I remember some heavy horses being shoed at the blacksmiths when I was about five or six. They used a big '*******' file and a very strong sharp short bladed knife to remove the hoof before fitting the shoe which was applied heated and then nailed into place. A dying art.
The cage shown above Chris, is that yours or supplied by a practitioner?
The hoof man brings his own contraption, the one in the photos is all hydraulic and supports the beast under its stomach with a wide strap, turns the animal horizontal, so it's on its side with its hooves at a convenient height, then the operator locks all four legs in place in rubber lined stirrups.
I would imagine a human version would be popular in some of the more up market and imaginative sado masochist dungeons
It's a complex contraption, whoever designed them was very innovative. I would imagine they aren't in any way cheap! The little curved knife they use to do the more delicate work is as you suggest, fearsomely sharp.
Dairy cattle don't need much if any hoof trimming as they usually walk on concrete twice a day into the milking parlours, and are used to being handled and the noise of machinery. They also aren't kept alive until eighteen or more!
Hamish the bull and his ladies are always on grass, and aren't used to being handled by strangers, so it needs some real caution. I've seen Hamish toss a very big dog at least ten feet in the air as if it were a football, I can only imagine the damage he could do a person if he got really stroppy.
He's usually pretty docile, but you don't take liberties with cattle, especially ones with horns, in fact calm ones can be worse than the nutters, as you build up a false sense of security around them. Then they catch you off guard...
The wife was like that, kept insisting Hamish was fine and wouldn't harm a fly. Until he chased her across the field one evening and showed her just how terrifying the best part of a ton of muscle in full flight can be. Now she is very wary of him, which is as it should be! They are very pretty cattle though.
I'd quite like a Belted Galloway, but I'm getting too old, it would almost certainly outlive us both unless we got an older one.
