Horses

[Bentiron1946]

I get the same thing when folks see my anvil. I have the cards of two very good farriers that I hand out. If any of you are interested in taking a course in shoeing horses I can recommend Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari, NM. Their email address is Mesalands Community College . It is a wonderful small college. I was there two weeks ago for the annual iron pour. They also have a very good foundry arts program.

[KYBOY]

Theres an excellent farrier school here in Ky if anyone is interested. Real farriers are rare in my part of Ky as many horse owners around here shoe their own. Just part of living in a very rural area..
Kentucky Horseshoeing School

[welder19]

I would love horses......if we were still living in the 19th century, I think they are a beautiful animal and all but I have a truck so I don't have much use for a means of transportation that you have to feed even though your not using it....but to each his own.
Kind of like snail boats....just not real useful in this day and age.
No offense to anyone who likes snail boats or horses, just my opinion.

welder19

[Jose Gomez]

welder19, If we use that logic the same could be said about blacksmithing.... I would love smithing......if we were still living in the 19th century, I think it produces a beautiful product and all, but I have a hardware store and a walmart, so I don't have much use for a means of making things that you have to work so hard at, even though you can buy it for a quarter of the effort it takes to make it....but to each his own. There is not always a well defined "use" for the things that people often chose to occupy their time, but if you look closer you will see that horses are used to work cattle, assist in search and rescue opperations in otherwise impassibe terrain, work crowd controll operations durring events like Mardi-Gras, and the US Border patroll still uses them to patroll large sections of the border that cannot be acessed by any other means. Horses roles in american history run nearly paralell with smithing by todays standards. The presence of both horses and blacksmiths are allmost entirely unnecicary by many standards, yet here we are keeping the dream alive.... I took no offense at your opinion, but just thought that I would share a diferent point ov view.

[ThomasPowers]

Jose; you still have more than a dozen of them four footed converters of high grade feed into low grade fertilizer?

My neighbor is trying to build up a paint stud farm for when he's retired from being a commercial pilot. Why he was sad to find out that I wasn't a farrier when I talked with him about putting a smithy in. And why he laser levelled the field between us to grow alfalfa.

Lots of working horses out this way as they are still one of the best ways to get up into the hills/mountains to find people or cattle.

[brucegodlesky]

1 horse+1 rabbit= great kielbasa (BOG)

[Jose Gomez]

Thomas, we are down to 14 horses of 5 different breeds (5 stallions and 9 mares), 6 miniature horses (2 of which are stallions), 2 goats, a llama, 3 dogs, 5 cats, 2 turtles, 2 canaries, a rabbit, and a platinum fox! I keep telling everyone that I am using my smithing skills to make all of the hardware for the ark that Noah is building behind my house!! Does anyone know where I can find a partrige in a pear tree? One nice thing about horses is that you can get 80 miles to a bale, which will be usefull if gas gets any more expensive!

[pete46]

JOSE: We may all need to at least learn how to trim a hoof or four.

[Jose Gomez]

You know the funny thing is that I trade blacksmithing, welding work, and tool sharpening for trimming and shoeing from a local farrier so that we both get to stick to what we are good at.... or at least willing to do!!

[pete46]

I think my farrier likes to come out ,just to see what kind'a new crazyness I got goi'n on.