Farrier's annual income

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If the farrier is a good one they get well over £70000 turnover my farrier is nearing £200000 turnover

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A farrier would HAVE to 'turnover' £70,000 to make a decent living. Out of that comes ALL his costs: transport, fuel, tools, equipment, gas for the forge etc. etc. etc. He also has to have insurances, perhaps pay Apprentices and put time into training them, AND allow for those weeks/months he CAN'T work because some client's ill-mannered horse has broken his leg!! (And of course pay 40% tax on what's left after all costs are claimed!)
 
Me and my otherhalf dont live in a huge house, we have a two bed bungalow, and i have only one horse and believe it or not, thats all i can afford.

I wish he's turnover was £200000 a year lol, he works very hard for what he does get and he deserves it all.

He is in pain alot of the time, even to the point where he has to sleep on the floor to keep his back straight.
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And hes only 28 years old. Yes it is his choice to do the job, i just wanted to say, no matter how much they earn, they are worth it.

One farrier i know on the other hand is loaded, and this is because he has a huge mortgage to pay each month, and he has to get the money, no matter how fast he has to shoe each horse
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I would not NOT declare my income because the tax man would have me for it... like a proverbial ton of bricks. they are not stupid and neither am i.
I mainly get paid in cash. It makes no difference.

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I was talking to my farrier about this post last night (in the chiropractors waiting room
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) and he told me that because the farriery act is an animal welfare act shoe wholesalers are not allowed to sell shoes to anyone who is not qualified to apply them (farrier or vet) as they could be deemed to be aiding and abetting a criminal act. Also as shoes are sold by the box of 10 pairs (for instance) not by weight, it's relatively easy for the Inland Revenue to cross-check what stocks of shoes a farrier is purchasing and come down on them if there are major discrepancies in what they were selling.
 
Well would you not take into consideration the following.
Travel time between each client.
Cost of shoes
Petrol
Insurance both in transit goods and public liabilty for the year.
Tax and NI
Gas for the forge
wear and tear on the van
cost of nails and rasps
Cost of clothing ie chaps
and the general shelf life of a farrier as their backs are normally shot by time there 40.
4 years to qualify
But yes your probally right around the 40 to 60k plus a year however this is not what ends up in the wage packet. Unless you have a dodge farrier who does not pay his dews to the tax man. what more can I say if there a good one and you are happy to pay the going rate, they return your call and turn up on time is always a bonus where were concerned. good old saying no foot no horse.
No farrier no ride.




perryhillbay said:
I was googling what a UK farriers annual income is last night, and I found something saying that a qualified farrier earns around £16000 per year, but an experienced farrier could earn up to £30000. wtf? Surely they are earn waaaaaaay more than that?

My old farrier I'm sure had a portfolio of 15 houses and was going balls-out ot be able to retire and live off the income from these houses at 35. When I say that, I mean that he worked LONG hours and put a lot of effort in, but still must have been raking it in.

Does anyone have an idea? I would have put a farrier on more like £60k per year, maybe more, depending on the amount of clients?
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ok lets do a little math shall we
to earn in turn over 200k this man would be putting on 12 sets a day at 60 pound a set. fair play if he is as he must be young and fit.
Based on the fact a set should take an hour roughly. with travelling he'd be working 15 hour days 5 days a week, I would guess he is single and very tired, but good luck to him if thats what his business demands he must be excellent. fair play.
 
:)good comment
we live in a average house and live a average but not lavish life style, most of the farriers wives I know all work for many reasons to support there husband and family and out of pure bordom as the devils are always at work lol.
Its also like having a dripping tap and being married to a plumber we even have to book our horses in for there shoes :(.
My hubby works long hours in the wet and mud, do these horse owners think to get their horses in half hour early and dry there legs off in the winter no. do they catch there horses in time or just turn up at the field when the farrier is due, mostly. And to add farriers hand after a few weeks of mud commit a complete crime to any girls pair of tights.
In the summer they get bitten by the flys !! in the winter the fight against the short hours of the day light. But yes a gr8 life if you can hack it.
In addition there is always a woman who want your life style and want to run off with your man. your man smells like a burnt horse every day not quite Calvin Klien.!! the washing machine is on over drive.
Oh to be married to a farrier.:confused:
 
I have a friend who is a farrier and not only does he have a bad back his hands also hurt from all the hammering!

It is a job which is highly skilled and I would suggest you wouldn't be able to keep up with the demands of a full diary as you get older due to the physical demands. So you need to earn while you can.

No sick pay isn't easy either when you are doing a relatively dangerous job.

