For anyone who has ever wondered

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TheFarrier

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What it is we spend five years learning. Here is a very simplistic list that i created for a member on here who was interested in the difference in training between a farrier and a barefoot trimmer.

I have ommited a few things from the list and simplified a few things but i hope this helps. A lot of what we learned was done under the guidance of our ATF. They cemented in a practical fashion the theory we learned at the college. I hope that people seriously dont believe the myth that we dont know how to trim a horse.

We do a one year (what they call) access course where we learn blacksmithing (which includes shoe and tool making which are then honed over the following four years).

Then for the next four years its a combination of our apprenticship and college.

College you learn

veterinary- Everything from the skeleton to the skin (joints, muscles, veins, tendons, bone nutrition, neck and back, internal organs, dentition) wounds, condition, ailments, Equine nutrition, conformation and movement (and faults), lameness, brushing to thrush to forging to stumbling to bursitis to spavins to seedy toe, blood and circulation, lymphatic system, biotin, laminitis, navicular and a few more things i didnt feel like copying down. The veterinary text book has 60 sections.

Anatomy (extra attention to the hoof and lower limbs) - osteology, arthrology (study of joints), skin, hoof capsule (everything in the hoof), laminae (sensitive structures of the foot), blood (arteries, veins and nerves), tendons and ligaments, physial cartlidges (growth plates), the foot - external and internal structures function and growth. Development of wall sole and frog. Suspensory apparatus. Nutrition and the foot.

Shoeing theory - professional conduct, horse breeds colours and markings (to make sure we shoe the right horse)
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, assessing angles and balance, ailments and corrections (thrush, corns, cracks, conformation (+limb deformities, forging, brushing, over reaching, contraction), foot axis, gait, foot management, shoe wear, laminitis, curbs/spavins/windgalls/thoroughpin/side and ring bone/splints/tendon injuries/navicular/etc, trimming, shoeing, remedial trimming and shoeing.

then while not at college you spend five days a week working under an ATF (accredited training farrier who is someone who has taken an exam in order to teach others) here you will learn all the above and put it into practice. Your ATF is the one who teahces you about trimming, shoeing, client relations, etc in a more practical fashion. My old boss for instance worked us from 8am til 5pm (or anytime he wanted us to finish. We didnt stop for lunch. We didnt get bank holidays. And not only did i get to learn from him but from the other farrier still working for him.

A quote from one of my text books: Farriers shoe horses not feet.

I hope this is found to be useful and helpful to anyone who is interested.

Please excuse any spelling or typo errors i really dont have time to go back and check.
 
Good post. Hopefully it will reassure people that a very long formal training course does actually count for something and actually has rather a lot of content!

As I have said previously, the bashing given to vets and farriers on this forum by very vocal but mostly untrained pseudo-para-profesionals is very tedious and largely uncalled for. Posts like this go someway towards disproving what they say without sinking to their level.
 
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Does an ATF have to keep more up to date than a 'normal' farrier?

Thanks for this post ... very interesting
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All farriers are required to do a minimum of ten points a year for CPD. continual professional development.

ATFs included. Infact my boss used to take us to a lot of such events! he is also the secretary of the local farrier club where the boys get together once a month and have various training evenings. I dont live near him anymore though
 
My farrier will definately get his bottle of rum(bought for Xmas and forgot to give it to him) next time I see him, I keep forgetting. I never really appreciated how hard it is to become a farrier.

Thanks for taking the time to explain.
 
Using a farrier that has aprentices and getting to know them well, I was amazed at the theory they do on anatomy etc. I personally would never use someone with little or no training to do any of my horses feet (barefoot trimmers)- especially my youngsters. My farrier is brilliant and so full of helpful info. A much underated profession!!

Thanks to all the farriers out there!!
 
QR.. thanks for that TheFarrier, i could never work out why anyone would let an untrained person near their horses feet, when i spoke to my farrier about it she was most p-d off to hear that some people consider that five years of training means you still can't trim properly.
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I 'knew' that the training was hard work - but I didn't appreciate how in depth you had to go, i.e the veterinary side of things. I assumed you would learn just on confo and hooves!
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I always value my farriers opinion. One day I picked Sammi's feet out and I found a nail angled through his sole, down into his frog. I was horrified, went to ring the vet and then it dawned on me, who knows ALL about hooves... the farrier! Thought I would try him first, and then see what he thought about if Sammi needed the vet.
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Rang him and he came out, said it was safe to remove the nail, which he did for me, thoroughly cleaned the puncture out and poulticed for 5 days, bunged remaining hole with stockholme tar, and it was fine! Luckily I didn't need the vet! God I love my farrier!
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Good to meet you TheFarrier - all hoofcare professionals should have good working relationships

It's such a pity that the trimmer vs farrier perception is out there and being perpetuated - there is such a lot to learn from each other.
 
Rudey - my last horse had an almost identical injury to yours - I called the vet. Guess what? He removed it, left me to clean it and poultice it! Job done I guess but I bet at twice the price!

Fwiw - I would trust my farrier over the vet any day regarding foot issues - its what they specifically trained to do!
 
Now I am going to make you really mad.... It didn't cost me a penny either
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My farrier wouldn't accept any money for it!
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So the next time he was out I bought him a crate of budweiser!!
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Saved me a tonne of money! Pleased I didn't need the vet as JUST the call out to us 'out of hours' is £56 (including VAT), so I was a happy bunny, as I still had an outstanding £200 vet bill from the week before to pay lol! xx
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A lot of what we learned was done under the guidance of our ATF. They cemented in a practical fashion the theory we learned at the college.

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Including a kick up the a*se if you got it wrong!
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My farrier is an ATF - he employs one other qualified farrier and has two apprentices - and boy - do they have to work to meet his high standards. The senior apprentice, starting his 3rd year, is allowed to do 'bits' of the shoeing process (removing shoes, preparing feet etc and EVERY stage is checked. Even his trims on youngstock he is checked and checked again, asked questions, gets bo**ocked for the wrong answers and made to 'think again'. It's a tough, hard training and while I would be prepared to trust senior apprentice to shoe a straight forward set of feet unsupervised, my ATF farrier doesn't! He's a hard task master - as he should be!

And he is very happy to trim horses to be ridden barefoot if I wish (I tend not to!
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) And to make him even more perfect, he's 100% reliable!
 
Good grief I had always presumed that barefoot trimmers were farriers who had just decided to specialize in barefoot. NOT someone who is 'trained' completely separate from a 'true farrier'

Just shows how wrong you can be. Its actually quite scary as I would normally consider myself a well informed horse owner.

I think I was a little 'protected' in my little world by the fact I knew it was illegal for someone to shoe a horse that was not a trained farrier so I presumed this included trimming

Oh well now I know....so thanks!!!!!

I will stick to my normal farrier in that case, as I have never had reason to worry about his work and he is always on time, polite and helpful
 
Remember soulful - there are some really great trimmers out there who are incredibly well informed and do a fantastic job, often on horses that have reached the end of the road for conventional approaches. There are some great fariers out there as well. A polarised position of farrier good, trimmer bad ignores many of the positive changes that are happening in the horse world.

But the reality is that there are some unscrupulous people out there, and there are some awful farriers and awful trimmers. I've seen some pretty terrible work and appalling horse handling meted out both by quite well qualified farriers and certain "trimmers".

A huge amount of effort has gone into establish national occupational standards for trimmers and other hoof care professionals with LANTRA - and that covers trainingcertification and regulation. The trimmers associations have welcomed and supported this effort becuase they recognise that this is the only viable way forward.

The UKNHCP, the principle organisation for barefoot in the UK, has a number of farriers on its membership and these farrier play an important role iun guiding and determining the quality and standards of training.
 
Thanks Thefarrier for such a great post! Really informative and I can see how much work has been put in! After all, they do say no foot no horse
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I hate the term "barefoot trimmers". The horse is unshod, not barefoot. Imo anyways.
I really do struggle to take in the fact that people think farriers dont trim - what do they think farriers do when they remove the shoe?! Put another one straight back on?!
Why would someone use a trimmer who has no formal qualifications over a farrier who has gone through hell and back in his course to learn about everything?
 
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Thanks Thefarrier for such a great post! Really informative and I can see how much work has been put in! After all, they do say no foot no horse
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I hate the term "barefoot trimmers". The horse is unshod, not barefoot. Imo anyways.
I really do struggle to take in the fact that people think farriers dont trim - what do they think farriers do when they remove the shoe?! Put another one straight back on?!
Why would someone use a trimmer who has no formal qualifications over a farrier who has gone through hell and back in his course to learn about everything?

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I couldn't agree more. My farrier also does "barefoot trims" if people want them, says he has no issue with people going "barefoot" and that it does suit some horses better than being shod. Equally, when someone told me that my horse's issues would be solved by going barefoot (ringbone, spavins, shivers
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), he said he'd be hopping lame the minute we took the shoes off and would never come right. He works closely with my vet and always trots up every horse before and after shoeing to see how it looks. What amazes me is that, despite the numbers of horses he shoes, he still manages to remember my horse's medical history and even what happened the day he first went lame...
 
Thanks for taking the time to put that together, this is exactly what is needed, for everybody to understand exactly what training has been undertaken.

only_me - People tend to use unshod for feet that have literally had the shoes removed and barefoot for horses that work without shoes. 'Unshod' implies that shoes are part of the horses anatomy, just as you'd say bareback not unsaddled.
And Formal Qualifications for trimmers are on their way!!

As I said on another thread, we're all on the same side and we all want sound horses!
 
My own farrier has apprentices with him, and I talk to them and watch them work.
I meet people from time to time who trim their own horses, and I point out to them that it's a highly skilled, highly trained job and not one that can be learnt in half an hour. I despair, sometimes.
Good post!
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