't have much of a mismatched foot conformation, and we get onto it early, you might not see a lot of change, but, you know, ponies typically have upright hoof conformation, so they'll start to get tearing of the lamellar attachment around the toe.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:21:20

  They'll have an increase in heel height. You'll see the deviation of the wall at the toe where you'll see a sharp new growth ring forming, and then the whole lamellar wedge kind of skis out in front. And, you know, chronic cases, that's the sort of hoof changes that we start to see.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:21:36

  I think it's… the way you just described it, then, as being, you know, we go from subclinical to acute to chronic, and it's such a short time frame between acute, you know, symptoms starting to appear and chronic. But I think the…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:21:53

  The positive thing that I hear in that is that you can stop it at any point along that journey. You know, it's not a it's not a disease like a virus. You catch the virus. You sort of can't just step in and go, no, you stop.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:22:01

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:22:09

  there, and… and go back to being healthy again, but this is not a disease like that. Like, we can… if we intervene in the right way at the right time, you can literally just…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:22:19

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:22:20

  stop it. Like, you might dip into that acute phase for 24 hours, but then if… if horse owners are onto it fast enough, that's as far as it goes. So it's not a… it's not a… I think we sort of talk about… still, we talk about laminitis as a…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:22:29

  Exactly.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:22:35

  as something that is going to happen to horses, and if it happens, then they're in a lot of trouble and potentially are going to be put down, but it's actually not. It's a condition that horses can dip into and dip out of.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:22:47

  And I think the way you described it just then just made me go, oh, like, it really is something that we can stop at any point in time. Well, maybe not.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:22:53

  And…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:22:55

  And the key is ultimately identifying the risk factor that caused it.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:22:59

  Mm, mm-hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:23:01

  Most of the time, that's pretty easy, especially if we're talking about a metabolic-associated case.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:23:07

  you know, you do get the oddball cases, you know, um, maybe like a sepsis-associated case that never developed diarrhea, for example, but it had, you know, some sort of significant change in its microbiome for a period of time. Um, you know, like, some of those are a little bit like, oh.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:23:24

  Why does this horse develop laminitis? Insulin is normal. You know, things seem pretty healthy, but it's clearly got laminitis. But, you know, identifying that risk factor, particularly in the metabolic associated cases, is ultimately the key to recovery.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:23:29

  Mm-hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:23:41

  So, um, yeah, like…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:23:43

  If you've got a, you know, a laminitic pony that's being if you've got a pony that's being maintained out on pasture and they develop laminitis for the first time, you can help those horses out significantly.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:24:01

  If your pony's 25 years old and had laminitis every year for the last ten years, those horses are much more difficult to turn off again. You know, they're very persistent. We can help them. That usually means that they stay on restricted diet.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:24:16

  You know, medication lifelong. So we can help them. We can't, you know, we don't they're not a complete basket case. But once they've been tipped into insulin dysregulation for many, many years, it's much more difficult to kind of turn that back off.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:24:31

  If you're only six years old, it's, you know, you've moved it from, I don't know, western New South Wales and now you're living in Victoria on, you know, previously improved cattle pasture and you don't realize that spring the ryegrass is through the roof and the non-structural carbs are significant and that horse develops laminitis for the first time.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:24:31

  Mmm.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:24:46

  Mmhm.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:24:52

  Mmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:24:53

  You know, then we can really switch that off and really help that pony out, sort of, longer term, for sure.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:25:00

  Because there's certainly the experience with my horses. So I have, well, I'm going to say two horses that would definitely be metabolic, you know, the classic crested neck and they get overweight very easily in springtime, like even with me doing what I do.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:25:15

  as a profession, and… and, you know, controlling them. The spring grass is just so high in energy, they… they put on weight really quickly, but… and they've both had, um, laminitis in the past, so they would have gone through subclinical stage into acute phase, where I can… I can feel either just a pulse, or they'll be just starting to get lame.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:25:35

  at the walk, but, um, luckily, because, you know, I sort of, I do keep a pretty close eye on them, like, you can stop it, and they both are barefoot horses, they, you know, they've got good feet. Um, you can't go, you know, galloping them up gravelly roads or anything, but that's probably pretty normal for any horse's foot, but.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:25:48

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:25:56

  Um, it is that if you catch it early enough, you can prevent disaster. Um, so what…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:26:03

  Oh.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:26:04

  What are the things…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:26:06

  what are the things we can teach horse owners? Like, what would you teach horse owners, um, as monitoring tools for these horses that we know are risky? You know, we know that we've got this cresty, necked, overweight, metabolic pony or horse. What should we be looking for?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:26:22

  I think if particularly if we're talking about metabolic or insulin dysregulation, for me, the first sign before they even develop any sort of signs of inflammation, true signs of inflammation, true, you know, lameness or anything like that.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:26:37

  Mmhm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:26:38

  is looking at the fat pads above the eyes, so what we call the supraorbital fossa. If you have a pony that goes from having a dip above the eye, and you can have a look, and you can stick your finger in there just above the eye, and press in there, and see if there's any fat sitting there.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:26:55

  If you notice that those areas are starting to develop bubbles, you know that fossa or that hollow is starting to fill up with fat. Ultimately, that I feel like is one of the best predictors.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:27:10

  For working out whether my horse is about to tip into an insulin dysregulated state.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:27:16

  My thought is that the horse is probably already has a high insulin, probably already is dysregulated naturally, because we also need to remember that.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:27:24

  Mm-hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:27:27

  Insulin dysregulation as a disease is also at some point quite protective. If you were living in the wild, your ability to eat green grass and convert that and store it as fat.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:27:36

  Yeah, this is true.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:27:43

  is gonna help you later on. The problem is, is that these horses are always in contact with high non-structural carbohydrate feed, hay, pasture, hard feed, so they're just constantly storing fat and being in an insulin dysregulated state.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:27:45

  Mmm.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:28:02

  Mm, mm-hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:28:03

  So for me, my first thing to look at, and if this is one, if you've got a horse that you suspect, and this is a very timely period to be talking about this, because if your horse is a little bit dysregulated now, come spring, it's going to be really dysregulated.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:28:12

  It is.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:28:17

  Mmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:28:18

  Have a look above the eye. If you start to notice that they're starting to fill up with a bit of fat, that's one of the first indicators. I find the cresty neck a little bit difficult to be really consistent with because I think, you know, feeling it is kind of hard.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:28:34

  like, obviously, like, the no-brainer ones that are, you know, body condition score 8 out of 9, you know, like, Ray Charles could see those guys are probably overweight and gonna have laminitis, but…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:28:44

  Mm-hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:28:45

  Different breeds will also have different regional adiposities. You know, you look at some of these, you know, gypsy cobs, for example, that do store a reasonable amount of fat around that area, you know, compared to a warmblood, for example, with a thin and looking neck.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:29:00

  You know, I think it's just a little bit more tricky to kind of work that out.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:29:04

  Mm, mm-hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:29:05

  Identifying regional adiposities or fat pads and not mistaking them for muscle is probably one of the biggest things. So these fat pads happen first above the eye, like we've sort of discussed, like you spoke about over the neck is important.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:29:23

