The global objective of the project is to enable potential beneficiaries to gain a better knowledge and understanding of EU practices and to be prepared for accession through strengthening the contacts and mutual exchange of experience in veterinary sectors of civil society in the Member States and Turkey, encouragement of exchange of knowledge and best practices on planning and implementation of EU policies. Our project fulfills these requirements on farriery subject. Specific objective is to encourage horse related professionals and poor families working with horse and donkeys, enterprises with organizing farriery training activities, to improve working equine welfare. The Project coordinator AKU and other partners, Macedonian and Latvian Agricultural Universities are public bodies responsible in Veterinary training in the region. Planned activities are to form project team, to form a list of requirements, to determine educators, to provide physical equipments (farriery tools, computer etc.), to determine education activity program, to arrange visual materials such as brochures etc. in order to deliver the trainees and their families, to prepare leaflets brochures etc. in order to present the project, to determine trainees, to form education workshop, to do farriery trainings in Lethonia and Macedonia with local and foreign experts, to do traininig activity in Macedonia with participation Turkish veterinary related students for enhancing awarenes level of students on importance of foot trimming on animal health, to produce and deliver a short film, to do farriery apprenticeship to trainees, to arrange tours stud farms, to prepare outcome reports with the project outputs. Farriery training activities in Macedonia and Lethonia will be the cornerstone of the project because these trained skilled personnels will have basic animal welfare training capacity to local veterinarians and other relevant persons in their countries. Staff of partner associations are to be trained in Macedonia and Lethonia, and subsequently to establish a farriery training curriculum, with the support of the partners. The veterinary related persons participating at Vocational Trainings in partner universities are expected to deliver their required experiences and competences through the project duration via seminars, local, national, international, workshops. Furthermore, international farriery conference will be held in Turkey with the participation of local and foreign partners. It is aimed at training experts from the region and other regions and in collaboration on a long-term basis at national and European levels. An exhibition about the history of farriery in partner countries will be organized in order to raise an awareness on the disappearing profession 'farriery'. Also a competition under evaluation of experienced farriers will be run among the participants of training activities who will take place in farriery Trainings. Historical farriery museum will be established in the AKU. The museum will include former unused antique farriery tools/equipments which will be collected from older forges. The museum will exhibit the history of farriery in Turkey. The activity will raise the awareness of the disappearing profession and help to promote dissemination events. The project has been planned for completion in two years.
The summarized objectives were to contribute improvement of working equines and cows hoof welfare, to start long-term cooperation and partnership among project partners, to develop farriery field capacities of partner associations. In order to reach these purposes, achieved current project activities were: Transnational meetings among partners: Throughout the project duration, partners hold six meetings determining partners’ responsiblities with presentation of recent performance and planning future activities. The meetings started with kick off meeting in Afyonkarahisar. The other meetings took place in Macedonia and Latvia with participation of all partner representatives. International Conference on Farriery and Allied Veterinary Sciences was held (https://nalbant.aku.edu.tr/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2021/03/Uluslararas%c4%b1-Nalbant-Konferans-Kitab%c4%b1.pdf). The conference aimed to stimulate new ideas, to share experiences among participants (>200) from Turkey, Pakistan, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Serbia and other parts of the world. During the event, current project activities were introduced to the participants. The recent developments in farriery were presented and discussed by the worldwide academicians and professional farriers. Best oral and poster presentations (Annex 1) were awarded by selection committee. International Farriery Workshop to discuss current and past situation of farriery has been held by participation of experienced farriers, veterinary students, academicians worldwide (Annex 2: Certificate of participation; https://nalbant.aku.edu.tr/en/2021/03/04/uluslararasi-nalbantlik-calistayi-yapildi/), Training activities; First Short-term joint staff training event (C1) consisting of basic farriery practices took place on 02- 08 September 2019 in Jelgava, Latvia with the participation of representatives from the partner institutions. Second short-term joint staff training event (C2) consisting of theoretical and practical farriery demonstations took place between 03-09 February 2020, Skopje, North Macedonia. Blended mobility of higher education students (C3) to increase awareness level of veterinary and vet. technician students on hoof health issues of horses and cows was organized online due to Covid-19 pandemic between 1 and 10 January 2021.Some attendants of this course directed to be farrier (https://twitter.com/nalbantprojesi/status/1446530427154571294/photo/1). Afyonkarahisar Agriculture, Livestock and Farriery Museum; This museum has been established with collaboration of Afyonkarahisar Governorship, Municipality and Afyon Kocatepe University (Annexes 3,4). During submission period, it was planned as farriery museum. Agriculture and livestock sections have been added with supports of Afyonkarahisar Governorship, Municipality and directorates of culture, agriculture in districts. The museum includes formerly used (dating back 300 years ago) antique agricultural and farriery tools (https://www.afyonturkeligazetesi.com/turkiye-nin-ilk-tarim-hayvancilik-ve-nalbant-muzesi-acildi/25667). Currently it is open to visitors under administration of Afyonkarahisar Municipality. Also, older documents as farrier customer notebook (https://nalbant.aku.edu.tr/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/06/Eski-Nalbant-Defteri.pdf) and several invoices from 1980s were collected during field visitings for interviewing with farriers. Photography exhibitions about the history of farriery in Turkey have been organized (https://afyon.ktb.gov.tr/TR-246043/ask-kultur-ve-sanat-gunleri-kapsaminda-afyonkarahisar-1-.html) both phsically and online (https://www.haberturk.com/afyonkarahisar-haberleri/78427612-nalbantlik-fotograf-sergisi-sanal-ortamda-acildi). Field surveys (Annex 5) with face-to-face interviews among experienced farriers (n=53) to form farriery job anaysis was conducted in and around Afyonkarahisar. Presentations about project activities at five international conferences were published in the conference proceedings. An article about horseshoeing principles was published in Turkish Journal of Agriculture (http://www.agrifoodscience.com/index.php/TURJAF/article/viewFile/4373/2201). Project web page (https://nalbant.aku.edu.tr/) includes all project activities. Project social media accounts (twitter, facebook, linkedin, instagram, project youtube channel) have been used actively because of dynamic nature exceeding 400 000 visitors. To make project results more visible, we participated in 4rd and 5th edition of the #ErasmusDays which took place on 2020 and 2021 (https://www.erasmusdays.eu/event/online-farriery-museum/). @ulusalajans @ABBaskanligi liked tweets many times. Farriery families documentary was published at youtube channel. A hand written farrier's memories, with 87 years old were prepared. Erasmus+ Inter-institutional agreement 2021-2027 between Afyon Kocatepe and Ss. Cyril –Methodius and Novi Sad (from Serbia) universities have been signed within scopes of the current project.