Cavallo Hoof Boot Review: First Impression

I use hoof boots on my mule’s hooves instead of steel shoes. I’ve done so for years, working my way up from boots I made with stuff I found in a dumpster, to the store bought kind. I use Easy Boots and Renegades.

This week hoof boot manufacturer Cavallo sent me 4 boots for my mule Brick. The timing was perfect. I was short 4 boots so Cavallo’s Treks came at the perfect time.

Thanks guys!

Heading Out in my New Cavallos

I strapped my new mule duds on Brick’s feet, lashed my chainsaw to mule Polly’s pack saddle and took off up the mountain. It was time to saw up that tree that had fallen across the trail.

Our farm is in the Foothills of North Carolina, 20 miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway. Mostly forested, it’s covered in stands of old growth red and white oak, white pine, poplar, maple and some hemlock. Winding through the forest are access roads used for logging and hunting access.

Thing is, if you have roads and trees, it’s only a matter of time until a tree falls across a road.

Sure, you could pile your chainsaw on to your tractor and putt-putt up the hill and do the job that way. But that’s not nearly as fun as doing it with a mule.

Which is why this morning, we clip clopped up the hill in our new hoof boots so we could drop a poplar tree that had fallen across one of our roads.

While downed trees aren’t a big deal on secondary trails, we try to keep our main roads open. Later this month, we’re seeding the stretch of road blocked by the fallen tree. There’s enough room under the tree for a mule to pass but not a tractor and seeder. It’s just gotta go.

After the tree was dropped we climbed back on to our mules and rode up to the orchard. The trees are young. They’re from this area: Arkansas Blacks, Winesaps and Limbertwigs. Julia and I just sat and looked in to the southern range. Soaked up the silence. Took in the sun’s low morning slant, summer’s geometric not toward fall.

This is why we didn’t take the tractor to cut that tree.

Then we reined our mules down the mountain, toward the rest of the day and breakfast.
Thanks again for the hoof boots, Cavallo. They survived their first mission just great.
More about Cavallo’s Trek hoof boots here.

The Mother of All Hoof Boot Reviews

After I wrote this post, Julia and I rode three mules from our farm in North Carolina to Virgina and back. We used three different kinds of hoof boots, including the Cavallos as well as Easy Boots and Renegades. After we got back home, I wrote up how each of the boots performed. Here’s the link to the most thorough hoof boot report you’ll probably ever read: