A shoe-in: how apprenticeships put farriery back on track
Farriery, the craft of shoeing horses, may seem a novel choice for a life’s work. But it is an immensely popular apprenticeship that attracts hundreds of applications. The British are a nation of animal lovers and the chance of working with horses in the open air has a powerful pull. With nearly half a million horse-owning households in the UK, many children have grown up riding horses, and it is a popular hobby.
“It’s extremely competitive,” says Alex Bradbury, who started his four-year farriery apprenticeship in June 2015 with Huw Dyer, an established farrier in Northallerton, North Yorkshire.
Bradbury struggled to pursue his dream and get taken on as an apprentice farrier after finishing his A-levels. “I sent out a hundred letters with stamp-addressed envelopes inside and only got one reply,” he says. That reply was a rejection. But he followed up the letters with phone calls, and was eventually taken on by Dyer. “It’s what I wanted to do when I was little,” he says. He grew up around horses and learned to ride as a child. He used to watch the farrier at work. “I did all the sciences at A-levels then was meant to go to university. But I decided I would do what I wanted, so I did my pre-farrier course and got my job with Dyer.”
‘I’ve been kicked – I went blind in one eye. They glued it back together and sent me on my way’: Bradbury Photograph: Joanne Crawford/Guardian
Farriers need to be registered with the Farriers Registration Council and apprentices must take a pre-farrier course. The job involves preparing horses’ hooves, fitting shoes and working with a hot forge to make the horse shoes out of metal. Hooves are like human fingernails and hair, they grow and need paring back to make them suitable for metal shoeing. The farrier also identifies common ailments of the hoof and adapts shoes for horses that suffer from them. But it can be a dangerous job working underneath a horse.
“I’ve had quite a lot of kicks,” says Bradbury. “I’ve been kicked in the face – I went blind in one eye for about two hours, it wasn’t too bad, I went to hospital and they glued my eye back together and they sent me on my way.”
Having an understanding of the psychology of horses is vital. “You are quite often in a box with a horse you don’t know, with no one else there for an hour at a time. You have got to be able to pick up on signs if something is not right with them,” he says. “You just have to accept that you don’t have any control over what some horses do – if they want their foot back they have their foot back.”
Farriers are required to wear protective clothing such as steel toe boots in case a horse stamps on their foot. They also wear safety goggles while working at the forge to protect against sparks. And they often wear a leather apron or chaps (half trousers) to protect their legs against friction from horses’ legs. All employers of apprentices are required to have insurance cover and professional farriers need their own insurance.
Bradbury spends three weeks every six months studying at Myerscough College in Preston, where he learns theory and studies the veterinary side of the job as well as learning how to make different variants of shoes.
When he qualifies in May, he plans to set up his own business, going out in a van and working for private stables or race horse owners. Most farriers are self-employed.
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While most farriers are traditionally men – it was a trade traditionally passed down from fathers – a growing number of women are showing an interest in the profession.
“It’s a job that’s hard on your back – you are bending over in a skiing position all day,” Bradbury says. “But I absolutely love it,” he adds. “However, I don’t think you can do it until you are 65 unless you take on apprentices.” He says many farriers retire in their early 50s.
“I’ll set up my own business one day and go out in my van on my own. I might do a few days a week with Dyer at the beginning until I get on my feet and feel more confident.”