  The second… the third place that a lot of people miss is actually behind the shoulder blade. Some people think, oh, my horse is starting to build up muscle there. No, that's actually a fat pad. And then the final place that we… well, there's one more place after that, but the final place that we see in a lot of horses is obviously over the rump. We'll start to see.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:29:32

  Yep.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:29:41

  some fat pads around the tail head. And then finally, in geldings and stallions, they'll get some, um, fat around their sheath. So, sometimes you get called and someone says, oh, my horse has got a fat sheath and, you know, got to have been bitten by something.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:29:56

  No, actually, it's just a bunch of bad days.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:29:58

  Just a bad shape.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:29:59

  Yeah, so they're the sort of things that we kind of look at more longer term, and obviously, when you're looking at your horse every single day, sometimes it is a little bit difficult to kind of map this stuff out, um, and obviously, you know, coming out of winter, taking the rugs off regularly, making sure that their body condition's looking pretty good.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:30:11

  Mm, mm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:30:19

  Um, that's all important from that perspective. So, for me, if I'm trying to understand, does my horse have underlying insulin dysregulation, they're the sort of things that I'm looking at.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:30:30

  Um, and then the hoof stuff kinda… and the lameness kinda comes a little bit later, you know? Like, if I look back over the history of a lot of these horses that I've dealt with over the years, it's kinda like…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:30:41

  You know, they started to stack on a little bit of weight. Um, maybe they had, like, some sort of, um…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:30:47

  you know, lameness, or some sort of behavioral issue, then the horse has a little bit of time off, which is ultimately one of the worst things that you can do for a horse that's insulin dysregulated, because as soon as you stop exercising them, it becomes a bit of a vicious circle. You stop exercising, your insulin becomes more dysregulated.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:31:05

  And this is the cycle of laminitis, and obviously in the wild, if you develop laminitis and you're not moving around, and your insulin gets higher and higher and higher, yes, the wolf is going to catch you, because you're going to be, you know, or the lion or whatever is going to be around the corner, and you're not going to be getting anywhere.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:31:23

  Same thing happens here. You know, we stop exercising our horse because of some vague reason, which is sometimes the early signs of laminitis. We think, oh, we can't ride, we can't exercise.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:31:34

  We still continue to feed the same feed, we don't drop the feedback, they're still potentially on pasture that's high in non-structural carbohydrates, and all of a sudden we get this real cycle of increase in insulin and becoming more dysregulated.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:31:49

  Yeah, the exercise is definitely very, very protective. I say that with our popcorn, you know, she was tomato's competition horse, and now she's not, and she, this year, moved her into a pasture. It was all dead dry.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:31:54

  Oh.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:32:04

  pasture, but, you know, within a week she was a bit scratchy when someone was riding. I'm like, oh, something's not right. And then, yeah, she had an alternating pulse. It was sometimes there, it sometimes wasn't. But if we can keep them in work, it is.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:32:19

  it is amazingly protective, but the fat pads is really interesting, and I literally want to leave you here by yourself and go out and look at my two… look at my two horses, because, um, yeah, it's not like… I mean, I'm aware of it more from a Cushing's disease perspective, but that's not something that I…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:32:28

  Have a look.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:32:38

  have really paid attention to, so I will definitely be paying attention to, um, my two with their… with their fat pads over their eyes. Um, Digital Pulse, talk to me about that. Where does that come in?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:32:51

  Yeah, look, if we've developed, you know, I sort of think about a digital pulse as.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:33:00

  you know, we're kind of trying to understand how a horse kind of feels, which, you know, is sometimes dangerous, but, you know, ultimately, a digital pulse is what I would think would be like if you jammed your thumb in a door, and you created inflammation under your nail bed.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:33:13

  it's almost like a compartmental syndrome, you know, like, you've got this hard hoof wall, this hard bone, and then you've got this soft lamellar attachment that has, you know, nerve endings and blood vessels, and when that swells, that becomes painful, and we start to feel that sort of throbbing pulse, I suppose.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:33:34

  And I suppose the textbook definition of an increased digital pulse.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:33:40

  Yes, it could potentially be an increase in heart rate.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:33:45

  But I don't find that to be hugely predictive, unless we're more talking about a horse that's towards the end stage, you know, it's quite a severe case, might have them in hospital, we're monitoring their heart rate twice a day, um, and we're trying to work out.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:34:01

  you know, where's this horse kind of going, and how is it coping with having some severe laminitis?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:34:08

  In the horse that's out in the paddock, increases in heart rate, I think, is much more difficult to kind of look at. So then what we're trying to determine is an increase in intensity, and so that becomes quite difficult.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:34:13

  Mmhm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:34:22

  If you get into the nitty-gritty of it, but actually, if you're a horse owner, if you can feel a digital pulse in one or more limbs.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:34:32

  that means that you may be having a laminitic episode. So, in general, a horse that doesn't have laminitis, it's very difficult to feel that digital pulse. But if you feel a pulse in one.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:34:46

  or more limbs, that's more likely to be a laminitic episode. There are cases where we do just get a digital pulse in one limb in a laminitic horse. It's usually in a horse with a mismatched foot conformation, one flat foot, one upright foot. The upright foot will tend to have an increase in digital pulse, because.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:35:05

  You know, the foot is under different biomechanical strain, but the general rule for a horse owner, if you can feel it in one or more feet or limbs, that's how we kind of know that the horse has got, you know, having a bit of a laminitic episode and it, you know, don't get too worried about that.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:35:08

  Mmhm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:35:22

  Oh, one's a little bit more intense than the other, or one side of the limb is more than the other. Like, I think all of that stuff is probably, you know, not really in the realms of being overly important clinically, but like I said, if you can feel it in one or more limbs.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:35:36

  If the horse is, while you're checking the pulse, the horse is shifting weight frequently. So horses typically will shift weight if they're standing in a stable or standing still. They do shift weight throughout the day, but if they're doing it like every couple, you know, every 30 seconds, they're moving from one leg to the next.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:35:53

  That's a really indicator that the horse is having some sort of inflammatory situation going on.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:36:02

  And it's a lot more obvious, too, when they shift weight, because they are literally kind of just rocking from one side to the other, like we do when we're dressed up and in high heels. My feet! No, I wasn't dragging you into that one, Luke, but my feet are really sore and I need to shift weight.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:36:11

  Not that I've experienced that, but yeah.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:36:20

  So, to take a digital pulse, though, it's a very, like… can you talk me through, like, you were telling me how to do it if I'm in the paddock with one of my horses, and I'm on the phone to you going, I'm not sure if this horse has got a digital pulse. Talk.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:36:34

  So, basically, the place to check them is what we describe as over the neurovascular bundle. So, basically, where the vein, the artery, and nerve all run down the, sort of, backside of the fetlock. Now.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:36:49

  They, the, the, the vein, artery, and nerve run on both sides of the leg, so the inside and the outside.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:36:56

  I think the best way to kind of find it, um, obviously, technically, it's a little bit… for me, personally, it's a little bit easier to find the inside one, because I kind of wrap my fingers around the inside of the limb.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:37:11

