New Shoes and Happy Hooves

Local farrier, Carson Kuehn, plays one of the most important roles in horse care

Carson Kuehn rubs his hand across the horse’s back and down her hip before settling on the mare’s fetlock. As he picks up her hoof and rests it on his chap- covered knees, he begins the process of trimming hooves and replacing her shoes.     

He takes his time, meticulously looking for problems. Using his tools, he cleans up the hoof. Next, he trims away the loose, dried-out sole. With the ease of a surgeon, he reaches for the tools pocketed in his chaps.  Next come the nippers, used to trim back the excess growth before grabbing a rasp to file down the hoof to a clean, even edge.  

Carson is a farrier, a specialist in equine hoof care. In the 13 years he has been practicing, he’s shod nearly 10,000 head.  That’s 40,000 hooves to the mathematically challenged! His clients are spread across four counties and some days he crisscrosses every one of them.  

“I stay busy. Every day I try to meet four to six clients,” he said in his casual, soft-spoken manner. “I have to,” he added.  “This isn’t a year-round job. I need to make the best of the eight months that I work.” Carson regularly cares for roughly 100 horses, trimming or shoeing them every eight weeks or so. 

On this particular day, work began at 6 a.m. in Shepherd, where he shod four horses. Fourteen hours later,with multiple stops in between, he was outside of Absarokee, where his day would end with three more horses.  

It’s a physically grueling career. Carson said it’s not his back that takes a beating but his forearms, elbows and hands.

“I do get tired now and then,” he admitted as he stopped long enough to work the kinks out of his hands, “But the physical part isn’t the hardest part. I’m a self-starter, so no one is telling me to get out of bed in the morning or how to do my job. It’s all up to me. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid.” 

Carson, who grew up in Billings, began his career at a guest ranch in Wyoming, where he worked as a wrangler. He apprenticed under a farrier and took to the trade quickly. It has served him well. In addition to his farrier career, Carson and his wife run cattle. He owns enough cows to keep him busy during his off hours and claims his farrier work is his job and his cows are his hobby. His duel career as a cattleman and farrier allows him to do the best at both jobs.  

Carson, a graduate in business and marketing from the University of Tennessee- Martin, where he had a four-year scholarship in marksmanship and finished in three, acknowledges that sometimes you find something you love that has little to do with your education.

“I’ve always loved being outdoors and being around horses,” he said.  

To find a career that you truly love and are accomplished in is a rarity that Carson does not take for granted. His quiet demeanor fits his role as he calms each horse down and attends to his job. He sizes the new shoes for the horse and begins the process of attaching them to the prepared hooves.

“I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing and feel blessed to do it,” he said. He finishes up, stands, stretches his long back, pats the horse a couple of times and then begins another.