Hot Dirty Barefoot Trimmer Hoofcare Products and Services

05/03/2026

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"ISO farrier who doesn't charge an arm and a leg"

This essay will be a compilation of thoughts that have been swirling around for awhile..... in which I'll attempt basic math with loose interpretation of some numbers. If you're going to be a nerd about my numbers, you're missing the point.

First, being a farrier is a niche skill in high demand. The United States has the largest horse population in the world with 6-10 million horses. With only 28,000 farriers estimated by the American Farriers Journal, every farrier should have 285 or more horses on their schedule to ensure all horses have hoof care (assuming an average of 8 million horses).

285 horses = 71 horses/week, 10 horses a day, 7 days a week.
Don't want to work every day with no break, forever and ever?
Then it's 15 horses a day, 5 days a week.

Some farriers can handle that workload. I personally cannot.
Assuming all your clients live 0 minutes away from you, everyone stands well, horses are ready for you, and you have no shenanigans, you're looking at 5 - 7 hours/day for barefoot trims on 15 horses. That's the most unrealistic math I've ever done 😂.

If you're doing half sets, full sets, or glue ons, I'm not sure many farriers could/should do 15 of those a day. And you're looking at a 15 hour day minimum without any travel time or interruptions.

Farriers come to you, so add in realistic travel time and their hours spent working get longer, with less horses they can get to in daylight.

Second, you want a GOOD farrier. General standards would be: shows up, communicates, is reasonably skilled and knowledgeable at the craft, is friendly to you and your horse. Rates will vary. You can have fast, good, and cheap but never all three at the same time.

Out of those 28,000 farriers, not all of them are good.

Third, some of you have never run your own business so you don't understand what happens behind the scenes.

When you go buy a new car and you don't like the price, you shop around or negotiate with the sales person. But you know the salesperson ultimately isn't in charge or control of the market rate. When you go grocery shopping and prices have gone up, you may put something back on the shelf, but you don't yell at the cashier on your way out. They have nothing to do with rising costs.

But those are big corporations. Your farrier is a small business. You're looking at the person who sets their rates. When you say things like "I can't believe what I'm being charged for shoes these days...." you're saying you don't think your farrier should be able to pay their bills and run a successful business. You won't find the email address of the Toyota CFO and write them a strongly worded letter about the price of your new car. But you will fuss and complain about your farrier bill to their face or behind their back.

Make that make sense....

There is a difference between saying "that's not in my budget right now" and "I can't believe you charge an arm and a leg for nailing on some shoes."

I don't personally know a single farrier who is overcharging for their business model. Whether they are talented at their craft is up to you to decide. But farriery is a career. Our business must be profitable for it to be sustainable.

Fourth, hoof care is essential and every horse needs it on a regular basis. So we're back to the original dilemma - millions of horses and not enough (good) farriers.

Solutions?
Farriers: insist on safe working conditions, charge whatever you need to, and take care of yourself so you can go the distance.
Owners: get your horses trained to stand better, don't have more horses than you can afford, and consider yourself lucky (considering the aforementioned math) if you have a good farrier.

If you made it this far - the image I chose is of my new composite toe boots to protect my injured foot. Fitting, I think.

PS - if this comes across as unsympathetic to owners....I can see why. Owning horses is becoming more and more expensive, prohibitively so for many people. But that isn't due to farrier prices.

PPS - if you think my little Grinch heart has shrunk too small, don't worry. I'm still kissing pony noses and loving our equine friends. Perhaps this is just the beginning of my seasonal depression 🙃 summer is almost here.......🐎

04/24/2026

This was one that needing some definite tucking in a few cycles ago, but he is well on his way back to having level feet :)

04/14/2026

So this past weekend I attended my 4th official whole horse dissection - this one was taught by Becks Nairn and Critter, who was graciously shared with us by Sozo Equine, LLC . Its obviously something a little out of the box for a hoofcare pro to attend, but I greatly enjoy learning about the whole horse and it gives me an opportunity to collaborate and learn from more people (and horses), as everyone who attends these always brings something to the table. Everytime I go, I acquire more knowledge of all the things - not just the feet :)

Competition happens at the bottom, the people at the top are collaborating ;)

Picture of some of the group and me on the ladder was stolen from Celeste-Leilani Lazaris :)

04/12/2026

04/07/2026

The million dollar question - why did a lot of us (ok people that I know anyway) get into hoofcare?

To trim our own horses.

Then we get busy. Body sore. Burnt out to the point of being fried. Tired of people (more so than the horses) demanding head space.