  But basically, when you do that, so say we're looking at the near side front, I will be facing the back side of the horse with the horse's head over my back, over my shoulder. I'll run my hand down the inside of the leg, and I'll run down till I'm at the sort of level of the fetlock.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:37:28

  And then the best way to kind of find that neurovascular bundle is to run your fingers sort of horizontally across the leg, really lightly. Eventually, you will feel these little threads underneath your finger, and those tiny little threads, that's the vein artery and nerve.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:37:43

  And that's where you'll find the digital pulse. Now, it's important not to press really hard on that area, because you will occlude it, you won't be able to feel the pulse itself, so you do need to be quite light when you're feeling it. And I'll do that, you know, with my two fingers on the inside.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:37:59

  And I still use my thumb on the outside. Some people think, oh, well, you can't use your thumb because, you know, your thumb has a pulse, blah blah blah, but ultimately, if the horse has got a significant digital pulse, I'm gonna feel it with both fingers without too much of a drama.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:38:14

  Yeah, okay, because I had also heard that, don't use your thumb, and I find sometimes I have to hold my breath when I do it, because otherwise, if I'm moving, I'm like, oh, is that, is that a pulse? Can I feel something? But I think when, when you can feel something.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:38:19

  Yeah.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:38:30

  You can feel it like it is, it is there, like, yeah, yeah, it is, it is there. And I think probably the, the thing to do, and I'm sure you'll agree with this, but the thing to do if you've got a horse that you're worried about, just feel their pulse every day.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:38:31

  It's real. Yeah.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:38:44

  Yes, yeah, I think.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:38:45

  And then you'll get a sense for when they're changing or if they change.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:38:50

  And I think one tip that's really important, particularly if there are young veterinarians or farriers that are listening to this.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:38:58

  is you can only check a digital pulse while the horse is fully weight-bearing on the limb. So, if you run your hands down the horse's leg and it picks the foot up, you cannot feel the pulse. So, sometimes you have to trick it.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:39:13

  sometimes you have to stand on the opposite side of the horse and feel the leg that's on the… so if I'm doing the left front or the near side, I'll stand on the off side, and I'll run my hand down, usually, the off side front first, and I'll pick it up, and then I'll just quickly go ahead and I'll run my hand down.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:39:33

  the near side front from the opposite side, um, just obviously be careful that you don't kind of get your arms, you know, kind of twisted up with the horse's legs, but obviously just tack it on the other side, and that'll kind of trick them a little bit, and they won't lift it up. It's particularly important on hind limbs, you know, a lot of.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:39:49

  horses, when you run your hand down, they'll just automatically rest it. You can't feel a digital pulse on a horse that's resting their foot.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:39:56

  Okay, that's good. That's good tip. My horses are obviously not well enough trained to worry about picking their feet up every time. I think they're so used to me checking their digital pulse that they don't bother. So just just really quickly talk to me about.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:40:10

  rings on the hooves, like, when are they indicative of something that either has already gone wrong or is going wrong, and when are they just normal fluctuations between, you know, here we go from lush green to burnt dry within the space of a couple of weeks, so their diet, being pasture-based, is shifting a lot.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:40:31

  Yes.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:40:32

  I think…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:40:34

  You know, if we talk about inflammation within the hoof capsule, you get extension of that inflammation to the coronary band. So when we talk about.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:40:46

  laminitis, or even a foot abscess, you know, you get inflammation within the hoof capsule, but it also extends to the coronary band. And now the coronary band is where the hoof tubules essentially grow from. So if you have a period of time where the hoof is inflamed for whatever reason, laminitis.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:41:05

  Hoof abscess. Now, we're talking inflammation of the hoof capsule structures, not, you know, the deep digital flexor tendon, all the navicular bone, all the coffin joint. They don't cause growth rings at all. It's just purely hoof tissue, hoof inflammation.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:41:21

  you'll start to see that growth ring start coming down. Now, in laminitis, we term growth rings to be divergent. And so what that essentially means is that there's a growth ring that's narrower at one section and wider at the other. And so the typical case is the laminitic pony that already has a quite upright hoof conformation.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:41:44

  And so when they develop laminitis and they go through the acute phase and they head into the chronic phase, the hoof wall at the coronary band at the toe will be slow to grow compared to the growth ring at the heel. And so it does give you a bit of an indicator of where the hoof is growing from, and that's important because.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:42:03

  If there's hoof growth in a particular region, there's blood supply in a particular region. So in a chronic laminitic pony that grows 2 inches of heel over a trimming cycle, if we were to do what we call a venogram, where we use special contrast and take an X-ray of that pony's foot.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:42:09

  Mmm…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:42:21

  we'll see a huge amount of blood supply in the heel region, and we won't see that much blood supply to the front of the pedal bone and down from the coronary band at the toe. So, growth rings are an indicator of inflammation, but they can also be a bit of an indicator of where the hoof is growing. So.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:42:39

  That's where it can be quite important.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:42:41

  Yeah, that's fascinating. I love… I love how eyes get opened when things are explained to you. Like, I… you know, like, you hear about divergent rings, but I'd never had it explained that, you know, where they're wider, that's where the hoop is growing.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:42:48

  Yeah.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:42:53

  Yes.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:42:56

  And it happens the opposite on a flat foot. So if you have a, you know, a horse with laminitis, ultimately how their hoof grows is dictated by their underlying conformation. And so if we have a horse that has a club foot and a flat foot.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:43:12

  The club foot will develop that sort of divergent growth rings like we talked about in the laminitic pony. Usually that foot gets a digital pulse first and that's where, that's usually the presenting complaint. Oh, my horse has a unilateral or say a right fall in lameness with an upright foot.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:43:27

  You know what's going on and then once we look at the super orbital fat pads above the eyes and the regional adiposities and we pull an insulin and it's through the roof and we take some x-rays to kind of know what's kind of going on but in the flat foot you'll typically get almost like the opposite situation where.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:43:35

  Mmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:43:42

  You get a lot of growth in the front part of the foot, in the back, in the heel region, particularly on the medial or the inside wall will be quite slow. So yeah, it's, it's a really, you know, this is where that whole, what we talked about in the very first start of this podcast was about.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:43:58

  how you can use the external hoof capture and then map it to the X-rays, this is the perfect example of where you can kind of see that happening.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:44:01

  Mm-mm.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:44:04

  That's fascinating. I will now also be paying a lot more attention to the shape of the, the shape of any rings on any horses that I see. So look, there is still, I mean, even with awareness growing about laminitis and what causes it with these insulin dysregulated horses, there is still an awful lot of horses that get laminitis.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:44:24

  Um, and one estimate that I read was that one third of horses who do develop laminitis are humanely euthanized within 12 months of being diagnosed, which I think for both of us is a pretty horrifying statistic, because we know that it's very rare.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:44:41

  full well that a lot of these cases can be prevented, but also stopped in the early stages. So, from your perspective, it was both a farrier and a vet. Where is that battle lost most often for those horses? Like…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:44:56

  what goes wrong for them? At what point don't we intervene? And I guess the second question is, how much of a role does poorly controlled nutrition have in that?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:45:07

