How did you find your farrier?

Great, did not realise that. I will take my card in to her soon. good plan.


All you guys thanks for being so helpful.
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i will do all of what you have suggested (i have never had to advertise myself so its bit new to me) Thank you
 
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Bedlam i have been a farrier for a while now!
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i am not new by any means (nor am i old though) And i dont always have time to be a stand in and i know most of the farriers in this area as i regularly attend our farrier club meetings. I would not take their clients its not how i run my business but if someone is loking for a farrier then yay for me
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I would not want to take another farriers clients so dont like this suggestion much sorry, im just trying to change areas so in a few months to a year or so we can move closer to where my wife works

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Sorry - misunderstood!

However, unless you only want to take on clients who have just bought horses and don't already have a farrier, you are going to have to poach clients from a colleague.

You're going to have to advertise hard in feed merchants and tack shops and online. Everybody in your new area already has a farrier - you're going to have to start by picking up the unhappy ones (who might also be the difficult ones!).
 
My friend lives in that area - just outside Gloucester and is having a terrible problem with getting a decent farrier. I usually rely on word of mouth to get a farrier, when I first moved to the area I asked everyone who they used. We had a yard farrier who thankfully was great and I used him for two years until I moved areas. I now use a chap that works for a very well known farrier as I have held for him at work for nearly 3 years so watched him shoe a lot.
 
I have some good friends with horses and one with a Stud in Glos, but they are extremely happy with their farriers.
My first farrier was a local guy that I was at school with, in the same class. My current farrier is one that my husband knew from working with horses over twenty years ago.

You could just up-sticks and move to Cornwall, I can soon fill your books for you, especially as you do donkeys
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My farrier at home, was a livery of mine found him so I started to use him as my current one at the time (lived close by) was about to retire.
The two farriers I have used at uni have been through yard staff recommendation, and both came to the uni horses and student livery horses.
 
My last farrier walked off the job leaving me with one unhappy horse who had two shoes on, two off and feet in a state.

New farrier had dropped off card at yard and I rang him and sobbed at him, so I think he took pity on me - he'd moved into the area (Gloucestershire incidentally!).

He did a super job on a less than easy mare, and when I got my new horse he did a super job on his feet too.

When said horse went out on short term loan, I gave him a nice bottle of wine and a card to say thankyou for always making sure my horse got to events well shod and begged him to keep me on his books as decent farriers are like gold dust. He is always on time, occasionally early and puts on a thrown shoe for free.
 
I recently swapped farriers as my old one was completely unreliable and I found my new farrier as he had dropped off a business card on the yard where i work. I asked around to see if anyone was using him and the general consensus was that he was very punctual, called if he was going to be late, reasonabley priced etc so I gave him a shot- and dont regret taking a chance at all!
 
Got my farrier off the council website. He is great, although took some grovelling to get him to add me to his list.

When I moved down it took me 12 weeks to persuage someone just to come out and remove his shoes, apparently my house is in a black hole between farrier areas, north of the A303 and too far south of the next towns to the North. Maybe you new area has one of those?

He won't shoe unless the legs are clean and dry and you have a hardstanding, and I think that is fair enough. There is a shortage of good farriers around here and why should he have to work in the mud? He has never let me make him tea yet, but I do let him in the house to use the loo on occaision!

If you are trying to move to a new area can you make the website put your details on the list for that area? I assume that you currently come up for the area of your home\forge address?
 
I had a farrier that would descend on the yard with a couple of apprentices & shoe half a dozen or more horses. If your horse threw a shoe though he was incredibly difficult to get back to refit. On one of those occasions I phoned a friends farrier & he dropped by & refitted for me. From then on I used him. I've used him for about 9 years now & he shoes both mine every 6 weeks.

He never fails to turn up, if he's running late or ill he'll phone to let you know or will reschedule.

If you can offer a service like his, & keep it up you will have no problem geting & keeping clients. As you will have seen from previous posts there are so many farriers out there whose customer relations skills are awful & they mess about the clients without a second thought. Good Luck for the future.
 
I think we've had our farrier for about 25 years now
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He is always on time (if not early) and will do his best to come out the next day if one has lost a shoe or has an abscess etc. Horses generally have clean feet, and on hard standing, although not shelterd from all weathers unfortunately. Has coffee and biscuits every time (his dogs get biscuits too
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He has shod everything we have ever had, including our donkey - who was a total b*gger to shoe when we first got him, although I think the farrier established who was boss pretty quickly!!!
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Word of mouth is best imo, being on time, and being able to fix on lost shoes quickly etc will pay dividends
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My first farrier was through word of mouth. But he was an unreliable type who wouldn't let you know if he was running very late and sometimes wouldn't turn up at all. He was also quite bad-tempered with the horses. The last straw was him refusing to come back out and see to my nail-bound and very lame TB. Luckily that day another farrier was on the yard and I asked to move to his list. That was 12 years ago and I've never regretted it. He's always cheerful, rarely more than 30 minutes late, great with the horses and - perhaps most important - a very good farrier!
 
word of mouth for me, George is my first horse and the livery yard I went to recommended him, yard turned out to be dreadful but my farrier is a star and so reliable / helpful.
 
Word of mouth with both. My first one I've used for ages then yard liked him so much they used him too, the second one found me the Mickster and as he did his feet in his previous home I used him for a while, but then went back to the first because he's on the yard anyway and is excellent with the horses.
 
Word of mouth and mine's a true gent to my horses and is always interested on shoeing my horses well and proper for the type of work they are doing.

Defo a chap who gets looked after in cider and chocolates
 
I found my current one on the farrier registry. If you are moving to the glos area then it is crying out for decent farriers. I'm based right in the middle of all the major centres in the area and I've only ever come across 3 decent farriers
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One is now retired, one is charging £35 per trim
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and the other one is almost as expensive but at least he turns up.... Sadly most farreirs are only interested if you've got 5+ horses
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I would only ever use a farrier by recommendation - if not through other customers, then by fellow farriers
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My father was a farrier, but when he did his disappearing act we started using a guy from Lambourn who we'd known quite well and who we trusted implicitly. We then moved house and were too far away for him to travel to, but he recommended two or three in the local area for us to try, and we ended up with our current guy who is fab
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I would never, EVER answer an advert for a farrier
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Sorry!!!
 
i was delivering leaflets for my hairdressing services and got chatting to the village farrier, asked around and got good reports, he is offering credit crunch prices so brilliant. my last one was recommended at the yard.
 
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I found my current one on the farrier registry. If you are moving to the glos area then it is crying out for decent farriers. I'm based right in the middle of all the major centres in the area and I've only ever come across 3 decent farriers
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One is now retired, one is charging £35 per trim
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and the other one is almost as expensive but at least he turns up.... Sadly most farreirs are only interested if you've got 5+ horses
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I have the best farrier in the Glos area
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- he was recommended by my original YO when I moved to near Glos 12 years ago, and he has been shoeing all my horses ever since. He is absolutely fantastic - he turns up when he says he will, is very reasonably priced, and does a brilliant job
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He does remedial shoeing if required (one of my previous horses had navicular) and when that horse was referred to Liphook the vet there said that my horse could not be shod better
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Unfortunately, to the annoyance of the students/unreliable payers etc on my yard, he is also in a position to pick and choose who he takes on as clients now
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I just started using our yard farrier 6 years ago and don't regret it for a minute. He's helped me out so many times with regards to my old mare when she couldn't keep shoes on, kept losing them, ripped them off etc although to be honest he's more a friend now than my farrier. Our farriers are a good close knit group who work well together and i'm happy to admit we're very lucky round here.
 
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