Cost of doing business — know what you must charge per horse, not just what others charge.
Most new and even experienced farriers set their rates by looking at what competitors charge nearby. This feels safe but is actually one of the most common reasons farriers underprice themselves — because every practice has different overhead, travel distances, tool investments, and lifestyle costs. Cost of Doing Business pricing starts from your numbers and works outward to a rate that actually covers everything.
The CODB method — long advocated by American Farriers Journal and educators like Bob Schantz (Spanish Lake Blacksmith) — divides your total annual need (overhead + consumables + target wage + taxes + profit) by your projected annual service count. The result is the floor you cannot charge below without losing money.
1. Overhead Costs: Enter your fixed annual business costs — insurance, phone, software, continuing education, association dues, accounting, and any "other" recurring fixed costs. Include only real costs you'd pay regardless of how many horses you see.
2. Tool Depreciation: Add each major asset (forge, anvil, rig, grinder, truck if not already in Vehicle section). Enter purchase cost, salvage value, and useful life in years. The tool uses straight-line depreciation: (Cost − Salvage) ÷ Life.
3. Vehicle Costs: Enter truck/rig payments, insurance, registration, and your travel parameters. The calculator estimates annual fuel cost from your miles per appointment, fuel price, and MPG.
4. Income Goals: Enter your target take-home pay, estimated tax rate, desired profit margin, and card processing fee.
5. Service Mix: Enter how many horses of each type are in your book and how many cycles per year each gets. The total annual service count feeds the per-job pricing formula.
6. Consumables: Enter average direct material costs per job type (shoes, nails, pads, rasps, sealant). These are variable costs that scale with volume.
The weighting factors reflect that a 4-shoe job requires more time and overhead allocation than a trim. You can think of it as charging a "labour unit" — a shoeing is the base unit, and other services are a fraction of that unit. This keeps the ratio of trim-to-shoeing sensible and consistent with your actual time investment.
CODB pricing means setting your per-horse rates based on your real annual expenses — overhead, materials, vehicle costs, and target wage — divided by your projected service volume. It ensures you actually cover all costs and take home what you need, rather than copying competitors whose costs may be completely different from yours.
Add your total annual need (target after-tax income grossed up for taxes, plus all overhead, depreciation, vehicle, and consumables). Divide by your weighted annual service count. Shoeings receive a higher weight because they take more time and materials than trims. Add your desired profit margin and card fee to get your final charge. This calculator does all of that automatically from your inputs.
No. Shoeings take significantly more time and consume more materials (horseshoes, nails, pads, more rasp wear). A common industry approach is to price a trim at roughly 30–40% of a full shoeing. The calculator weights each service type based on its typical relative time and material demand, but you can always adjust the final numbers up or down to match your local market.
Research from American Farriers Journal consistently shows that most farriers price from competitors rather than costs. Because every farrier's overhead, travel radius, tool investment, and personal financial obligations differ, a competitor's rate tells you nothing about whether that rate works for your practice. Farriers who calculate from CODB have a defensible, data-backed price they can confidently communicate to clients.
Overhead includes: truck/rig loan payments, vehicle insurance and registration, business liability insurance, health and disability insurance, tool depreciation, professional association dues, continuing education clinics, phone/software subscriptions, accounting/tax preparation fees, advertising, and retirement savings. These are costs you bear regardless of how many horses you see in a given month.
The Annual Revenue Projection section shows projected gross revenue at your calculated prices. If the total falls short of your need, you can increase your horse count or cycles per year, reduce overhead, or adjust your prices upward. The calculator updates in real time as you change any input, making it easy to model different scenarios.
Most horses need hoof care every six to eight weeks, whether shod or barefoot. This means roughly 7–8 cycles per year for a horse on a regular schedule. Horses in heavy performance work, therapeutic rehab, or with fast-growing hooves may need 4–6 week intervals, increasing to 9–13 cycles per year. Season can also affect growth rate — many farriers see faster growth in summer and slower growth in winter.