  Yeah, I think… and I think, from memory, that study's out of the UK, so, you know, a lot of this is gonna be around, you know, metabolic, you know, ponies and cases like that, and so…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:45:20

  you know, do we see a similar

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:45:23

  percentage here, you know, maybe slightly less, because, you know, Australia's environment is so much different to the UK, you know, like, the UK is probably pretty much like Victoria, a lot of improved pastures, you know, really full seasons, not so much summer, but, you know, they're probably living in a very similar type situation.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:45:41

  And I think the battle is lost when we don't identify the risk factor. So we'll just bring that back into play.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:45:50

  Without the understanding around insulin dysregulation and how that affects your cause.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:45:56

  You're never going to be able to to stop or improve a case. And that's that's been the biggest game changer within my career because like I remember, you know, before I became a vet and then, you know, early in my career.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:46:00

  Mmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:46:12

  dealing with these horses with insulin dysregulation. You could trim them to X-rays, you could put thousands of dollars worth of therapeutics on their feet, but they were still uncontrolled. They were still insulin dysregulated, and that was.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:46:27

  you know, we put them on all the diets, we could try and exercise them, we could give them anti-inflammatories, we were literally doing everything for them. We were identifying the risk factor, but we couldn't get the risk factor under control, because they were living in this, um, I suppose, situation where they were in this never-ending cycle. We couldn't.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:46:39

  Mm-mm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:46:45

  Get them out of pain enough to be able to exercise them. And so I think, you know, early on that and that's where I think things have kind of gone wrong over the years and why that study is so pivotal, because that just shows how we couldn't control.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:47:01

  that. And, and now the change has been is that we, we can control, you know, their insulin dysregulation through medication.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:47:12

  for a period of time, so that we can start exercising him again, you know, because, like, we've, you know, you and I have spoken about it before, and we've worked on cases before, but these horses, they just… we can't seem to turn the insulin dysregulation off, and…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:47:26

  you know, like, there's a whole… we'll talk a little bit about it, but obviously, you know, the marketing of different hard feeds, and what's on the bag, and what's in the bag, and all the rest of it is another question. But, you know, for me, I think it always gets back.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:47:42

  To we needed to identify the reason, you know, why the horse has developed laminitis, which I think we've been quite good at over the last ten years. But in the last five, you know, things have changed where we can now medicate these horses and bring them back to insulin dysregulation. So.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:47:59

  It just turns it off for a little bit so we can get all the other stuff working. And I think that's where I'm more optimistic about these cases now is because we can actually change the trajectory. Like once they've been tipped into insulin dysregulation for a period of time, we can turn that off.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:48:17

  Get their diet right, get their exercise happening, and flick these things around without, you know, having them crippled for a whole year, and just a never-ending cycle, basically.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:48:26

  And from a nutrition perspective is really important. Like while you're using the medication and getting them through that acute phase and turning the whole cascade of the disease off essentially for a little while for them, if those horses then go back onto the same diet though, that triggered them in the first place.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:48:39

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:48:45

  It's just going to start the cycle again. So the the nutrition of them becomes so important. And I think from I mean, I look at laminitis from a similar but also very different perspective to what you do.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:49:02

  Um, just from the direction I'm coming in at it from, and in my experience, if you can't get a horse sound, barring, you know, changes in the hoof that you're having, but before a horse actually changes anything within the hoof capsule.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:49:17

  If you can't get them back out of that laminitis, there's still something in their diet that's triggering them, and it's a matter of going in there and going, what is it?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:49:27

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:49:27

  You know, what is in this diet still that is still setting them off? And this is where…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:49:33

  Um, you know, we both share this frustration, I'm going to say intense frustration, because there is, you mentioned it briefly there, there is a lot of misleading and incorrect labelling on feed products. Like, I saw one the other day, massive writing across the front of the bag, grain-free.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:49:50

  And then the first two ingredients are wheat pollard and wheat bran. Now, if someone in the UK is listening to this, they might go, well, and because their wheat bran is very different to our wheat bran, but in Australia, you know, wheat pollard and wheat bran's like 20 to 25% starch still.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:50:07

  So horse owners end up in this situation where they think they're doing everything right for their insulin dysregulated laminitic pony and choosing products that are telling them they're grain free. And a worst case is when a feed company will say.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:50:24

  it's grain-free, and not put the grain ingredient they're using in that product on the label. It's just hidden in there. So, you know, they end up in this situation where they feel like they're doing everything right.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:50:37

  but their horse is getting worse, or at the very least, not getting any better. And I know you're someone who… I mean, you see this from a much more, um…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:50:49

  stark perspective, I guess, because you're the one that's trying to hold their feet together. Um, so is that… like, for the horses that battle laminitis for a long period of time, I mean, I can't really say, is that something you say, because I know that it is, but just give me your perspective on.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:50:53

  Yeah.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:51:06

  On that issue for horse owners.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:51:10

  It's it's huge. And I I think it's it's gonna come to a head. And and I don't understand why.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:51:18

  Feed companies aren't getting on board with the idea of just…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:51:23

  being truthful around the labeling. Like, I understand it from a product perspective that there's a marketing element to it, but I've even had this conversation with some of them, and I'm like, why can't you be the leader of this, right? Like, why can't you say.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:51:38

  Hmm…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:51:39

  across all of my products, you know, and most of them have too many products, which also is just seems insane.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:51:46

  Prostrate. Yep.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:51:48

  But why can't you just come out and be like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to give all of the ingredients. I'm going to create a label that is standardized across my product range so that when an owner comes to the feed store, they can then go, okay, well, I can compare this bag from, from my favorite brand and like, I'm already buying their stuff.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:52:11

  And I'm going to compare it to another bag of their same thing. And I'm going to go, well, my horse is a 15 year old Shetland pony. It's a little bit overweight. I'm going to choose this because like horse owners actually understand this stuff now, like they know what to look for.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:52:26

  Hmm. Okay.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:52:27

  It's just the companies are literally not putting it on the back.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:52:33

  And, like, like, surely at some point, this is gonna have to come to a head where someone's gonna turn around. Some horse that's mega expensive is gonna get laminitis.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:52:45

  And that owner is going to go, hang on a second, this doesn't make any sense. And I was told here by this company to feed this because it's X, Y, and Z gray, but it actually, it wasn't, and it was the worst thing for my horse.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:53:01

  With all the data that we're collecting and all the insulins and all the cases, it's going to become to a point where it becomes an issue for these companies, a risk factor to continue operating the way that they are like. And I just don't see the reason why they need to do it.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:53:14

  Mmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:53:18

  It just blows my mind that they're still continuing to do it.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:53:22

  Yep.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:53:22

  And I think, you know, horse owners in Australia need to understand why we're in this kind of state that we're kind of in, because ultimately.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:53:34

