Apprentice Farrier

Apprentice farrier Nathan Wall shoes a horse. Picture / Alan Gibson

My job

Name: Nathan Wall
Age: 28
Job title: apprentice farrier
Working hours: flexible between 7.30am and 6pm
Employer: No 1 Farrier Solutions, self-employment
Pay: $10 an hour, rising with experience; qualified farriers earn $500-$1000 a day; high earning opportunities overseas, especially Japan
Qualifications needed: keenness and willingness, ready to work hard
Career prospects: self-employment 

Q: What do you do?
A: I get up at 5am, ride and then meet the master farrier at 7.30 at the Matamata track and find out what jobs he's got planned for the day. I assist him with shoeing the horses. He lets me do the parts I'm up to. We're based in the Waikato and have a lot of work at Matamata but we go to Tauranga and as far as Katikati and Auckland. The industry couldn't run without farriers. Workhorses might be on the road or hard surfaces and they wear their feet out faster than they grow. Racehorses all have to be shod. Just the basic equipment you need would be an anvil, gas forge for heating the shoes, a large stock of shoes and racing plates, an apron, shoeing hammer, clinching tongs, buffer, rasp and pull offs. Farriers have lots of different hammers and other tools to perform all sorts of jobs.

Q: Why did you choose the job?
A: I've been an apprentice for three months but I've worked with racehorses for 10 years, travelling as far as Hong Kong with them. I wanted to learn about hoof anatomy. Horses have to have good, healthy feet or they can't run. I thought it would be a good career move to see how hooves work and how to shoe. If you're training horses sometimes you can't get a farrier and you have to shoe them yourself. There's a shortage of qualified farriers, in fact there's a shortage of people to work in the equine industry.

Q: What's the best part of the job?
A: When you have a problem and solve it you have a real sense of achievement. You can get problems where there's been abscesses, or cracks in feet. If you improve that horse you get that sense of achievement. I don't mind the long hours. The worst thing is probably having to go out in bad weather but you can work around that. So far the oddest thing has been shoeing miniature ponies. It was quite hard case getting under them.

Q: What are your strengths?
A: I believe I have good horse knowledge already. I've worked with them for 10 years after growing up at Waihi Beach where my father was a fisherman.
But I have a lot to learn about hooves. I didn't realise how much there was to learn, such as how shoes are supposed to fit and the anatomy of a hoof.

Q: Where would you like to be in five years' time?
A: In three to four years I'd like to be a qualified farrier. I'd like to be training some horses - have about a dozen horses in work - and be shoeing through the day.

Q: What's your job hunting advice?
A: I just looked around. You can get lots of information from the Equine Industry Training Organisation (see link below). A good farrier is keen to work and has attention to detail. And you have to enjoy doing it. If you don't want to be there you are not going to make a good job of it.