Kentucky Horseshoeing School

The Kentucky Horseshoeing School was founded in 1978 and is located in Mount Eden Kentucky. This school is focused on understanding balanced shoeing through a combination of intense anatomy, physiology and biomechanical training. The goal of the Kentucky Horseshoeing School is to produce the very best entry level farriers in the country.

Students can choose from a variety of different course lengths to suit what their needs and desires are. The shortest course that is available is the two week trim course. This course is designed for horse owners who would like to be able to maintain their own horse's feet in the absence of a professional farrier. This course places a great deal of emphasis on basic limb and foot anatomy, functions of the foot, movement, identifying problems and basic foot health. Students will learn how to pasture trim, pull shoes, level hooves, and reapply pulled shoes when their farrier is unavailable.

The next course that is available is the eight week basic farrier course. This course is designed for owners who want to trim and shoe their own sound horses. This course will teach students how to use and maintain farrier tools, how to trim and balance a horse's hooves, how to shape and nail readymade shoes without the use of a forge. Some of the basic forging techniques that will be covered are hot seating, forging toe clips and punching holes in factory shoes.

The sixteen week advanced program is designed for people who want to become skilled in trimming and hot shoeing horses. This course will place an emphasis on using factory made shoes. In this course, students are introduced to more advance practices like tool building and maintenance.

The twenty two week career track course is designed to produce comprehensively trained, entry level farriers. This is a performance based curriculum designed for students that have very high expectations for themselves. This course will take the student through an in depth study of anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, equine movement, and conformation. This program will teach students how to properly trim and shoe horses to achieve proper foot balance and maintain the limb. This course will go beyond the basic shoeing of sound horses with readymade shoes. This program will teach students how to build shoes and will teach them all of the aspects of remedial and therapeutic shoeing. Besides learning how to use farrier tools, students will learn how to make a variety of different tools including forging tools. This will incorporate both basic welding and farrier skills.

Besides trimming and shoeing, students will also learn how to diagnose and treat a variety of equine lameness by acquiring a strong foundation that will help students sort facts from fiction in the field of farrier science. Students will also learn how to read radiographs and communicate with owners and veterinarians to create the best treatment plan for each individual horse.

Once a student has completed the twenty two week course, they may choose to continue their education by choosing to perform an internship. The KHS Farrier Internship Program requires that each student maintain a minimum of 80% average on all of their practical and written work. Each student is placed with a master farrier for a minimum of six months. Students must follow the syllabus that is provided by KHS and each student's progress is monitored by KHS for the entire six month period. Most of the internships that are available are paid and many students who have successfully completed an internship have been able to start their professional farrier careers at the top of the pay scale.

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