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Donn – is it one of those middlebuster-type diggers that has the slats on the back that pop up and down to sift the taters out of the dirt?

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bdcasto: What size are the openings in your welded wire panels? Do you have any condensation problems on your bubble foil insulation? We used the same product under the metal roof of our chicken coop and haven’t had any condensation, but the coop is very well-ventilated and we did leave an air gap of 1″ between the roofing tin and the bubble foil, by using purlins between the two. I had been considering using a welded wire panel to make a sheep wagon for camping in but hadn’t seen any examples of one yet. I really appreciate the information you have given from your experience with the project. What you said about letting the panel relax into its shape – rather than try to force it there – makes a lot of sense. As a person with little natural patience, my inclination probably would have been to beat my head against it until one or the other gave in.

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Mine have shy bladders. They hold it as long as they can when they’re in harness. In the tie stalls, they pee when it’s feeding time, oddly.

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It’s the older way of doing it, before they came out with the handy-dandy #1616 combination snap. You could go back to a plain old #440 on your breast strap and loop your pole strap around the neck yoke. Some of the nicer wood neck yokes are lathed with a groove or a pair of ridges to help keep the pole strap in place.

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Geoff, I was thinking about it this morning and I bet if you eliminated the combination snap and sent your pole strap directly to the neck yoke, you’d have less tongue slap. The combination snap lets the neck yoke articulate side-to-side readily. I think most pole straps that we get from the harness makers these days are of a length designed to attach to the combination snap. But you can get a longer pole strap with the reinforced loop at the end that is designed to pass over the end of the neck yoke itself. Then the breast snap clips to the ring.

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My best horse is the one that I plow single with, and she walks on the land. Unfortunately, she’s the furrow horse when we plow with a team. We’ve had a lot of discussions about that, she and I, but it usually only lasts for one pass across the field. I just don’t hitch to the plow for that first pass. Open the field, roll the plow out and pull it around, unhook from the plow, show her where I want her to be (furrow or the land) and make a run down the field in that manner while having “The Discussion”. Usually “The Discussion” is over by the time we reach the end of the furrow (we typically plow small fields – 300 feet on a side, on average). Then go back for the plow and get to it. It is a little bit of a rigamarole but for me it is worth it. Once we’ve hashed out whether she’s in the furrow or on the land, she stays there. Reno strikes me as a bit of a sensitive emo boy, so you’ll probably have some Discussion as well.

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@Countymouse 34392 wrote:

Humans might just be the most forgotten and underrated draft animal. 😉

Around our place they are the most over-worked.

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Did you ever get your horse up on the land and adjust your plow bridle so the plow ran true?

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Adjustable collars only adjust the length/height of the collar, top to bottom. For the wider-necked pony you are probably going to have to re-shape an off-the-rack collar. A block of wood placed between the sides of the collar will help hasten the breaking-in/reshaping process. I usually do this with new collars anyhow. I try to not work my horses too hard in a new collar because, like new shoes, they need time to conform to the wearer. A new collar usually doesn’t fit quite right and has to break-in and mold to the horse. A new collar for me usually means some relaxing wagon miles are in my future.

I like Badger and Coblentz, myself, but there are many others that are just fine. Lots of Brodhead collars in use these days.

I don’t have contact info for Badger… maybe someone can find it for you in an older issue of Rural Heritage. They are Plain Folk and do not even have a message phone as far as I know. You will have to write them.

Coblentz Collar Shop, on the other hand, is 330-893-3858.

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9.25 is much wider than you’re going to find in a new 19″ collar off the shelf. I would definitely get a collar shop involved.

Best thing to do would be to call or write your collar-maker of choice and send these measurements. They will be able to measure their own collars and figure out if the proportions of their 19 will work for you. Collars are hand-made and each shop uses its own forms/molds. I’m guessing that My Draft Horse does not make their own collar but instead re-sells another manufacturer’s collars. You might find out whose collars they are selling and then see if you can contact the maker.

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Mostly just picked up odds and ends. I learned my lesson about bragging on my good purchases when I unwittingly told the consigner of my new horse hair mecate that I’d snagged it for $2.50. Oh, was he ever displeased.

Prices were down… except, it seemed, for all the 23″ collars I tried to bid on. Mowers were back down in the realm of reasonable. $800-$1400 for field-ready to rebuilt and freshly powder coated. A treadmill went for $900. A single horsepower went for $2000. I believe that last year an identical one went for $3200. Three single-horse mowers $950 to $2000. Minnie Moline loose hay loader $1450. Vehicles went pretty cheap for the most part. Couple of exceptions. Excellent prices on the really nice vehicles. Quite a bargain for whoever brought them home. Didn’t see what the two Canadian competition plows went for. One was completely tricked out with a coulter knife, a jointer, a depth wheel.

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Yeah, longer breast strap willl allow for more sway. I assume you’re running the typical breast-strap-with-combination-snap? Not a chain and Mast clip or a breast strap with a sliding snap?

Is your breast strap pretty snug in the raceway on your combination snap?

Just got back from the SFJ auction last night. Gloating over my loot and still shaking my head at some of the treasures I had to watch slip past me.

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If we back up a little and look at the reasons that tongue-slap is undesireable, I come up with:

– puts torque on the collars
– can hit the horses with the tongue
– makes a gawd-awful racket which could potentially startle a team and cause them to bolt

A wider evener and neck yoke would get the horses away from the tongue and out of the line of fire. A D-ring harness eliminates the collar-tongue association found with belly-backer harnesses and removes the collar torque. The third one is just a matter of experience and teamster vigilance.

Have I overlooked any of the concerns associated with tongue-slap? Disking across plowed sod can be bad for producing tongue-slap, as can any vehicle with thin/narrow wheels across rocky terrain.

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D-ring harness. 😉

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I think it is important for people to understand that when we lose our temper with our horses, we let them down. We disappoint them. They have expectations for us, just as we have for them. Letting the horses down reduces their belief in our leadership skills and it takes much longer to build their confidence back up afterward.

And when I say “we” and “us”, I am including myself in those pronouns. I still struggle with anger and frustration at times, humbling as that is to admit.

Fortunately for us humans, horses do have an amazing capacity for forgiveness.

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