The Slow Learner

by David Farmilo
Accredited Master Farrier, Oakbank SA
PH 0418 835 186
www.horsefarrier.com.au

Over the years I am sure I must have driven people silly with my continual carping about balancing the hoof.

The problems to be encountered with horses’ legs are endless – toe-in, toe-out, knock knees, bow legs, base wide, base narrow, cow hocked etc. To rectify all these problems, there have been as many different horseshoes developed – heart bars, egg bars, anchor bars, square toes and trailers to name a few.

Then at the hoof there are even more problems – sand cracks, contracted heels, quarter cracks, flares, long toes, high heels, low heels and seedy toe. With all this to contend with, it’s a wonder any horse ever makes it to an event, let alone wins a ribbon or a prize.

A farrier’s life is a funny life – it takes 10 years to even get started, after 20 years you have a reasonable amount of experience, then with 30 years behind you, you realise that most of what you did for the first 20 years was wrong.

I must be a slow learner, as it took me probably 35 years to realise that my method of shoeing a horse to achieve a parallel hoof pastern angle was based on a precise method, but I found it very difficult to teach to others as most of what I did was instinctive. When you think about it, the farrier knows what is a desirable end result, but how does he achieve it? Good evaluation, good judgement, a good eye and the ability to estimate accurately how much hoof to remove are all part of the attributes of being a good farrier.

It then took me another 10 years to ponder how I could work backwards from the perfectly balanced hoof to teach others how to correctly balance a hoof without them necessarily having all the attributes mentioned.

My principles of horseshoeing have always been that when the hoof is correctly balanced, the front of the hoof wall is parallel with the pastern angle, the hoof shape is a mirror image of the coronary band, there are no flares in the hoof wall, and the hoof is stress free. (I learnt this from Old Joe on Angorichina Station nearly 50 years ago, and this has always been my mantra).

The realisation dawned on me that the horses that I dealt with didn’t have all the gait problems mentioned above, that I never used any of the horseshoes mentioned above because it wasn’t necessary, and that the hooves of the horses that I dealt with didn’t suffer any of the problems mentioned above. Why? It had to be because I always correctly balanced the hoof.

Instead of working instinctively, as I had done for all those years, from then on I analysed every horse and every hoof that I worked on to calculate what I was doing to end up with a correctly balanced hoof. As a result I found that what I now call ‘my centre of balance’ which is a precisely calculated reference point on the hoof behind the tip of the active frog and it is exactly the same whether it is on a thoroughbred, a Clydesdale or on a 6 week old foal. From there it was a relatively simple step to develop a tool to first show how much hoof to be removed, and whether to remove it from the heel or from the toe, and then to double check that the hoof had been correctly balanced.

With tool in tow, I then embarked on my annual pilgrimage to the outback where I teach trimming and horseshoeing to the ringers on the cattle stations. Time after time I got the same comment – ‘But it makes it so easy. Why hasn’t someone thought of this before?’ I was ecstatic – I could now easily teach others how to correctly balance a hoof the way I have done it for so many years. It only took me 50 years.