  The performance loss world is so much smaller than the thoroughbred world. And, you know, a lot of these extruded feeds were all made around the thoroughbred industry. How can I feed 200 broodmares with two backpacks?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:53:50

  packets twice a day, you know, like, let's create a product. And it's so innovative, like, I think some of the things that have been created are amazing, but it's also shaped the way that a lot of feeds have been created in this country, which is not necessarily good for, you know, the other part of the market, I suppose, that we're kind of dealing with.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:53:51

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:53:53

  Yep.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:54:09

  And that's where the welfare of these horses gets a little bit tricky, you know, like, again, like, you know, we're starting to see feeds that are more performance horse or pony kind of base, but again, the labeling is…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:54:22

  Like, you walk into a feed store, and even for me, walking through there and picking up these bags, I'm like, you know, which one are you supposed to recommend? Because ultimately, people ask me all the time, and I've got to come up with something, and…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:54:38

  you know, I think it's just getting harder and harder. So, that's the thing that I would just love to see change, is that someone.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:54:45

  like, I know we don't really have, like, a governing body over, you know, the nutritional labeling in this country for horse feeds, but even if just, like, one company would make it part of their thing, it's just like, hey, we're gonna have open and transparent and consistent labeling across our product range.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:55:03

  So people can choose what they feel is necessary for their horse because.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:55:09

  it's got to get to that stage, and… and this is the super interesting observation that I have about buying horse feed, is…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:55:19

  It's so hard.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:55:20

  And as an owner coming to a feed store.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:55:24

  And you walk in there.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:55:26

  and you've already got someone trying to help you find the best feed for your horse. Now.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:55:33

  there's lots of things that go into that, like that the person in the store might have had a laminated pony in the past, or they like this, or maybe the rep for this particular company came in a week ago and said, this is the best thing for your horse. But what I liken it to, it would be like walking into the supermarket.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:55:50

  And having someone in the supermarket walk up to you and say, hey, maybe you should buy a bag of apples instead of, you know, this or that. They're actually recommending what you should feed your horse.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:56:04

  And you can't make that decision. You can't pick up a bag yourself and decide which one's which. And it's just very confusing.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:56:11

  Yeah, I mean, it is. And I agree with you on all of those points. And I mean, as part of what I've tried to do through my career is actually give people tools. You know, we built we built the Equalize software 22 years ago, and then we built FeedXL, and now we have this My Happy Horse.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:56:29

  And it… and they're all sort of there to help people put diets together, but I mean, I was so idealistic when I was younger and going, I don't want to influence anyone, and you know, everyone needs to be able to make their own independent choices. We will… we will get this app to the point where.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:56:44

  they can put all of the details in, and I think that's what you're getting at when you go into a feed store. Like, unless that person who's trying to help you gets a full history of your horse, all of their forages, what their exercise regime is, what their history is, what their genetics is, what their feet may look like, do they have fat pads over their eyes?

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:57:04

  Unless they know all of that, they can't make a good recommendation. And so we will get this app to the point where once we've got all of that information, it will offer suggestions for fees. It's not quite there yet, but we will get it to that point. And I think I realised that we needed to do that when I was thinking I had to go and buy a very old tractor. Luke is like 19, Betty, her name is, and she's from the 1960s.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:57:27

  But there's like three different oils in Betty. I don't know which oils to buy for Betty. So if I went to the, you know, the mechanics or whatever, and they handed me a 15 page brochure and told me to read it and then choose the right oils, I'd be going, can you just tell me? So it's, you know, it's sort of that.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:57:28

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:57:44

  that situation, but the mislabeling, I don't understand. I mean, I've worked with a lot of feed companies over the years, and no one has mislabeled a feed on my watch, so if there's… and I was just doing the labeling for a new product, um, that'll come out in the next few months, but you know, there's…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:57:59

  there's wheat, um, bran in there, because it was needed as a carrier for the premix. It's 4 grams per kilogram, and I will not let them label that grain-free. Because it's not, you know? Like, I mean, it's a tiny amount, but it's got to be on the label, and it's not… but we can label it.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:58:12

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:58:18

  Um, with the non-structural carbohydrate level.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:58:20

  Yep.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:58:21

  and then… and then, you know, and that… that's probably part of the labeling that you're talking about that's not consistent, you know, we don't have that on all of the labels, so people can't… can't make good choices. And then the big bright print on the front that says grain-free is just so…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:58:35

  so reassuring, I guess, as a horse owner, that you go, oh, well, this'll be… this'll be safe, and it's just… it kills me. I don't… I don't understand how feed companies who are there for the good of horses.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:58:47

  Deliberately put them at risk.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:58:49

  It's unfortunate that I think a lot of.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:58:54

  Not all companies, but some of them play on the fact that us.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:58:58

  Horse owners.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:59:00

  want to do the best for our horse. So we… we read this stuff, and we're easily marketed and manipulated into doing and buying these things, because we believe that it's… we're being told that it's the best thing for our horse, you know, like…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 10:59:02

  Mm-hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:59:15

  You need 16 different supplements. You need to feed two different hard feeds and you must do all this. But, you know, like I think ultimately people are starting to realize that a lot of that stuff is not is not real. You know, like it's they're just being marketed to and.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:59:31

  As the cost of living goes up, horses aren't getting any cheaper, so people are starting to knock off all of these different things, and they're starting to go back to the basics now, and they're starting to formulate their own feeds and trying to work things out for themselves to try and reduce the cost, and they're finding that.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:59:48

  not only are their horses not getting worse with whatever they thought they were helping for, they're actually getting better, you know? Because…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 10:59:56

  A lot of people don't realize, like, yeah, this supplement or that supplement, we're trying to chase, you know, 1% here or 1% there, but we're not actually understanding what we're actually giving the horse, and maybe it might have one good thing in it, but then it's got 5 bad things in it, so what's the point, you know, so…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:00:13

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is, which is where, which is where we come in, in giving them the tool to be able to actually visualize the diet, you know, and you can see that with that one product, you are actually meeting all of your horse's nutrient requirements. But unless you can see, like even for me with complicated horses.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:00:21

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:00:29

  I don't trust myself to just put a diet together. I still want to go through and actually visualize it all.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:00:37

  Um, so just moving on, sugar beet pulp is an interesting one, and it can be very low in non-structural carbohydrate, and it can be a very useful ingredient for a lot of these horses, but I know…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:00:52

  That's right.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:00:54

  vary, and I know from speaking to you over the years, you also find that the success or failure with sugar beet pulp is also very varied as well.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:01:05

  Is that still the case for you? Like, do you still have issues with horses on it?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:01:10

  Yeah, I think, um…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:01:12

  What I've always found with them, like, I think I can kind of get away with it on…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:01:17

  You know, a performance horse that might be a bit insulin dysregulated, but it's in full work, um, but anything that's not exercising, and I think you've alluded, you've probably told me this in the past, is it's just, it can be still so high in calories as well, so I think.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:01:35

  Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:01:36

  From that perspective, I don't find it particularly helpful. Like if I've got a laminitic pony, you know, that's not exercising, that's in pain and it's on beet pulp, you know, they just don't do very well on it. But I think the horse that's.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:01:51

  in work and competing, but they need a little bit of extra energy, I don't find it to be too bad, because they're already on the edge of being regulated anyway, I suppose, from that perspective.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:02:04

