66 



THE ART OF HORSE-SHOEING. 



a horse, but in most cases it would be more just to blame 

 the man who made the nail-holes or fitted the shoe and 

 so rendered safe driving difficult or impossible. 



Fig. 43.— Nail-holes " pitched " in and out. 



Each nail-hole should be as far as possible from the 

 other — say, from an inch to an inch and a half apart. 

 When the two front or toe nail-holes are put too- far 

 back, the whole are crowded, or the last are pushed back 

 too near the heels. 



For small shoes, four or five nail-holes are sufficient. 

 Medium-sized shoes should have from five to seven, and 

 the heavy shoes of big draught horses must have eight. 

 The number of nail-holes need not always be increased 

 in proportion of the size of the shoe, because as the 

 weight of shoe is increased, so is the size of the nail, and 

 an extra strong nail may take the place of additional 

 ones. The fewer nails .in a foot the better, but as a 

 properly-placed nail does no harm, and as the loss of a 

 shoe may be very serious, it is better to have one too 

 many than one too few. 



Machine-made Shoes. — Horse-shoeing is distinctly 

 an art requiring special skill for its proper x>erforixiance. 

 It is also one of the most laborious of all skilled trades. 

 Anything which lightens mechanical toil tends to im- 

 prove the mental and artistic qualities of the workman, 

 and all applications of machinery which lessen the heavy 

 manual labor of the farrier may therefore be looked upon 

 as improvements. Machinery has lightened the labor 

 of shoe-making in two ways — by supplying various pat- 

 terns of grooved and bevelled iron in bars, which only 

 require cutting into lengths and turning round to forma 

 shoe, and also by making shoes all ready to be fitted to 



