Why I’m secretly watching videos on the internet

I could spend less time on the internet, but I could spend more time there too. See, I’m not addicted. It’s just that there is such interesting stuff on the internet. You can learn a lot. My latest interest is watching videos of cows getting their hooves trimmed. I know it sounds boring, but it’s not.

I’m not a farm girl, so I never knew what problems these poor cows could have with their hooves. They walk around all day in piles of manure and that can’t be good. Then they suffer from stepping on things that can get stuck in their hooves. And then that can cause all sorts of problems.

Then that leads to me uncontrollably watching Nate the Hoof Guy on social media whenever one of his videos appears. There are now a host of other hoof videos popping up on my wall too thanks to those wonderful algorithms that give you more of whatever you are watching.

Anyway, I find myself snacking and watching these gross videos of hoof trims at the same time. It’s not really a good thing to do.

My face contorts into all kinds of disgust as Nate cuts into a black area of a hoof and reveals a large patch of what looks like mud inside the hoof. Augh! That poor animal. Even worse, many times an infected liquid oozes from the site. Oh, yuck! It’s like a train wreck, you can’t look away.

Hooves can be a mystery because sometimes the problem is layers deep inside the hoof. I’m grimacing just thinking about it. The hoof is sometimes called the hoof horn and there are a lot more terms, but I can’t keep up with them all yet.

One term known as the frog, is the triangular pad in the center of the hoof. The hoof guy will check these for signs of infection and all kinds of other stuff like sticks and rocks can get stuck in their hooves.

To do this safely, the hoof guy puts the cows into a hoof trimming chute to keep them contained and he gets out his tools.

A curved blade is the most common tool and allows the farrier (hoof guy) to follow the concave shape of the foot while scrapping away any hoof problems. Knives also have a curved section at the bottom. They last for years, but due to constant sharpening, need to be replaced eventually. Grinders are also used to care for hooves.

I’m shocked that the hoof trims do not involve much cleaning of the manure from the cow’s feet. They just trim off the bad part. Then they spray this antiseptic stuff on it and put a white powder called salicylic acid on the spot to treat bacterial and antifungal infections like digital dermatitis, which to give an example of what I found when I looked it up is hairy heel warts. That sounds disgusting.

Sometimes a plastic looking hoof block is glued to an undamaged hoof to take the pressure off a damaged hoof on the same foot. Then an elastic self-adhesive bandage is used to wrap up the cleaned and reshaped hoof and off the cow goes traipsing through more manure on their way out of the barn.

See I’m learning a lot.

I’ve got my phone on mute because I don’t want my husband, Joe, to know I’m secretly watching hoof trim videos.

Joe doesn’t have his own social media; he just creeps on mine. He put in a lot of effort one night in making these hoof videos disappear. He knows all about gross hoof problems from past experience working in a barn and found the videos to be more than he wanted to see. He knew I’d thank him for making these videos gone. Not really.

After a few days, Nate the Hoof Guy videos started showing up again. I couldn’t help but click on one and then another and another. There must be a 12-step program for me to detox somewhere. But, maybe later, a new hoof trim video just popped up.