Farrier

What the wage survey shows

The national median is $35,360 a year, the bottom tenth earn $27,250 or less and the top tenth $50,060 or more, in the 2025 federal wage survey. 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 this figure tells you little about what a farrier with a full book earns. The very high demand rating on this page is also the animal caretakers rating, not one for farriers.

Your first year

You are learning on someone else's clients and building your own list at the same time. Many new farriers keep another job going for the first year or two.

What actually sets your income

A trim is quick. A full set of shoes takes far longer. Corrective and therapeutic work on sport and race horses takes years to be trusted with.

What it costs to get there

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.

What comes with the job

• 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 path to becoming a farrier, step by step

No degree, no license, no exam you are forced to sit. Skill and a reputation are the whole qualification.

1. 1

   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.

2. 2

   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.

3. 3

   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.

4. 4

   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.

5. 5

   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.

High school courses that help you become a farrier

• 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.

Time and money, at a glance

Nobody licenses you, and that cuts both ways

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.

Where people study

There are only a few full-time horseshoeing schools in the country, so most students travel and board.

• Kentucky Horseshoeing School

  Runs 24 week and 36 week courses in Kentucky.

• 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.

The certification ladder

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.

Nice-to-haves

• 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.

The therapeutic side

Working with veterinarians on laminitis, navicular disease and broken-down racehorses is the deepest end of the trade. 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.

What a farrier does day to day

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 honest pros and cons of being a farrier

Work life

Similar paths

• Veterinary TechnicianThe nurse of the animal clinic. Two years of school, and you will do more hands-on medicine than you expect.
• WelderJoin metal to metal so it holds. A trade you can learn in under a year, tested by whether the weld passes, not by what you say.
• Metal FabricatorTurn flat steel and drawings into stairs, tanks, trailers and building frames. Cut it, bend it, fit it, weld it.

In Britain it is a crime to do this untrained

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.

Hooves grow like fingernails

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.

The forge is not decoration

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.