I am thinking I may need to switch to a new farrier in my area, but I don’t want to cut ties with my current farrier until I have tried the new one at least once.
Is there an etiquette to this situation? Do I just ask my current farrier to skip a trim? Are they going to be upset, or is it understood that clients sometimes try new farriers every once in a while?
Eek I wouldn’t. If your new farrier isn’t working out it’s ok to get someone new but I wouldn’t be comfortable shopping around and expecting my farrier to still keep me on as a client.
Ugh, that’s what I was afraid of. So, how do you know it’s time to make a switch? And then what if the new farrier doesn’t work out?
If there is a reason you are unhappy w your current farrier, perhaps a conversation w said farrier might be the way to start.
I don’t know what you mean by “time to make a switch”. You switch farriers when you or your vet is unsatisfied with the quality of the services… or if one of you moves. If that’s the case, it shouldn’t matter how things go with the new farrier. You’ll either have found someone you like or you’ll know two farriers who you don’t like. If I fired a farrier I don’t get why I would take them back.
Switching for a single trim is unlikely to really tell you much. Problems take time to develop and time to correct.
Theoretically, it sure would be nice if every farrier was open to a frank conversation about how the horse is doing and if the horse might be better served by someone with a slightly different approach or skill set. There are a few of them out there like that.
In reality, farriers are often prickly people who get their feelings hurt when clients want to explore other options. Sometimes reasonably, and sometimes unreasonably.
Which camp your current farrier falls into is something only you know. Have you spoken to them about your concerns with what you’re seeing in the feet? How did that go?
Are you a skilled and experienced horse owner who is capable of judging farrier work? I don’t mean to insult you implying that you aren’t, but if you are, look at the farrier work of other farriers in your area. If you are not educated enough to judge farrier work yourself, try to educate yourself to the point that you can form an opinion, even if you can not do the work yourself. To educate yourself, find Doug Butler’s book, “Principles of Horseshoeing”. After reading at least some of this book, you will be able to have a clue what to look for in terms of trim and shoe fitting, enough to ask some intelligent questions.
Search out horses that farriers other than your own work on, and inspect the quality of their work on other horses. Your current farrier does not need to know that you are doing this… you are just looking. And judging.
If you can identify the issues that you feel you are having with your current farrier that are making you think you might need to do a farrier change, search for a better job from someone else BEFORE committing to anything, or anybody. If you find a job that you like better than the one from your current farrier, you can make the switch.
IME, (married to a farrier for 30 years), your opinion and criticism and input is not going to change the job your farrier does… because he/she thinks they are doing it right, and have been doing it this way for X # of years, and you haven’t. They aren’t going to change because YOU say so. And they aren’t going to appreciate your opinion, as a “non-farrier”, whether you are right or wrong in your opinions. They will do the job they do, as they think is correct, no matter what the client says or thinks. So, if you find a farrier whose work you think is better suited for your horse, you will change farriers… which is usually not an issue for your previous farrier, they don’t usually care, have plenty of clients who come and go for a variety of reasons. They won’t take it “personally”. And if you end up regretting the new farrier and want to switch back again, all you have to do is make the phone call to your previous farrier to book an appointment. It’s OK.
This way, you do not have to risk your own horse’s soundness to “test out a new farrier”.
Also, make sure that you form your OWN opinion about a farrier job, don’t take someone else’s opinion as fact. I’ve seen popular coaches and trainers who don’t have a clue about farrier skills, and can’t figure out why their horses are all lame, with horrific farrier jobs that they can’t recognize. Vets too. Educate yourself enough to form your own opinion.
Good luck, it can be scary out there!
^This.
The etiquette with any service is that you do not keep people waiting in the wings. You are paying for a service - if you want something changed or do not like how something is being done, you have two options: have a conversation with the service provider and see if they are amenable to making changes or kindly let the service provider know you will be switching to another provider. You might need to do the latter after you do the former if the service provider is not amenable to making the changes you want.
It’s easy to divorce your cable company or your trash service because those services feel much more removed from us than the work a farrier does. So treat your farrier like the human being that they are: let them know what you’re seeing, ask what can be done to change it and see what they say. If they are amenable, you still have a good working relationship with someone you know. If they aren’t, you have given them the courtesy of letting them know what wasn’t working for you before moving on to someone else.
This is all fantastic advice. I am not very knowledgeable about farrier work. I know enough to know that there is a problem, but not enough to know if it is caused by the farrier or another external factor.
The horse in question has kissing spines, and both of his front hooves are flared with quarter cracks. He is barefoot and trimmed on a 5 week schedule. The front feet were slightly flared when we purchased him around 8 months ago, and have gotten worse since then.
I will discuss with the farrier to see if there’s another reason the hooves have gotten worse, and try to educate myself as well. I have a book at home “The Essential Hoof Book”, but haven’t read it yet.