So our horses go on the back burner. Even though they stand better than any client horses we are going to do out in the wild. We have control over their diet (most of us anyway). We have bodywork and maintenance dialed in. They are the perfect, ideal horses we should all aspire to have on our books. And yet - we are burnt out and sore and wiped out.

Even though they are the reason we started on this crazy journey in the first place.

It's time to do some spring cleaning, Marie Kondo style, go up on pricing, and make some time for MY horses. My excellent animals (4 of whom got trimmed this evening) who did not pull on me and half of whom I did at liberty. They deserve to have the space made for them.

*I do have some very wonderful clients and I'm not talking about you or your horses in this TED talk*

04/02/2026

Sometimes you find some treasures in a small book resale shop. Time to get my CE on ;)

03/27/2026

for the win to kick off the end of my work week

03/21/2026

This dude was at a trainer (who likes to do her own farrier work) for about a year and came back to where he was previously with the pre trim feet. He cleaned up pretty well, and just seems to be suffering from lack of farrier disease. Hopefully with a few more trims on a tight cycle he will be back to having pretty little feet.

The top picture is why a good cycle length (4 to 6 weeks) is important. If you wait until the foot look bad for a trim to contact your hoofcare pro, it has been too long. And, if you aren't on a solid schedule, it can be hard for them to just work you in immediately. I have had that come up recently with a potential new client that needed them done "right away". Im very rarely available "right away" for a new client. I can make things happen in an emergency setting for my regular clients, but it can be hard to shuffle for new ones who knew their horses were overdue by several weeks and suddenly needed them done "right away". Unfortunately, in that case, their lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part.

So, stay on a good schedule and make things easy for your hoofcare pro :)

03/21/2026

I have a quick favor to ask from this community!

Many of you already know about the Hoof to Horse Academy and the learning platform we’ve been building alongside the Hoof2Horse app. The goal with it has always been pretty simple- make good, evidence-based education around horse and hoof health more accessible to the people who are actually caring for horses every day.
This includes topics like anatomy, biomechanics, hoof care, welfare, and the “why” behind what we see in the hoof.

As we continue adding to the platform and figuring out what future lessons and resources should look like, we’d really love some input from the people who would potentially be interested in using it.

If you’re a horse owner, owner-trimmer, hoof care professional, or work with horses in any capacity, it would help a lot if you took a minute to fill out this quick survey. It’s short, but it will help us understand what kinds of topics would be most valuable and what would make a platform like this genuinely useful.

Survey link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSedvL3c97O2WdAocYWt7ADDABY1k44dyb_dE0co2wUqleMokw/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=100133271047995517984

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share their thoughts. The more input we get from horse owners and professionals, the better chance we have of building something that helps more horses ❤️

Picture of little twisty legs rehabbed to more functional and evenly load bearing over time.

03/15/2026

Diet is important.

What you see before is buckets of primarily forage - alfalfa cubes or timothy cubes for the metabolically challenged( Cube-it or Triple Crown), a low starch senior feed (Triple Crown) for those that need the extra calories and have had cube issues in the past, a ration balancer (Triple Crown) and salt. Ideally they all should get some vitamin E as well, but we do have a small amount of grass currently.

The hoof pictured is on this diet. It's ready for a trim (as the cobbler's children tend to be) but its not thrushy and doesn't present with any white line disease and has minimal separation (because I leave a rim anyway).

The hoof pictured is also on 23/7 herd turnout (the hour is spent in a pen eating their rations). Movement is also important. Friends are also important. When they aren't up eating the meal pictured, they are turned out on what is primarily dry lot most of the year on hay tested coastal round bales.

To get the nice feet, you have to do the things. Its been super wet this last week and muddy around the round bales. Mud isn't usually the main cause of why your horse is raunchy thrushy. Occasionally yes, but often not.

Find a good ration balancer! If you go with a straight powder mineral one, order one from a reputable company that best aligns with your hay test (CalTrace, MadBarn, Vermont blend, KisTrace, etc). If you are getting something from a local feed store and its a nice red powder, its probably just primarily iron and salt...and what other amounts in it aren't going to be helpful for your horse. Ideally you want something with aminos in it too. There are several FREE websites out there you can input your diet into and see what you are lacking, and adjust balancers accordingly.

Throwing random "hoof" supplements at your horse aren't going to kick any issues they are having and make your horses feet look healthy.

Thank you reading my TED talk.

03/06/2026

Thank you to everyone for their support!!! Ive shipped out over 100 jars in the last month to both fellow trimmers, a rescue, a local trainer, and a bunch of horse owners. Again, thank you everyone!!!

03/06/2026

Sometimes the barn help is lacking in skills. Mint the rooster just wanted hand outs.