SIMPSON COUNTY, Ky. — The Kentucky Derby isn’t just a time for guys and gals to get dressed up. Horses get geared up for the big event too.

What You Need To Know

  • Ethan Harrington has been a farrier for 10 years

  • Farriers make sure horses have shoes and have healthy hooves

  • With shoeing, there are three main reasons as to do it: protection, traction and correction

Some are getting haircuts, some are getting new saddles, but most of them are seeing a farrier for shoeing and making sure their feet are healthy.

Ethan Harrington, a farrier in Simpson County, has been performing in the profession full time for 10 years, often trimming hooves daily. He is the owner of H and H Farrier Service. “They’ll grow a whole hoof in about 12 to 14 months, so you have to trim them back like you would your own nails,” he explained.

But the importance of this job goes way beyond that. Farriers are always involved in making sure horses have no abscesses on their hooves.

“So it’s just like an abscess for a human,” he said. “If you have something festering in you and you relieve that pressure, then you get instant relief.”

He also shoes horses, making sure they fit nice and tight. Or he gives them a medical plate that can easily be removed to check on wounds.

Harrington said, “It would undo the bolts with a wrench, and when you had to treat the horse, it would slide and it would expose the bottom of the hoof, treat the bottom of the hoof, and then it goes back on.”

In shoeing, there are three main reasons as to do it, whether it be a trail horse, a racing horse or a Derby horse.

“Protection is one of them,” Harrington explained. “Traction, we let it gain traction, or correction, like if we had a limb deformity, or we were trying to protect a gate, that would be correction.”

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