  I do wonder about it, like maybe it's effects on microbiome because essentially it is like a short chain carbohydrate, right? So I don't know whether that helps with some of the changes that we see in the hindgut around microbiome. I don't know.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:02:16

  Hmmm…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:02:19

  Short chain fatty acid production.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:02:21

  Yeah, I mean, it's a…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:02:23

  It's a, yeah, it's a fibre and it will, it will ferment to volatile fatty acids, not lactic acid though. So that's, that's what you get when you ferment starch. But it, yeah, I mean, it's, it's got enough because it, I mean, it's grown for sugar, right? So depending on how much of that sugar they washed out of it when they processed it, it can still be over 12%.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:02:44

  non-structural carbohydrate. For anyone listening to this and you're going, what is non-structural carbohydrate? There is a whole episode, I forget the number now, but if you search for it, it'll come up in the Happy Horse Nutrition list of episodes, so you can go back and figure that out. But essentially, for a laminitic horse, we want.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:02:46

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:03:03

  feeds and forages to be less than 10%, ideally. Pat Harris, the most amazing nutritionist in the world, in my opinion, but she presented some data at the Equine Science Society meeting in Melbourne last year to show that a horse on a 9% non-structural carbohydrate.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:03:24

  Hay still had elevated insulin response. No, no, but no, we don't want to know this. So so there will be. And actually her her advice is that when you and this might be handy for you, Luke, with with your work is when you when you can't stabilize a horse.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:03:39

  Give them a meal of their hay that might be tested hay and you think is safe, but give them a meal of their hay and then test their insulin response to see if they're actually still reacting to that level of non-structural carbohydrate, even if it's below that 10%.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:03:53

  threshold, but yeah, beet pulp, I mean, it's got the same calorie content as oats, so it's not, it's not exactly a, a, um, good diet.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:04:00

  Weight loss. Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:04:02

  It's not a good weight loss feed ingredient, but if, I mean, it is useful, I mean, it's a beautiful fibre, so it does add fibre diversity. I love this stuff, but I am also aware that with lemonitic horses, it can be risky, but there, um, there's a lot of people that will say, you know, if you soak it and rinse it three times, then it's okay.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:04:20

  And that that is probably true because you're just washing out the extra sugar. But I don't I have never recommended someone do that because it's a lot of time in, in feed preparation. So yeah, if you've got a horse that's, that's lemonade and it is on big pop, you can't get it stable ditch.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:04:29

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:04:35

  Beat pulp for a period of time and just see if that helps. Anything else you want to say on feeds, supplements? I mean, we haven't even talked about forages and that's a whole other conversation because we have to get them right too but just.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:04:51

  Just on that before we move on, Luke.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:04:54

  I think, you know, we've talked about insulin and the metabolism being a really important component, but I think the thing that we haven't unlocked yet, which is getting closer, is, is looking at the microbiome of the horse and having tools to really look at that.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:05:12

  Um, you know, I partnered with a human lab, and we have done some sort of DNA analysis of some… some horses' manure, and…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:05:20

  And it's really, like, super interesting. It's very, um, on the edge of trying to work out, you know, what's normal, what's not, um, and trying to sort of sift through all that information, because you get a lot at the end of the day, but…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:05:33

  you know, we all understand that we are feeding our horses to feed the microbiome, and that's what's protective for a lot of the diseases that we see. And, you know, whether it's in people or horses, it's all kind of interlinked. And so.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:05:47

  you know, like we're sort of talking about this, you know, understanding of short-chain fibers, and roughage, and…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:05:55

  and hard feeds, and a lot of the synthetic products that are now going into hard feeds, and what does that do? You know, like, we've got all these synthetic amino acids going into these complete feeds, like, what is their role? How does that work? How are they digested? Is it normal? Is it not? You know, like, a lot of questions are now.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:06:14

  Sort of coming out and we know in people in particular, ultra processed foods are not really good for you. You know, like if, if you're, if you're eating ultra processed foods all the time and they're not just chocolates and chips and ice creams, but they're also.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:06:28

  you know, protein bars and supplements and all this other stuff, well, that's having a significant impact on… on our health. And so, if we're starting to feed our horses ultra-processed foods, well, what's that effect, particularly on the microbiome? And, you know, like.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:06:43

  We're not all… we're not all astronauts living on some, you know, ultra-processed amino acid feed type deal, you know, like, we can't live like that for very long, and…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:06:54

  you know, I think we need to be careful about what we're feeding our horses, and look at what's on the bag, and how it's being produced as well, so…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:07:04

  And I think, I mean, the big thing for me as a nutritionist is the closer we can feed them to the way they evolved. The healthier they will be. But I do just want to say here, because it is really important with grains.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:07:19

  Unless we process them, they're unsafe to feed.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:07:22

  Yes, which is something you taught me. Yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:07:23

  So, you know, you…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:07:25

  Yeah, so yes, there's the… you know, it does my head in when I go to the States, and they talk about over there, you know, feeding horses, um, complete…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:07:35

  pelleted rations. That's all they get. I'm like, no, no, let's not do that. Like, that is such an unhealthy thing to do. I mean, mentally unhealthy for them, as well as physically unhealthy for them, but from a grain perspective, they have to be processed, because otherwise we just dump a whole heap of starch into the hindg.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:07:52

  Um, but you only really are feeding grains to horses that need the energy, so broodmares, um, and high-level performance horses. Everyone else, we can really get away without having grain, or at least get away without having a significant amount of grain in their diet.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:08:07

  And yeah, the microbiome is fascinating. And it would be really, really interesting to have a look at, you know, horses that have tipped into laminitis versus not. There is there is a company in Australia and there's a few interviews with Belinda EquiGI who will do full microbiome analysis down to species level.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:08:24

  Now. So we've we've got the technology. It's just a matter of then finding the patterns.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:08:25

  Oh, that's cool.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:08:27

  Yeah, thank you.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:08:31

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:08:31

  Um, and then knowing, like, well, how do we then manipulate that pattern? Like, what do we have to feed? What do we have to do? But, um, it's such a big area, it blows my mind, the microbiology stuff, but it's super important, and I think you're right. Like, I think we'll get there, sort of, over the next 10 years, we'll have a better, much better understanding.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:08:50

  And hopefully be able to help.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:08:53

  you do your job with getting feet right by changing what's going on in the… in the gut. Um, so look…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:08:58

  And when we and I suppose on microbiome, when we're talking about microbiome.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:09:03

  You know, and supplementing it.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:09:07

  The products with just, you know, fairly bland brewer's yeast as a probiotic is not the golden, you know, it's not the silver bullet for microbiome. If you look at human, you know, a lot of the products in the human space.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:09:23

  the the list of products that you can buy as a person to help your microbiome. All the different bacterial species is astronomical in the horse world. We are literally using one species, and that's it. And so.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:09:39

  Just remember that when you, you know, we're talking about microbiome, and you're thinking, how can we change it, and you start googling, you know, different things, like.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:09:46

  there's a huge world out there in terms of different species of pre and probiotics out there. So, you know, I think that's important.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:09:54

