Since our staff became involved with American Farriers Journal 16 years ago, we’ve seen many changes in the hoof-care industry. While this publication has grown from 690 pages in 1992 to 1,116 pages in 2007, readers haven’t seen the need for us to make any drastic changes.

Yet over the past few months, we’ve held in-depth conversations with our own 20-member staff and numerous AFJ readers about how to better perform our mission of serving the hoof-care world through this magazine, the Web site and the International Hoof-Care Summit.

Don’t Mess It Up!

Even though our readers understand the need for change, they’ve told us not to be making any major changes in the time-tested way we deliver information.

But as you page through this issue, you’ll notice a few refinements that will make for easier reading. As an example, the dozen or more departments that you find in each issue, such as this one, have a much cleaner look. We’ve also refined our feature article designs to make them more consistent while paying more attention to photos that help tell each story.

We also looked carefully at our cover design. And after looking over more than a dozen cover options, we e-mailed several magazine covers to AFJ readers.

This is when things got interesting, as more than 200 readers responded with their thoughts, ideas and opinions. Interestingly enough, the majority preferred the existing cover rather than making any drastic changes. So what you see on this month’s cover is…