In my opinion they earn every penny.... :)
 
goodhoof said:
:)good comment

In addition there is always a woman who want your life style and want to run off with your man. your man smells like a burnt horse every day not quite Calvin Klien.!! the washing machine is on over drive.
Oh to be married to a farrier.:confused:
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This is the bit I wouldn't be able to cope with, I think all you wives do well put up with it without being paranoid . I would imagine that any farrier would be fair game in the eyes of the horsey ladies who want their horses shoeing for free and assume a wealthy lifestyle. OH son's best friend is a farrier and has women fawning over him everywhere he goes to shoe, some old enough to know better as he is only young.
I reckon if you worked out the hours put in, including making shoes for those that make their own, their hourly rate won't be that impressive!
 
B+ll++KS to all this ,I cant put a price on the service my farrier and his tag team who used to shoe Lancelot gave me. Lance was plain dangerous and the yard farrier had blacklisted him . As my farrier said, I cant blame him ,he is a one man band and lance could put him out of business. The truth is a bit more complicated .I think ,because when he took Lance on ,Dave knew him of old it was a case of facing an old friend/enemy.I think maybe the price you pay for being the best is to shoe what comes up. Farriers, RESPECT!!
 
My dad was a farrier and trust me we werent loaded! ours were always the last to be shod
He did however shoe faster than those on here, an hour to do one set??! he was 61 when he knocked on his last set,and still did it quicker than that and he had been shoeing all his life! could quite easily whittle it down to 30 min if not less per set if the horses were stood there ready and were quiet.
Its hard work, his hands were rough, he smelt of "farrier" and would come home filthy, sometimes battered and bruised and starving hungry after working from dawn till dusk. He was happy though, and had some good customers and some not so great.
you telling me that getting the horse in and ready with dry legs (not even neccesarily clean!) is difficult, that being there on time once every 8 weeks is impossible and that having the cash in your hand is too much to ask.

Mum always forbid me from being a farrier, now i begin to appreciate why-- he was always left with the crackpots to sort out and get shoes on (no matter what injurys- i remember him being branded with a shoe on his belly when it struck out, when he broke his arm after the woman let the horse pin him up against a gate, and expected her horse to be clenched up before he went to hospital, when a different one tied the horse to a bowser full of water, which the horse pulled onto my dad (a tonne of water and a horse attached and he still went to work after; ended up taking bute!) lost teeth, numerous broken fingers/toes, far too many other things to mention!, last one to get paid, blathered up, no time to eat etc

the skill is amazing, its the public you've got to watch out for!
 
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When I read about all these terrible clients, I get now why my farrier is happy to make the 110 mile trip to my yard every 6 weeks...
The horses are clean and ready, there is coffee and bacon sarnies on tap, the shoeing area is in the barn, on level concrete with good light and if he's getting cold, I pop the heat lamps on for him :D
I don't know how much he earns or how much money he has, he doesn't know how much money I have - it's none of our business, really. What I do know is that he does either 8 sets a day, 5 days a week or 20 trims, or a combination (of course) - he doesn't think he could do any more and still do a good job. He said to me that he tried to cram as many horses as he could once, and he started to resent the horses and the job, he could never be on time, always tired, always rushing and getting short tempered - it wasn't worth it, so he cut down the numbers and is no worse off, he does much better job and can charge more.
 
Mike007 said:
LOL like they work for a living,. Few old school vets left .
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I have one of those, one man band, been specialising in equines for 40 years, I dread the day he retires. He phoned me Christmas morning to check on the progress of a horse he'd treated the day before, if I'd needed him he would have been out.

I have a lovely, lovely, Farrier and as far as I am concerned he deserves every cent he manages to bank (and keep)
 
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There's a big difference between Turn over and Salary.

I am a self employed dog groomer with a salary. My first year I opened I turned over about £45k but took zero as salary. These days I turn over about £60k, and while you might think that I take the difference of £15k as a salary, but with the out goings (rent, rates, utils etc) going much higher, I take significantly less than that as a salary.

I had a client ask me how many dogs per day I groom - I told him anywhere from 4-8 (depending on size and depth of work per dog). He did the calculation in his head of: oooh, you charge £38 per dog (what I charge him for HIS dog) x 6 per day = you must be rolling in it! I laughed at him.
 
I suppose it depends whether they are honest to the tax man..... which I find unlikely tbh! My farriers children all go to private school so he must be earning a fair mint! Saying that though he does have some serious clients with big event yards and at £85 a set I'm sure he is raking it in....
 
goodhoof said:
ok lets do a little math shall we
to earn in turn over 200k this man would be putting on 12 sets a day at 60 pound a set. fair play if he is as he must be young and fit.
Based on the fact a set should take an hour roughly. with travelling he'd be working 15 hour days 5 days a week, I would guess he is single and very tired, but good luck to him if thats what his business demands he must be excellent. fair play.
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The farrier who came to my old yard used to routinely put on 8-10 sets of shoes in one visit, minimum perhaps of 6 on a bad week as well as doing trims on ponies etc (it was a big yard) and he had this fixture every week of the year. He definitely didn't spend anything like an hour per horse, perhaps half that. I reckon that his single visit to our yard, where he was usually gone by lunchtime or shortly after, netted him a minimum of £500 every time. I understand he has costs to take into account as well as travel time, but that is still a fairly good hourly rate!
 