  And there's there's not a whole lot. Well, there's no evidence for bacterial probiotics in horses, for repopulating microbiome. And honestly, like, the best thing people can do is get fibre diversity into the diet. Don't feed one type of hay feed.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:10:06

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:10:08

  Seven. You know, that's a lot, but if you can achieve it, amazing. Don't plant one or two species in your pasture. Plant 15 if you can. You know, allow horses out onto natural areas to graze because that's where they'll find the fibre diversity.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:10:09

  Yep.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:10:18

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:10:26

  Um, when you… if you feed poorly and then try to use a supplement to fix what you're doing in the diet, I often use the expression, it's like trying to use a garden hose to put out a bushfire. Like, you're not going to get anywhere. It's just… it's just not going to work. So, I think for the microbiomes.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:10:35

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:10:41

  perspective, supplements, I mean, and I mean, I formulate supplements as part of what I do for a living. So there's definitely a role for them. But when you're trying to fix stuff that you are breaking with poor diet in the 1st place, it doesn't work.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:10:50

  Yes.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:10:57

  And like you touched on diversity of, you know, haze and forages gives diversity of microbiome. That's one thing that we definitely do know when it comes to analysis of the microbiome of the horse and people.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:11:11

  The more diverse that you eat, and the more diverse your horse eats, you know, the better, the more diverse the microbiome will be, and we believe that that's the important, yeah.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:11:21

  And I think, and this is going off on a little bit of a tangent, but for laminitic horses, often what happens is people will find one safe tested hay.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:11:31

  and then they feed them that hay. So they, you know, you restrict their fibre diversity right down, and we don't know then what that does to their insulin dysregulation. Like, there's every chance that that will make their insulin dysregulation even worse, and they're in their higher risk.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:11:32

  Yes.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:11:45

  Yes.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:11:48

  again for future episodes. So it's I mean, they're they're tricky from every perspective to manage lemonitic horses. And I I know that because I have a couple of them. But and I've had someone say to me, oh, that's ironic. You're a nutritionist, and you've got a lemonitic horse, or it doesn't. It doesn.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:12:02

  you know, automatically protect you just because you know what to do. You've still got pasture fluctuating and hay fluctuating, and they're not… they're not easy to manage. So, um…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:12:07

  That's right.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:12:13

  I do want to move on to our clear round quick questions, but before we get to that, Luke, how can people find you? Because I know that you've got lots of different ways you can work with people, so how can people find you?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:12:17

  Yes.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:12:23

  Yeah, so the best way to kind of get in contact with us is through our website, motion-equine.com.au, and so that'll give you a pretty decent overview of kind of what we do. We just recently redid our website, and um…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:12:38

  One of the things that I've been doing, well, pretty much for ten years is that I have been running like a telehealth service. So for people not in my area or interstate.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:12:50

  I basically have now a bit of a portal where people can, you know, submit a form, they can add all their horse details in, they can add the history, they can upload all their x-rays, photos, videos, whatever they want to, to that platform, and then.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:13:04

  I can review it all and basically what we're doing nowadays is recording a video call of me going through the history, going through the X-rays, making a bit of a plan for the horse, and giving people as much information as they kind of can.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:13:19

  people have been really getting on board with that lately. It's sort of streamlined the process, and yeah, it's been really good. Obviously, I live here in Victoria, in the Macedon Ranges, so we obviously service people locally to us in Wood End, but I also travel to the Mornington Peninsula every two weeks, and.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:13:39

  I still go to Albury in New South Wales once a month as well, so, um, yeah, catch me somewhere along the line.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:13:45

  Great, and I will put links to your website and also to the telehealth on the show notes for this podcast. I think the telehealth is such a cool idea, and it's a great way to do it, and it's also very reasonable too, so if anyone is struggling with a horse with laminitis, find Luke.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:13:51

  True.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:14:02

  Um, even, I assume, if they're overseas, it makes it all very… all very accessible. Um, okay, are you ready? Clear round, quick questions with no refusals, Luke. Um, what is your all-time favourite horse movie or book?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:14:07

  Yep.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:14:11

  Sure.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:14:15

  I had to think about this for a little bit, but as a kid, and like we sort of alluded to, my granddad got me into horses, and so a movie that we used to watch over and over again as kids was called The Cowboys with John Wayne.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:14:30

  It's really the fun angle.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:14:31

  I haven't seen that one, but did you aspire to be a cowboy at any point in time?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:14:32

  Yeah. I'll…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:14:36

  I, yes, I, yeah, I still have cowboy boots, so, um, yeah, I did want to be a cowboy at some point in my life, but, um, yes, I don't ride horses anymore. That's for my wife to do.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:14:47

  Well, your wife is a smart woman. It's always, they say, as a horse girl, it's always a good idea to marry a farrier, and she's got a vet and a farrier. So double, double points. What is one myth about laminitis you wish would disappear forever?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:14:54

  Yeah.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:15:03

  Oh…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:15:06

  He's got seven of them, he says.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:15:11

  The one the one I think that is is is probably, you know, most.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:15:17

  difficult to kind of deal with.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:15:21

  is, um…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:15:26

  I think…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:15:27

  A lot of people really still struggle with the concept that the deep digital flexor tendon, the tendon that runs down the back of the leg and inserts on the back of the pedal bone.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:15:40

  its role within laminitis. And, you know, unfortunately, for many years, we had one professor that was like, the deep digital flexor tendon has nothing to do with laminitis. But.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:15:53

  if we think about how the lower limb functions, you need to have a structural hoof wall, you need to have a lamellar attachment that attaches the wall to the bone, and a deep digital flexor tendon that stores energy. That's part of locomotion.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:16:11

  If we can't load the deep digital flexor tendon, the horse doesn't move forward. So if all those 3 things are interacting together along with the ground surface, everything's working okay.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:16:24

  If the horse develops laminitis, we get breakdown of that attachment. So what happens? The hoof wall, when it hits the ground, starts to go this way, while the deep digital flexor tendon starts to pull this way, and when they're in equilibrium and they're working together, they stay together. But once that lamellar attachment breaks down, all of a sudden we get this.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:16:46

  And so.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:16:47

  I think that's probably one of the biggest myths that and the things that people miss, and it really significantly impacts the long term rehabilitation of those cases, because once you understand the role of the deep visual flexor tendon.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:17:04

  it's not the whole thing, but then we can set up a shoeing package to help that horse long-term and get him out the other side. And so, for me, that's probably the biggest one that I deal with a lot of the times, and obviously with the internet and social media, everyone's got an opinion, and they're all experts now, which we all have to deal with, but.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:17:13

  Mmm…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:17:25

  You know, I think if you can get your head around that and how we can manipulate the deep digital flexor tendon through different types of shoes and providing heel elevation, reducing the, the path that the deep visual flexor tendon has to move through.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:17:41

  We can actually really get some significant rehabilitation for these cases.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:17:46

