Farrier Business Practices

Hi there colleagues across the ocean!

I saw a tvshow the oher day (well month orso) on discovery; Dirty jobs.

He tried to work as a farrier for a day and it was the first time I´ve seen him give up lol.

But that´s not the question;

The american farrier in the program had his car FULL of aluminumshoes, and when I browse for american suppliers there´s ALOT of aluminum.

I really like the idea of lightweight shoes and good support! Problem is swedish customers tend to shoe their horses in 8-12 week periods... and its damn hard to convince them of the use of short periods.

Besides the only shoes availabe here are either Werkman, Mustad or Kearchaert... ironshoes.

Offcorse we got raceshoes to! But for the regular hobbyhorse there´s no options but different style ironshoes.

So my question is do american farriers use that much aluminium shoes as I think?

Also; I´m sick and tired of swedish suppliers always beeing out of stock, and I dont mean out of the brand of lets say the nails I want, they´re out of nails and shoes all together.

So I decided to buy a pall for my self and maybe share it with collegues.... then I was told that I couldnt order from the above brands of shoemakers since I should buy from the suppliers.

That´s really why I´m browsing U.S farriersites at the moment, trying to find american manufactourers to import and resale in sweden.

So please help me qualitywise, wich one´s good? wich one manufactors in china and wich are "homemade" (got a few suppliers vendoring BADquality chineeseshoes here too)

I check in here again but wouldn´t mind answers in mail; bjorn@hovslagarebjorn.se

Best regards

Bjorn Lundh

certified swedish farrier that sorry about poor language/vocabular/spelling

Hello Bear,



Aluminum shoes of all sorts are part of many farriers choices but I would say they are a smaller part on average except for the racing industry which mostly uses them. Aluminum is also used in many therapeutic shoeing treatments in which KBN (Tennessee Navicular Shoe), straight bar, heart bar, and egg bar, are used.



There are many suppliers who ship overseas from the states. Many of these can be found on the FIA (Farrier Industry Asc) web site. This is a site listing many suppliers. Many also advertise in the American Farriers Journal (maybe possibly you should subscribe). Europe also has The Farriers Journal is several languages. Many of the suppliers such as Anvil, Mustad, etc. have European suppliers you can contact. Try their web sites. I know when I'm in the EU I buy from Strohm of Germany or Colleoni of Italy (who sells a lot of aluminum).



Good Luck and Welcome to the forum.

Esco Buff, PhD, APF, CF