For my Business Case Study I decided to use, my farrier of many years, Ray Higgins. Ray has been in the farrier industry for 17 years, he gained his qualification through and apprenticeship (NVQ). He then continued to study and achieve a Diploma to then become a fully qualified farrier. Ray then progressed had decided to start his own business as a farrier and has been doing so for the last 9 years. He previously focused on shoeing show jumpers and eventers, this was purely because he found those disciplines particularly interesting as well as the injuries they acquired and learning/using different shoeing techniques to benefit their movement and therefore performance such as the use of wedges. Moving on in his career he has taken on other business of his own and has therefore stopped more of the commercial shoeing and targeting clients of certain disciplines. The majority of his clientele come from livery yards, when he is the yard farrier, and people who’s horses he has been shoeing for years, such as my horse.
Ray accumulates clients by advertising his business on social media platforms such as Facebook, as our worlds now revolve around social media and technology, this is the easiest and most efficient way to promote a business. He also uses other displays such as posters in tack and horse feed shops. However in the horse industry, a lot of information and recommendations get passed on through word of mouth. This is beneficial for business that have a good reputation such as Ray, however if a business has a bad reputation, this is how they will not gain any and lose costumers. As a therapist getting good results from patients as well as being friendly and easy to talk to will benefit my reputation which will hopefully travel by word of mouth to help me acquire more clients.
Along with the recognised qualifications, a farrier must have their own personal liability insurance as well as paying a yearly registration fee to the Farrier Registration Council. By being part of the farrier registration council they will provide cover of the initial few thousand pounds of the overall bill if a client requires veterinary care due to poor shoeing.
The most common injuries that he comes across are abscesses, bruised feet and laminitis. When a horse has an abscess, the treatment Ray provides is to firstly; remove the horses shoes (if shod) and proceed to dig out the abscess so that all the infection (puss) is removed (it can be seen to be removed completely when the wall of the hole that the abscess was in starts to secrete a small amount of blood). After the abscess has been dug out, it should be cleaned and wrapped in a wet poultice shoe, the wet poultice should changed twice a day for three days. The wet poultice should then be changed to a dry poultice, this allows the foot to dry and harden, with sugar or iodine and left on for 1-2 weeks depending on the size and depth of the abscess. Once the poultice is allowed to be removed, Ray would usually shoe the horse with a pad to the hoof to provide support or used cotton wool to avoid dirt getting in the foot.
Other injuries that Ray said he would come across includes tendon injuries. In this scenario, the horse would either be shod with the use of a raised heeled shoe, wedges or unshod and put on box rest depending on the severity of the injury, which would be determined by a veterinarian. Coming back from an injury, Ray suggested showing a horse using extra support such as a pad to cushion the food and evenly distribute weight.
From this case study, I can look at my work as a therapist through the work of a farrier and see the tremendous benefits correctly fitting shoes have. It is essential that as therapists we are able to work with businesses such as farriers to improve the horses comfort and efficiency during locomotion.
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