Farrier Resume Example & Writing Guide

This sample is for a certified farrier with a private book who is applying for a staff position at an equine hospital. The name, clinics and farms are invented. If you are applying for an apprenticeship or you have just finished farrier school, keep the layout and lead with training and horse handling.

The reader wants to know whether you can be turned loose on their horses without supervision, and whether you will still be there in a year. They look for four things.

• Certification level and who trained you. Farrier school, apprenticeship hours, and your certification body and level. The name of the farrier you apprenticed under carries real weight in this trade.
• Volume and cycle. Horses a week, cycle length, and whether you keep to it. A farrier who runs on time is worth more to a barn than one who is technically brilliant and always late.
• Therapeutic ability and vet relationships. Whether you can shoe from radiographs, build a bar shoe package, and take direction from a veterinarian without friction.
• Horse handling and safety. Difficult horses, young stock, stallions, and your record on injuries to yourself, the horse and the handler.

“Two things decide it for me: which vets will vouch for you, and whether you turn up on the day you said. Certification tells me you can shape a shoe. References from a veterinarian tell me you can be trusted with a laminitic horse at two in the morning.”

There is no state license for farriery in the United States, which makes voluntary certification the main signal on the page. Write the exact level, the awarding association and the year.

• American Farrier's Association levels run from the intern classification through Certified Farrier and Certified Tradesman Farrier to Certified Journeyman Farrier. Give the level and the year you earned it, and note if you are testing for the next one.
• Other US associations, including the Guild of Professional Farriers and the Brotherhood of Working Farriers Association, run their own testing. Name the association if you certified through one of them.
• Farrier school: name the school, the length of the program in weeks, and whether it covered hot shoeing and forge work or trimming only.
• Apprenticeship: give the hours, the length and the certification level of the farrier you worked under. This is often the most persuasive item on an early-career page.
• Continuing education: clinic hours, contest placings, and any anatomy or therapeutic courses taken with a veterinarian.
• Practical items that belong here: your driver's license, your own truck and rig, and whether you carry general liability insurance. Employers and farms ask about all three.

• Hoof balance assessment, static and dynamic evaluation, watching the horse move before and after
• Trimming, hot and cold shoeing, forge work, handmade shoes and modifications
• Therapeutic and corrective shoeing: bar shoes, wedges, pads and packing, hospital plates, glue-on and composite shoes
• Discipline-specific work: racing plates, jumper studs and stud holes, gaited horses, draft horses, mules and donkeys
• Foal and young stock corrective trimming
• Radiograph interpretation for shoeing purposes, and communication with treating veterinarians
• Lameness recognition and knowing when to stop and call the vet
• Horse handling, restraint and safety, including young, sore and difficult horses
• Forge, anvil, rig and tool maintenance
• Scheduling, invoicing, record keeping, stock and inventory

Two plain-language qualities are worth stating with evidence rather than as adjectives: you turn up when you said you would, and you tell an owner the truth about a foot even when they do not want to hear it. Both are the reason farriers keep clients for a decade.

For an apprenticeship the head farrier is deciding two things: can you be around horses safely, and will you last. The work is hard on the back and most people quit in the first two years. Answer both questions on the page.

• Count everything from school: supervised trims, full shoeings, forge hours, anatomy coursework, contest entries.
• Put your horse background up front, whatever form it took: grooming, barn work, riding, showing, ranch work, hauling.
• Say you have held horses for a farrier or a vet and how many times. It tells a head farrier you know how to stand and where not to.
• List physical work history honestly, since bending under 1,200 lb animals all day is the part that ends most careers early.
• Mention your own tools, your truck, your license and whether you can travel or relocate.
• Ask a veterinarian, barn manager or your school instructor for a reference and name them with permission. In this trade, personal references do more than anything on the page.

• One page. Your reader is a vet or a barn manager, not a corporate recruiter.
• Put certification level in the headline next to your name if you hold one, as farriers do in this trade.
• Include references with contact details, with permission. This is one of the few fields where naming references on the page is normal and expected.
• Say whether you have your own rig, tools and insurance, since a staff or contract position may or may not supply them.
• No photo and no date of birth on a US resume. A few photographs of finished feet and forge work can go in a separate portfolio if the employer asks.