For Chris Beymer, Thoroughbred feet come in all sizes — just about every day.

The Lexington, Ky., farrier, who has been shoeing Thoroughbred horses in the Bluegrass Country for 27 years, spends his mornings at area breeding barns, where he might handle a foal’s foot for the first time, trim a barn full of brood mares or nail the first pair of shoes on the front feet of a yearling just before a sale.

In the afternoon, he’ll be at Keeneland Race Course, handling the hoof-care needs and nailing on race plates for horses that are in training and already racing. All in all, that means a day of “Shoeing For A Living” with Beymer gives us a chance to see a nice cross-section of the Thoroughbred industry.

Beymer, who was born and raised in Lexington, is a “hardboot.” That’s Kentucky slang for a horseman, supposedly derived from the fact that the boots of that type of horseman were typically hard-caked with a mixture of mud and manure.

While Beymer’s time in the business may not seem like so many years to some veteran farriers, his career…