I hope in honesty they do earn more than 30k a year. They deserve it. My farrier works more hours a day than anyone I know just about. My OH works 9-5 and gets paid more than that. In the summer my farrier works 12 hour days. And it's not like it's an unskilled labourer's job either.

Presumably farriers who do big yards earn more as they have to spend less time travelling?

I don't know how much they earn but even if it is 60k a year they deserve every penny. Plenty of professionals earn that and they don't get kicked and trampled at the same time.
 
My farrier is a genius. I know he is definitely quite well off but it is not directly from shoeing horses...He along with two other farriers owns a company that makes shoes. I have previously said to him that as mine is the only one in our yard that he does feel free to tell me it's too much hassle. My OH's farrier is lovely and very good but I just love the way my farrier does Dol's feet and am loathe to change. My farrier's response was that he had no problem making the time to come and do my one even though it is the only one in the yard and a bit out of his way as he knew she was well behaved and that he always gets paid, and he knows that I will give him at least 10 days notice (as much as possible) One thing he does which I think is very clever is that because he covers such a vast area him and another few farriers have a kind of unofficial alliance where if one of their customers needs just one shoe replaced and they are out of the area for the day they'll get in contact with one of the others who is in the area and get it done. Customer is happy, farriers are happy! I think a bit like any industry, a farrier who is a good business man will make far more than one who isn't.
 
I'd guess it depends. Somewhere like Gloucestershire, Newmarket, Lambourn, other high horse density areas with large yards it will be a LOT more than somewhere with fewer horses, smaller yards etc, etc. 6 visits a day sounds about right, obviously some will be 1 horse, some will be 3 or 4. Certainly my OH doesn't get through more than 6-7 visits (vet) in a "normal" day - i.e. routine stuff, including travelling. He'd get through more if there was a zoned visit system in place, which works a lot better in a high density area. SA vets plan to see 6+ each hour consulting!

Obviously if you're shoeing racehorses in newmarket, you can probably shoe all day, relatively light horses (albeit skittish) without travelling more than a mile, and you'd probably do a yard a day or something like that, so you'd earn quite a lot for relatively less overhead than someone based in Devon, Scotland or Cornwall...
 
I have complete respect for my farrier and if he has the same amount of money in his pocket after tax and expenses as I do at the end of every month then that respects goes up even more.
How many of us here turn up to work to find it dirty, wet and without facilities? I don't so I make sure my boy has clean dry feet, the kettle is on and everything ready for when my farrier turns up... and at Christmas (or this Friday if the dates went completely wrong over the festive spell) he gets a bottle or two to say thank you for struggling out to me in all kinds of weather :)
 
It's the barefoot farriers that must make the best return as less outgoings.

Highly skilled but at £28 per trim per horse and my 3 are done in about an hour thats £84 an hour, then off down the road to the next my chap can't be doing badly ! He does one area a day to reduce travelling time and has stopped doing shoeing to concentrate on the barefoot stuff. He also does a big barefoot dressage yard near here and a big Western yard a bit further away .

He is very worth it but I don't think he is on the bread line. Although he won't talk numbers when I tease him about how loaded he is LOL
 
just like to point out to you that since registration came in for farriers the days of not declaring income has finished . we have to prove registration before we are allowed to buy shoes and nails . shoes are easily lost through the books so some wise arse came up with the idea that we should buy nails by the number , it used to be by weight in the old days . the taxman sussed us out with the help of the old registrar ,
chris
 
Friend of mine is a very good farrier in a very horsey area (Cotswolds) But i reckon he must be pulling in more like 300k not 30k! Fair play to him though he deserves it because he works very hard indeed!
 
I WISH it was 200k, we live in a 2 bedroom house with a small garden. My OH has one day off a week if he's lucky and people call him at all hours of the day and night- seriously 7am for a lame horse or 10pm for a lost shoe! Someone once called him at 7pm on a saturday night as her horse had lost a shoe and she was going to a show the next day (not even a client- she couldn't get hold of her own farrier...wonder why) He went at 7am on Sunday morning and she was huffing about paying £25. I get back way before him in the summer, make dinner and he falls asleep on the sofa (how romantic). In winter he's home before me (sleeping on the sofa) but the mud ingrained in his hands lasts til spring! He probably makes around 35k all in after tax/insurance/fuel/materials and he's even got his further qualifications so that he can do remedial shoeing. I wouldn't do it, I like my nice clean office where the clients aren't usually trying to stand on your foot or kick you in the leg.
 
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