Daisy Bicking (Parkesburg, Penn.)
During May this year we were fortunate enough to host Pennsylvania farrier Daisy Bicking for a 3-day workshop in the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia. We’d like to give Daisy a public shout-out for coming such a long way to help teach us.
We had a group of 20 participants and the full-participant spots sold out in less than 24 hours! I had been following Daisy’s work for over 2 years and was impressed by the results she was achieving in composite materials. There had been limited tuition in such products available in this country, and so I had contacted Daisy on several occasions to ask for advice on tricky cases. We finally had the chance to meet at the 2015 International Hoof Care Summit and discuss the opportunities to bring Daisy’s workshops to Australia. Fast forward 15 months of planning and our first day was upon us!
We obtained numerous cadaver legs, got an assortment of them radiographed for the workshop by our amazing local vets, and then spent 3 days practicing with them in addition to watching a live-horse demo. We covered hoof mapping, hoof distortions, how to use composite shoes to achieve the best outcomes, and how to better our trims before applying shoes. On the last day we were able to put our trimmed and shod feet through the bandsaw to see how we were affecting the insides of the hoof.
The workshop was a complete success, with the majority of our participants saying the workshop should have been longer and all participants wanting more workshops with Daisy in the future. We established a student support group after the workshop, where the students can discuss their tricky cases in a friendly environment. We’ve now been able to see an assortment of horses be helped through these techniques that we’ve learnt from Daisy, and several of the students have integrated these skills in to the workshops that they’re teaching. The follow-on effect has been incredible!
Networking, cooperation and the sharing of information between farriers is extremely important. There are growing communities of farriers who wish to help each other out, including between those with more traditional and more alternative approaches. Daisy has been integral in promoting these communities, especially for those of us coming at shoeing from a barefoot background. And we can’t recommend networking and educational events such as the IHCS highly enough for helping foster these relationships.
Thank you Daisy and the International Hoof-Care Summit! We’d also like to give a big thanks to EasyCare Inc. for a generous donation of goods for the students to practice with. Their support is greatly appreciated.
— Sarah Kuyken (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia)
Director, Innovative Hoof Care Australia
