Help With Collar Fit?

I had the same problem with my newest mule recently with wrinkling the skin. she didn’t have any hair loss or visible blisters but wrinkled skin for several days. I just figured it was collar size. I was going to try to take her to the Amish harness maker for advice but can’t seem to get time. My old mule also got blisters from the collar that I had been using for several months but it is from too small of a collar. I didn’t realize how much bigger his neck got from being fed well and some exercise. He was severly under weight when I got him. I too would like to know why the wrinkled skin. I have only been pulling a stone boat with my 230lbs and fencing supplies another 100lb or so.

1.) Salt the horse’s shoulders if you aren’t already. Draw yourself a gallon of warm water in a bucket. Add a palmful of epsom salts and dissolve it. Take a sponge or a rag and sop the shoulders with this saltwater, taking care to backbrush the hair to ensure that the saltwater reaches the skin. Do this at the end of the work day, each day. Next morning, brush the shoulders VERY WELL and/or wash the shoulders with clean water. Even a couple of granules of salt left on the hide will be terribly abrasive under the collar so get all that salt off of there before going to work. Salting the shoulders draws the excess moisture out of the wrinkled area so it doesn’t blister and also toughens the skin.

2.) I had to watch the video without audio; I hope I didn’t miss anything critical. The 24″ collar looks like it fits pretty well in length. The 26″ is way too big, even with the pad. I couldn’t tell much about the width of the 24″ collar from the video. If the collar is too wide and you squish it tighter with the hames, then the collar will get longer and will be too big.

3.) Mowing can be hard on horses if the field has bumps. When one wheel hits a bump, it makes the tongue slap. This causes the collar to rock on the neck. Doesn’t take much of this tongue slap to cause a wrinkley patch like you are finding. A collar that is only a little bit too big will rock pretty easily.

4.) I would be interested in how you set your hames. If you have roller bolt hames, you can likely adjust your draft up or down by a half-inch or so which can make a difference. However, that half-inch is of little consequence if the hames are too big for the collar in the first place. So the collar is only part of the equation.

Can you provide a side shot of the horse hitched and hooked and ready to work? And maybe a closer photo that shows how the hames ride on the collar?

Hi George, You are using D ring harnesses, right? I have had these wrinklies at different times with different horses and collars. Always seems to be an animal that is a little bit of an easy keeper. Not fat, but not worked down either. In some cases I have found a shorter collar made a difference and in others not. I have been suprised how much the collar fit changes under load. Remember to check them while you are working. It is hard to say if I would change anything on one of those collars; with out being there, but the smaller ones all seemed as if they would work. With a pad I like a little closer fit on the sides that I do without a pad. But I have no experience in working with out a pad.

It doesn’t look to me as if you need to buy collars; but for anyone buying collars, I have found the adjustable collars very useful. Now if it would just stop raining! d

A fleshy horse can lose a couple hundred pounds in water weight during one day of hard work which can easily bump them into the next collar size down. It is not unusual for my easy keeper to drop a collar size during a day of hard work. On the wagon train or during haying, I will bring a collar pad for just such an occasion.

If you’re using a D-ring harness then the tongue probably isn’t wagging the collars. If you’ve been using that 24″ and the horse got the wrinkled patch wearing it, I’m more curious than ever about where your traces come off the hames. Also, your foretug angle. Having the foretug not be 90 degrees to the hames will cause that wrinkled patch. Having your traces shimmed down too low on the hame bolt (I said “roller bolt” in a previous post. I meant hame bolt or trace bolt.) can do it also. Do you have a little spacer on your hame bolt?