Waynesville High School senior Justen Leifer has aspirations of becoming a veterinarian, but before he gets there, he has found becoming a farrier to be a job in the field of agriculture which will, in part, help to prepare him in the arena of horse health.
A non-native to the Ozarks, Justen, 18, ended up in the Waynesville, Mo., area because his father finished his military career as a drill sergeant at Fort Leonard Wood. Before the move, the Leifers were stationed in North Carolina.
His father, Blaine Leifer and his grandparents, owned several hundred horses while living in Indiana prior to being in the military, according to Justen. When Blaine was 18, he began serving in the military.
“He served 20 years and he ended up here at Fort Leonard Wood about 11 years ago. He retired four years ago,” Justen said.
Since then Blaine has encouraged Justen and his 12-year-old sister, Brandi Leifer, to get involved in agriculture. And since his father has had equine interests, he encouraged Justen to look into learning how to shoe horses.
“Since then, it has been nothing but horses for me … well, horses and cows,” he said. “We, as a family, work mainly with cows. I own a couple head myself and then my parents, they own some.”
The Liefers also worked with a goat, a side project for his sister. She is in the 4-H program and will show the goat this year during fair season.
Justen has been showing cows since his freshman year as a student in the agricultural program at the Waynesville Technology and Career Center (WCC) when the former advisor prodded him to buy a Hereford heifer.
“I showed her for two years, then I got her bred and she threw me another heifer calf that I am working with now. I also bought a show steer for this year,” he said.
Though winning a number of awards during his high school years showing his cows at fairs such as the Pulaski County Fair in Richland, Mo., along with showing a sheep at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, Mo., where he took third in his class, Justen had to take a hiatus from competitions between his junior and current senior year because he went to Purcell, Okla., to receive his farrier certification in an eight-week training program.
A normal day at the Oklahoma Horseshoeing School for Justen would be to wake up at 6 a.m., make sure his room was clean, and then go to the classroom by 7 a.m. to do bookwork. Next he would have breakfast and afterwards he and his 15 classmates would go to the barn and work with a horse for the rest of the day.
“When we finished with our horse, we would have to make shoes from bar stock,” he said. “Saturday’s would be half days and graduations were held on Saturdays.”
Classroom instruction was mainly over anatomy and the different types of shoes, including ones that are corrective for problems, according to Justen. Also, the students learned about the business side of farrier work. In the barn, Justen would often work on horses that needed corrective shoes, applying what was learned in the classroom.
“Every hoof is different; if you need to put a corrective shoe on one foot, you won’t need to put one on another (hoof) more than likely, unless it is something fairly serious,” he said.
Along with everything else Justen had to do in his training, he also had to learn to do some smith work and at his house right now he has an anvil and a forge. Some shoes need a trailer, which is an attachment on the outside of the shoe, which helps in pulling the hoof down more quickly, he said.
“After (schooling) I started my business (JBL Farrier Services); I have now worked with about 300 head of horses and have 70 regular clients,” he said.
His clients are mainly in Rolla, Plato, Richland, Crocker and other places nearby in the Waynesville area.
Leifer plans on attending Missouri State University to study animal science in the fall and minor in agricultural business to give him the knowledge he needs to continue his farrier business, along with eying a veterinarian degree down the road.
“The plan is to go to veterinarian school and open my own clinic one day,” he said. “This will really help with my farrier business because a vet and a farrier are best friends; I cannot diagnose a problem with a horse, but a vet can and he can tell me how to shoe that horse – the plan is to be a vet and a farrier at the same time.”
This summer, he plans on getting certified into the Brotherhood of Working Farriers Association (BWFA). He additionally plans on obtaining a journeyman certification for a contract licensure as he looks to expand the scope of JBL Farrier Services.
Leifer’s experiences thus far in the world of livestock have been both rewarding and rough. He has been kicked several times, but he said that just comes with the territory. Also, working with cattle, which are more like dogs compared to spirited horses, can present its own dangers. However the rewards of correcting a gait or nursing a sick animal back to health far outweighs dealing with a surly cow or obstinate horse, he said.