Another thing to consider is the horse’s diet. Even a really skilled farrier won’t make up for a poor diet!
This all certainly sounds like something needs to change in a pretty big way. How did you find this farrier that you’re using now? Did he come highly recommended by multiple people you respect? Were you able to see his work before you began using him? Or was he just convenient?
There are so many areas without really talented farriers. If this guy is the best you’ve got available, then it does behoove you to try to make it work with him. But if you know you’ve got bigger and better farriers available, what you describe above would be enough for me to say “thanks, it’s been great, have really appreciated your help, but we’re going to try something different,” without trying to make this relationship work.
IME, farriers that quarter crack horses don’t get that horse better, no matter what is said or what is tried. I’m sure others have different feedback, but I’ve just never seen one improve staying with the farrier that caused the problem.
The way to interview farriers is to visit friends’ barns. When you see more than one horse with great looking feet, ask who their farrier is and make a mental note. You’ll often hear the same few names over and over again.
Does everything else about the hoof look OK? When you say the hoof is flared, do you mean it is only flared at the quarters, or that the whole hoof looks flared/collapsed/weak?
Quarter cracks and flaring on their own should be a very simple fix for any farrier if you have stuck to a 5 week schedule over 8 months (and especially if barefoot). The fact that flaring has progressed to cracks doesn’t bode well for the current farrier.
I agree talking to your current farrier about your concerns is the first step. Give them a chance to fix it and I would research the farrier you are thinking of using in the mean time.
IME-- if you have to ask a farrier to fix something they are doing, you probably have the wrong farrier.
Was your horse going barefoot when you purchased him? Some horses do not do well barefoot no matter how skilled the farrier.
The rest of the hoof looks ok to me and my other horses hooves are fine. Both horses have had instances of mild thrush off and on depending on how wet it is, but it responds well to treatment. When we first got him it was just the end of the hoof, now it almost the whole hoof.
Now that I think about it, I have also had problems a couple of times with this farrier taking too much sole off of my other horse and leaving him sore for a couple days after a trim.
He was the farrier recommended by every single horse contact I had in the area. Since then I have expanded my horse network and have gotten recommendations for a different farrier, which is when I started to wonder about this subject.
Some care and tact is definitely the way to go, then. Have you talked to him about what you’re seeing in the feet? How did he respond?
I’ve been in this same boat–one horse out of four developed quarter cracks. The farrier was dismissive, and called them sand cracks. I didn’t have a whole lot in the way of options for switching farriers, but we were moving soon. I just waited it out, and dealt with it when we landed in our new place. They were, indeed, quarter cracks. The new farrier was able to properly balance the foot and the cracks grew out over several months.
It wasn’t worth upsetting the apple cart and potentially going from the frying pan into the fire, but I had a solid end date to that relationship. It’s sure harder when you’re stuck, without a lot in the way of options.
If you’ve not had the conversation, it’s a good place to start. Point out the concerns you have with the feet and see what he says. If he gets defensive or makes a bunch of excuses, that a pretty solid indicator you’ll be better off with someone else…
I am lucky to have a farrier I trust and who does amazing work now, but have dealt with not so great ones in the past. I had a horse who needed a wee, not even 2 degree angle, not front to back but laterally - this was recommended by a highly respected vet and initially fixed day-of by hospital’s farrier who just happened to be there same day as us and was happy to trim to vet’s specs and put the shoe back on after it had been taken off for rads. My regular farrier just wouldn’t do it, said he saw nothing in the rads - finally I asked the vet to talk to my farrier and whaddya know, farrier started following vet’s orders. TL;DR, depending on your relationship with farrier, vet and their relationship with each other, call in vet back-up
I haven’t had a conversation with him yet, but will do so before the next scheduled trim. I’m hoping to get a start on that hoof book I mentioned so I can be a bit more educated to plausible and implausible excuses.
That’s a great way to go. If you want to post some picture of the feet here, we can also give you some feedback.
Here’s a site that talks about how to take good hoof pictures 
I’ve never known a farrier who was open to this sort of thing - once you switch, you switch, and you may or may not be welcome back at a later date.
I’ve also never known a farrier who is particularly amenable to criticism from the owner, even when said criticism is phrased as a question: “Why does this foot look different than that one?” “How can we work on XYZ?” - typically the answer to this type of question is “this is the way it needs to be done in my expert opinion” and “we can fix XYZ by me doing my job the way I know how to do my job - no further comments needed from you”
That being said, do a search on this board, and on the various facebook hoof groups - MASSIVE education available for free in bite size pieces with pictures of Good vs Bad, easy explanations for us “muggles” etc. Watch out, you may end up down a rabbit hole like I have been! There are for sure some very knowledgeable and generous members here who will take a look at pics of your horse’s feet and give really great feedback. (PS Listen and learn here, but probably shouldn’t go back to him and say “these strangers on the interwebz say we need to…” LOL)
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