In terms of swelling up, beet pulp is worse than alfalfa pellets/cubes. Feeding either in a herd situation can make it worse as the dominate horse will always consume more than they need or can process safely.
With cubes, a fast eater can suffer a choking problem and a few people put bigger rocks in the feed pan so the horse has to work around them to get enough to eat.
A lot of these problems come about because the owner switches to those feeds during hunting season with out letting the horse get accustom to them slowly.In addition, usually in a hunting camp and the fact that the horse loses a lot more water in the form of sweat, they don't get enough to drink. In some cases, people can feed pellets cubes with no problems, but you will most likely never have a problem if you soak them first. It doesn't hurt anything , but sure helps.
As for shoeing, you shoe for protection, traction or to correct a conformation or medical/injury problems. It is not correct to compare our mostly pasture pets with mustangs as the mustangs don't carry the extra weight of a rider, and the weaker footed ones got bred out a long time ago. I have seen some fat wild mustangs that have never had their teeth floated, but they don't get to eat the processed feed or grain that we feed our stock, so their teeth wear more naturally, but they sure don't live to be 25 -30 years old like our horses/mules do.
Some horses and particularly mules can go without shoes their whole life. I have a 16-18 year old mule I got from Jeanne Horne this year(J Bar H Outfitter) that has never had shoes on it. However, the other one I got from her, I shoed with toes/heels/borium as I wanted to have the traction on ice and rocks
There are some that profess if you trim them right ( natural trimming) you never have to shoe them, but put those same nags on the decomposed granite that we have around here and you will have some bloody feet in less than 10 miles.
Too bad about that mare though. Horses are like kids, there are no prerequisites that a person is required to have.
Last edited by saddlesore; 10/14/14.
