MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Loren Herschberger
I grew up on a farm in southern Illinois. We raised horses and cattle, as well as about every other farm animal. My dad was a farrier for as long as I can remember and is still shoeing horses. Growing up Amish, I only went to school through 8th grade, so when I graduated at 15, I started helping my dad shoe full-time by pulling shoes and then clinching and finishing feet. After a couple of years of doing this, I started shoeing. I mostly did my own horses at first and horses I had in for training. We shod horses six days a week. With the Shawnee National Forest being only a mile from the house, we were in the middle of major trail riding country. We shod a lot of trail horses, some standardbred race horses, as well as Amish buggy horses and a few barrel horses. At 18, I started going to every horse clinic that was local or that I could get to. At 19, I moved to Iowa to work in the horse industry. At that time, I also attended North Iowa Area Community College and got my GED. I ended up trimming a horse for one of my professors for several years afterwards. She was an awesome teacher and helped me exponentially with getting my GED, so I always trimmed her horse for free until the horse passed away. After being in Iowa for a couple of years, I moved to north Texas to work for a reining horse trainer as an assistant trainer. I stayed there one summer before moving back to Iowa. I absolutely loved Texas, and it was one of the best times of my life, but I believe it has to surely be the hottest place in the world in the summer. For several years after moving away from home, I trained horses more than I shod horses, but I always ended up under horses most every week it seemed. For the last six years I have been a full-time farrier, but still ride and show Quarter Horses with my wife, Fallon. We raise and train several horses a year on our farm where we reside in Floyd, Iowa. My brother Olen also runs a full-time horse training operation out of our place.
I am beyond grateful to the mentors and fellow farriers that are just a phone call away when I need a second set of eyes on x-rays, or when I am in over my head on something.
I keep a full book of horses five to six days a week. I mostly shoe barrel horses, versatility ranch horses, some reiners/reined cow horses, pleasure horses, and trail horses. I probably don’t have as many memorable stories as some. I try to weed through the less desirable situations quickly and stay out of trouble, but here are a few…
One cold November day, I was trimming some horses in a barn for some customers and there were a couple of dogs under foot. One was a big red pit bull named Mary Jane, and the other was a small white Jack Russell Terrier type of dog. They were cleaning up the hoof trimmings almost faster than I was cutting them off. All of a sudden, the pit bull “Mary Jane” grabs the Jack Russell by the throat and pins him down. She has a death grip on him and would not turn loose. The owners are kicking Mary Jane and she doesn’t even act like she can feel it. Then they tried beating her and then pulling them apart by pulling on her back legs. All to no avail. Mary Jane wasn’t turning loose. Jack Russell finally went limp and he was gasping for breath. I thought surely that any second would be his last. So all of a sudden, an idea came to me. I walked over to the dogs, and I rammed one handle of my GE nippers through the back of Mary Jane’s mouth, out the other side and the other handle over the top of her nose. I clamped down on those handles and Mary Jane finally turned loose. Jack Russell got to see another day. That was close to 10 years ago. I still trim and shoe there and Mary Jane is getting old and grey now.
The next story is of a client that I had several years ago that has since been inherited by a different farrier I presume. She had a big gelding named Picasso with quite a bit less than ideal ground manners. I was hired because they said the last farrier had hit Picasso in the belly “for no reason.” After the first foot, it was pretty apparent that Picasso was pretty skilled at making the farrier’s job miserable. On the last foot between all the jerking around, I managed to bloody my hand pretty good with the rasp, the blood was flowing pretty good onto my rasp and the hoof stand and even some got on Picasso’s foot. “Oh no,” she exclaimed. “Did you clip him too short?” she asked with much concern. To which I explained that this was my blood, not Picasso’s. She was so relieved and exclaimed, “Oh thank God.” To which I could not help myself and I started laughing. But that was the last time I ever went and saw Picasso.
I will try to keep this last story short, I was at this place for the first time, trimming a horse and a pony in their driveway. They had about every kind of farm animal and dogs around and under foot, it was a cold day and I was pretty bundled up and hurrying along. I was trimming the horse, when out of nowhere a big mean goose came up and attacked me, latched onto my leg, and started flogging me. The flogging didn’t hurt but the bite on my leg and not letting go very quickly, kind of did! So anyway, I just kind of kicked at him and the owner ran over and chased him away. So now I’m really moving fast around this horse and pony and I’m pretty gun shy from this goose by now. I get the horse done and move to the pony. I am working on a back foot and I’m bent way over, so that the bill of my ball hat is obstructing my view in front of me. All of a sudden I hear, or sense that this goose is coming in for the kill again. I had my rasp in my right hand and I don’t know if it was purely accident or reflex or what, but I gave a good flick in that direction with my rasp and I felt it connect…. I looked up and that goose was flopping around on the ground like a chicken with its head cut off… it surely looked like I had just killed their goose… I thought, oh sh.t, with thoughts racing through my mind like, “has anyone ever gotten sued for killing a goose?” “I wonder how high dollar this goose is going to be now?” etc. Well lucky for me, the goose was just knocked out and a few minutes later he was totally fine. He did not bother me again, though.
My advice to young farriers getting started would be to join the AFA and your local association. The good that I have gotten from these associations and its members/mentors has truly been life changing. I would like to give a huge THANK YOU to the IPFA and the members and mentors that we have in this association. You have truly been and are life changing.
Looking back over the last several years of doing this, I believe every year has been better than the last. Especially when I started searching for knowledge and furthering my education and working towards certification.
What a ride it has been already, and I am just getting started!