Ben Bateman
Valaachi Downs Young Achiever Scholarship 2016

Thanks to the Valachi Downs Young Achiever Award I was able to spend two weeks in Sussex, UK, in March of 2018.

Six days were spent working with Matt Staples, one of the UK directors of the Equine Lameness Prevention Organisation (ELPO). Matt is now a remedial farrier at Liphook Equine Hospital, and someone I’ve always wanted to spend time working with. Our discussions filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge and since being home I’ve been able to put a lot of his ideas into practice.

Matt and I also attended a CPD evening at Cliffe Equine Vets in Laughton, where Andrew Casserly presented on the effect of frog support pads on palmar angle and Egbert Willems did an equine back dissection demonstration.

Over the middle weekend I spent one day working with Dan Stern building some urethane clogs for a laminitic pony and working through some really interesting ideas on a couple of lameness cases. During the second week I attended a three-day course at Total Foot Protection farrier supplies in Horsham, aimed at helping participants become familiar with the unique challenges and techniques required for using different types of glue in the application of composite shoes.

The first day consisted of lectures and demonstrations, the second day was hands-on, practising on cadaver feet, and on the third day we took a written exam in the morning and a practical exam in the afternoon. The exam was a modified version of the ELPO certified farrier practitioner exam, so there was a large focus on hoof distortion grading and mapping, which was great as a refresher.

The day after the course was an open lecture day with around 50 local farriers attending presentations from Daisy Bicking, Steve Foxworth, Beckie Lemmens and Matt Staples. The topics included leverage testing, future ELPO research and laminitis management using adhesives and composite materials. It was also great to hear Matt’s talk on the use of glue to help stabilise wet hooves.

In May of 2018 I returned to Colorado to work with Steve Foxworth and attend a farrier skills course. This was the third time I have stayed with Steve and on this trip my apprentice Nick O’Leary travelled with me. We spent several days working with Steve and his two apprentices in the field and then attended a farrier skills course in Penrose.

The first day was focussed on the forging skills required for the CFP exam which I have already passed, but was an area that I wanted to improve in. We had some time with the instructors and then a classroom session analysing videos of our technique to get some points to improve on. The rest of the day was spent hands on in the forge.

Days two and three were spent with some of the instructors sharing ideas and learning how to grade the participants’ work. On day two we helped participants practice hoof mapping and trimming and on day three we focussed on shoeing.

After the course we spent a couple more days working with Steve before I flew back. During this time Steve showed me some slowmotion video research which the ELPO has been working on and a really interesting presentation on the work the ELPO has been doing with hoof care of exotic animals in zoos, which is an area I hope to be involved in going forward.