I have an pair out in the barn that are a duplicate of what you have posted. My father had used them to trim the hooves of farm animals. When the sheep and goats are locked in for the winter their hooves do not get worn down as they would in the summer time so we would have to trim them back around spring time. Not sure if that is the purpose they were made for, but that what we always had used them on. We used different pruning shears for the trees and other vegetation.