Farrier Training

[Hal]

Hello all,

Though my main career goal is to use draft horses in farming, I am interested in getting some training in farriery so that I could shoe my own horses if necessary or do some shoeing for others. Does anyone have experience with getting farrier training from schools or internships? Any thoughts about whether on the job or school training is better, and which schools are worth the money?

Thanks much.

[aaronlee]

Hal if you go to http://www.horseshoes.com you should be able to get all your question answered. Bruce Mathews is also listed here somewhere and you could talk to him.

Aaron

[Hal]

Aaronlee, thanks for the link. I will look over it and search the web some more. However, I am still curious to hear if anyone on the forum has personal experience trying to get farrier training. Anyone been through this search process before?

[firebrick43]

I was looking into becoming a farrier after my stint in the marine corps and before I finished my service I spent a lot of time working with a fellow that used to be a college professor at CalPoly in CA teaching the farrier trade. Because of the enviroment in SoCal he made an extremely good living but the enviroment there is different than anywhere else. Any how, other than being a close neighbor and good friend, I spent probably a good 200 hours trimming horses/learning with him and initially had every intention of pursuing the trade. Since he had one several competitions and was considered a master farrier(certified journeyman) by AFA I asked him the schools he recommended.

One was the Sierra Horseshoeing school in Bishop California. I actually visited this school and the instructors were welcoming, knowledgeable, and you had plenty of horses to learn on, although many were rank range horses. But that is part of the education to learn how to handle them.

The other two were the heartland school in Misery, I mean Missouri
and one in Oklahoma, I believe Oklahoma State but am not positive on the last one.

I moved to indiana where there is not the potential to make a living as a farrier and found that being 6’2″ is not a good trait to have bending over and picking up feet. Plus it plain scarred me to see how crippled up the fellows in there 50’s get after doing it for 30 years.

I personally don’t have much need for shoes on my horses as our indiana clay soil is not hard on their feet and I don’t do an appreciatively amount of road work. I also wont own a horse with poor feet that need shoes, so I trim my own with what I learned already and good study of horse feet anatomy and reading many books on the subject.

Most schools offer 4,8,and 12 week courses. If you just want to trim your own I would recommend a 4 week course, if you need to shoe for a living, get the 12 week course, and get AFA certified, the small cost up front will reap rewards down the road. And never undersell your work, people wont respect you for it and you will struggle in the long run.

[Jared Ashley]

i am a farrier, and i attended Heartland Horseshoeing School in Missouri. I would highly recommend it. you need a solid understanding of anatomy before you should be trimming feet. while any good school should give you this, equally important is the knowledge and experiences that you will gain with an apprenticeship. i wish i had spent more direct time with a mentor before i went out on my own. but, like everyone here in the horse logging industry that is willing to help each other out, i have several guys that will help me out when i run into something i haven’t seen before. best of luck to you.

[Author]

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