Eyes only OX shoe?

[Ladybird66]

I've never seen anyone turn up a 'brass' horse shoe from a working horse or copper shoe nails. They were only used in specialised places but presume due to metal value they were recycled. Would be a different and interesting find.

Never heard of brass shoes or copper nails but s’pose it could make sense. I know copper bits were used. Something in the copper that calmed fractious horses. Still used today but in much smaller amounts known as ‘rollers’ fitted in the middle of the mouth piece.
Wonder if they had anything to do with Rheumatism or Arthritis

[DaveP]

Brass shoes (copper zinc alloy), brass nails or boots with copper nails were used in coal mines and munitions areas to avoid sparks from steel shoes and nails.
You can get copper coated horseshoe nails nowadays as supposed to help prevent fungal infections but the data is a little spurious. Never been a fan of rollers.

[Saffron]

Brass shoes (copper zinc alloy), brass nails or boots with copper nails were used in coal mines and munitions areas to avoid sparks from steel shoes and nails.
You can get copper coated horseshoe nails nowadays as supposed to help prevent fungal infections but the data is a little spurious. Never been a fan of rollers.

In the case of the pit ponies they rarely saw the light of day, so any brass shoes that they lost would have been underground and I suspect recyled. On the rare occasions that they were turned out into the fields it could well be that the shoes were removed beforehand.
I would guess that the ones in the munitions areas were confined to a small area, where again any lost shoes would be seen and recycled.

These are very different situations to the normal horse that is out in a field of grass where a lost shoe is hard to find or even in olden days where if pulling a plough the lost shoe would immediately be burried. So its not surprising that we never find the brass shoes (I have never heard of one being found) yet frequently find the normal ones.

I am not convinced about copper coated nails preventing fungal infection, good stable management should do that.

FYI: As for the modern halfshoes mentioned earlier I saw an item where it recommended them for use in snow, as it prevented balling of compact snow in the hoof which can be dangerous.

Evan

[Pete E]

In the case of the pit ponies they rarely saw the light of day, so any brass shoes that they lost would have been underground and I suspect recyled. On the rare occasions that they were turned out into the fields it could well be that the shoes were removed beforehand.


Evan

My old fella worked in the mines as a child after school, Saturdays and School holidays and one of his early jobs was looking after the pit ponies.

As I understand it they were stabled underground and only saw day light very briefly, if at all, most days...

The only time they were on the surface, on grass, for any length of time was the two week summer shut down at the end of which they were complete buggers to catch as they not surprisingly did not want to go back underground.