  Okay, and just because people can't see you when you were doing your hands, when Luke said the hoof ball goes this way and the pedal bone goes that way, the hoof ball was going up, the pedal bone was going down, and they were separating because the pull of that.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:17:49

  Oh, yeah, sorry.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:17:57

  Yes.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:18:00

  David, you're welcome.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:18:01

  Tendon, yeah, okay. Um…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:18:04

  It makes perfect sense to me.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:18:07

  Yeah.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:18:07

  So if something's.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:18:07

  I don't understand why some people, particularly some very smart individuals, couldn't quite get their head around it. They have now kind of gone, yeah, okay, maybe it does play a bit of a role, but, you know, like we talked about, different conformations, even within one horse, will develop different forms of laminitis based on their lower limb conformation, so…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:18:26

  Mm, mm-hmm, yep, no, it all makes, it all makes perfect sense. Um, if you could ride any horse, past or present, which horse would it be?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:18:34

  Ride one.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:18:37

  Pat one. Lead one. See one. He chooses. He goes, I don't really ever want to ride a horse again.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:18:37

  Mmm…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:18:48

  Like it.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:18:48

  if I could ride, it would be really cool to be able to ride our stallion, Sicario. I think that would be, like, an amazing experience, but yeah, that ain't no way you're gonna catch me up there.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:19:03

  Dressage horse, Luke?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:19:04

  I'm also… yeah, yeah, I'm also, like, partly afraid of heights, so, like, yeah, it's just not happening, you know.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:19:05

  Yep.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:19:09

  Yeah. Wow. Okay. Good answer. He'd rather stay on the ground. I have Barbaro in my head because I'm like, oh, if only we could have fixed him. He would have been. He would have been cool to ride. But, if hooves could talk, what would most horses hooves be complaining about?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:19:11

  Yeah, no.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:19:17

  Yeah.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:19:28

  In general.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:19:33

  I… I really think, you know, we're seeing it a little bit, you know, these things kind of go in waves, I reckon. We're seeing a little bit less of it now, but um…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:19:41

  I think overdressing and over trimming hooves, you know, significantly impacts them, you know, hoof health wise. And so, you know, there's there's always this sort of pressure from owners or whoever that.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:19:57

  You have to trim lots of hoof off. There needs to be a big pile there. You have to rasp the entire hoof wall so it looks completely clean. But actually, that doesn't help the horse long term. And, you know, we see it pretty frequently in winter when the hooves get really wet and the wall looks a little bit shabby.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:20:14

  You know, you pull the shoe off, and you just take the rasp, and you trim, you know, you sort of rasp the walls off, and make it look pretty, and it looks good for a few days, but then you come back the next cycle, it looks worse, because every time you hit that rasp on that.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:20:29

  out a hoof wall. You know, the hoof wall's a tubule, so you can imagine it's a straw, and the straw's coming out of the coronary band and coming down to the ground surface, and you take that rasp, and you just keep opening up that straw. You're opening it up down the length of it, and that weakens the tubules, which makes them more unhealthy, makes it difficult to hold shoes, and.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:20:32

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:20:48

  and those sorts of things. So over trimming and over dressing horses feet, I think a lot of horses would be like, Hey, you know, just take it down a notch.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:20:56

  Leave my hoof walls alone. So, over time, they would get quite thin, wouldn't they, if you're just constantly rasping off the top of the hoof wall?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:20:59

  Yes.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:21:05

  Yeah, particularly if you start at the coronary band and dress the whole foot down. Yes, you know.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:21:09

  Mmm, okay, and when you, when you say dress, like, to me, I'm thinking putting oils and stuff on, but no, you mean, like, using, rasping it.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:21:15

  But rasping, yeah. Yeah, you start your rasp at the coronary band and you go all the way to the ground surface. You know, for me, you know, rasping the bottom third lightly, you know, around where all the old nail holes. One makes the hoof look a little bit nicer, but then, you know, it…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:21:30

  It's not deteriorating the whole hoof capsule, you know, like, the further up you start, the longer it takes for it to grow down, so…

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:21:34

  Mmm.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:21:38

  And my favourite question of every interview I do, if you had two minutes with every horse owner in the world, what would you tell them?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:21:48

  Ah, what would I tell him?

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:21:54

  I think…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:22:00

  spend money on.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:22:02

  learning how to ride your horse.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:22:06

  I think that is the best piece of advice that I could give people, especially now, where we're using horses for enjoyment, not for a job.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:22:15

  Mmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:22:18

  So if you enjoy riding horses, become the best horse rider that you can be, because that's going to save you a lot of heartache and a lot of issues later on down the track. Like, you know, whether it's.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:22:32

  a lameness that could have been prevented, whether it's, you know, you're not riding a horse and it develops insulin dysregulation and it gets laminitis, you know, it's… it just has so many flow-on effects. So, if you have a budget and.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:22:48

  You know, toss out all the kooky stuff that's in your feed room, and, you know, think, you know…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:22:54

  talk to Nerida and make a plan for your horse's diet, but learn how to ride your horse, and that's going to save you a lot of time and a lot of money in the future.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:23:07

  Um, and it's gonna really help you out, and you're gonna enjoy owning a horse, because if you don't learn how to ride, and this is coming from me, who just said, you know, I'm not gonna learn to ride my stallion, but at the same time, it's like, if you spend money, find a coach, go there regularly, commit time.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:23:25

  you will become a better rider, you will become a better horse person, and you'll enjoy the whole experience way more than if you're spending all this money on all this other stuff, and you're trying to get this, and the next gadget, and that's gonna make my life better. No, think about.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:23:41

  how you're interacting with the horse, and learn to ride, get fit, and just start being part of that horse's life, and be consistent with them. So that's…

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:23:51

  you know, outside of all the knowledge that I know about laminitis, and horses' feet, and lameness, and all the rest of it, the thing that I see the most is, you know, because I do a lot of telehealth, and I watch a lot of people ride.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:24:03

  you know, I think if you really hone your skill as being a rider, a lot of the other stuff goes away. The… because you're riding correctly, the horse feels better, it has confidence in you, doesn't feel lame, it doesn't develop a lameness, it stays fit, it stays healthy.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:24:10

  Hmm.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:24:21

  You know, all of these things are huge flow on effects.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:24:24

  I love… I love that leak, and… and yeah, it's… I mean, I'm not a… I'm not a brilliant rider. I ride, but I… I do see, you know, people in your profession talking about the… the negative impact of the way people ride on… on the horse. I think… I mean, it's beautiful advice. Go out and enjoy your horse, but do it… do it in the best possible way.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:24:44

  you can. Thank you for being who you are, and thank you for doing what you do for all of the horses that you interact with, and thank you so much for your time today and coming on and being one of our podcast guests. It's been a lot of fun, Luke.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:24:45

  No worries.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:24:58

  No worries. Great to be here. It was a lot of fun.

  [Nerida McGilchrist] 11:25:00

  And I'm off to check the fat pads over my horse's eyes. Amazing. Thank you, Luke.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:25:03

  Yes.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:25:05

  You better.

  [Luke Wells-Smith] 11:25:09

  No, that's cool.

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