Trim hooves and shape shoes for horses. No license anywhere in the country, and almost everyone works for themselves.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$35,360
Bottom tenth
$27,250
Top tenth
$50,060
The national median is $35,360 a year and the bottom tenth start near $27,250. Read that carefully: the survey has no code for farriers, so it files them under animal caretakers, a group made mostly of kennel, shelter and grooming staff on an hourly wage. Nearly all farriers are self-employed and charge by the horse, so a busy farrier with a full book earns well above this figure and a beginner earns well below it.
Thin and uneven
Apprenticing, or shoeing a handful of horses a week
You are learning on someone else's clients and building your own list at the same time. Most new farriers keep another job going for the first year or two.
Horses per day
You are paid per horse, not per hour
A trim is quick. A full set of shoes takes far longer and pays several times more. Corrective and therapeutic work on sport and race horses pays the most of all, and it takes years to be trusted with it.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is learning under a working farrier and buying your own anvil, forge, rasps, nippers and hammers, with a short horseshoeing course on top. The high end is a full twenty four week program, a better tool set, and the voluntary American Farrier's Association certification exams, which are paid per attempt. Neither number includes the truck and rig, which is the single biggest expense in this trade because your vehicle is your workshop. Horseshoeing schools are short trade schools, so ask a school directly whether it accepts the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) before you count on federal loans or a Pell Grant.
Horseshoeing schools are short trade schools, so federal student aid is limited. Ask any school directly whether it takes the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) before you count on loans or a Pell Grant.
You set the prices
There is no employer taking a cut and no license board setting a fee schedule. What you charge is your call.
Cash flow every week
Most farriers get paid the day they do the work, which is rare in the trades.
Nothing else comes with it
No health insurance, no paid sick days, no retirement plan. You buy all of it yourself, out of what you charge.
Clients who stay for years
A horse needs the same farrier every 6 to 8 weeks for its whole life. A good route is a repeating appointment book.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
No degree, no license, no exam you are forced to sit. Skill and a reputation are the whole qualification.
High school and horses
Grade 12
Get around horses any way you can: lessons, barn chores, a summer job mucking stalls. You need to be calm and safe near a 1,200 pound animal before anything else.
Horseshoeing school
8 to 36 weeks
Full-time courses run from a few weeks to nearly a year. Anatomy, forging, trimming and shoeing on live horses all day.
Apprentice with a working farrier
1 to 2 years
Ride along, carry tools, do the easy trims, get corrected constantly. This is where you actually learn the trade.
Build your own book
Take the horses your mentor cannot fit in, then the barns nobody is serving. Word of mouth is the only marketing that works.
Certify if you want to
Optional, from year 1 on
The American Farrier's Association offers voluntary levels, and the top one asks for written and practical exams plus forging a bar shoe against the clock.
Shop, welding or metalwork
Forging is the part people find hardest. Any time with heat and steel puts you ahead.
Biology
The hoof is bone, tendon and living tissue. You need to understand what you are cutting into.
Business math
Pricing, fuel, tools and taxes. You will be a small business from your first paid horse.
Weight training
You spend the day bent double holding a leg. The people who last built the back for it early.
No state in the country requires a license to shoe horses. You can finish a course on Friday and charge a client on Monday. That makes it one of the easiest skilled trades to enter and one of the easiest to do badly, because a bad trim can lame a horse for months. It also means your reputation is the only credential that matters. Certification through the AFA (American Farrier's Association) is entirely voluntary, but barn managers at serious sport and racing yards often ask for it.
There are only a dozen or so full-time horseshoeing schools in the country, so most students travel and board.
Kentucky Horseshoeing School
Runs 24 week and 36 week courses in Lexington, and hosts American Farrier's Association certification testing twice a year.
State and community college programs
A handful of agriculture colleges run farrier science certificates, usually a semester or two.
A registered apprenticeship
Apprenticeship.gov, run by the United States Department of Labor, lists farrier apprenticeships where you earn a wage while you learn.
Watch out for the word certified
A school cannot hand you certification. Only the American Farrier's Association examiners can, at a test you sit yourself.
Things you don't need, but that help.
All of it is voluntary, all of it is run by the American Farrier's Association.
Farrier Classification
The entry step, for people newly into the trade.
Certified Farrier
The first real level. Open once you have at least a year of horseshoeing experience.
Certified Tradesman Farrier
An optional second level, open after two years and the first certification.
Certified Journeyman Farrier
The top level. Written and practical exams plus forging a specific bar shoe to a set pattern inside a time limit.
Welding
Building and modifying therapeutic shoes is metalwork. Good welding widens what you can take on.
A reliable truck and a habit of maintaining it
A breakdown is a day of canceled appointments and a barn that calls somebody else.
Bookkeeping software
Invoice on the spot, track mileage, put money aside for taxes. Most farriers learn this the painful way.
A calm manner with nervous animals
Half the job is reading the horse. The other half is reading the owner.
Working with veterinarians on laminitis, navicular disease and broken-down racehorses is the deepest end of the trade and the best paid. It means reading hoof x-rays, building shoes to a specific prescription and being part of a treatment plan rather than a maintenance visit. There is no separate license for it. You get there through years of ordinary work, certification, clinics and a vet who trusts you.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
You load the truck at dawn and drive to the first barn. Six to ten horses across three or four stops, each one held between your knees while you pull shoes, trim, shape hot steel on a portable forge and nail it back on. Somewhere in there a horse leans on you, a client wants to talk about their gelding for twenty minutes, and a shoe does not sit right and you start it again. You are home mid-afternoon, and then you invoice and sharpen tools.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The UK has required farriers to be registered since the 1970s, and shoeing a horse without it is an offense. The United States has no such law in any state, which is why the American system leans so hard on voluntary certification and word of mouth.
Most horses need a farrier every 6 to 8 weeks, all year, for their whole lives. That is why the work is recession-resistant in a way most trades are not. The horse does not care about the economy.
Plenty of farriers still shape shoes hot, on a portable propane forge on the tailgate, because a shoe bent to that particular hoof fits better than one out of a box. It is one of the last trades where a working blacksmith is a normal sight.
There is no occupation code for farriers, so the national wage figures file them with kennel and shelter workers. When you read salary numbers for this trade anywhere, check which group they came from before you believe them.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise.