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You can have the electricity if I can have the flush toilet!

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Not sure what kind of belt you’re talking about… I’ve seen cheap packing britchen made of cotton canvas web. One of the problems with that is that the grain of the canvas traps and holds dirt, which is very abrasave, and the edge of the web is rather thin and knife-like. Easy for a canvas belting strap to cause rubs, particularly along the edge. The absolute best britchen, whether for packing or harness work, is made from an extra-wide piece of leather where the edges are rolled outward and sewn down, topped with another narrower leather strap. These rolled-edge britchen are the hardest-wearing and most comfortable for a horse. Costs extra to have the harness maker do it but in my mind it is well worth the money if you’re going to be buying new.

Sorry to have gotten off track there, going on about the virtues of rolled-edge britchen. Guess I thought I would start out by telling you what I think the worst and the best britchens are. Canvas at one end of the spectrum, rolled-edge leather at the other.

In the middle, there’s of course regular single-ply harness leather. That’s pretty standard. But I’ve seen britchen made of nylon straps and the various synthetics like Biothane. Those kind of range all over the place as far as quality and strength. Just depends on whether the harnessmaker knew how to apply that material to his trade and then whether the harness was adjusted correctly on the animal.

I have a good Champion leather stitcher and a good rivet set and I repair my own harness. I occasionally buy a piece of hide and fabricate pieces of harness for myself, but more often I just re-use pieces of other harness or re-purpose leather that no longer serves its original function. Lines, for example, make good replacement hip straps. After haunting the auctions for a few years, I’ve got a good stockpile of useable pieces and parts. When I have a draft horse harness that needs a piece as important as a britchen, I usually order it from my favorite harness guy if I don’t have a spare one I can swap out for. No reason you can’t make your own stuff, though, if you’ve got the raw materials and know how to use it.

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If only to remind you Easterners that there ARE people living out here in the wild west that have modern things like electricity and running water and Internet!

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Hey friend, I hope you don’t take this wrong but I hate to see you go down a tough road if there’s some way to avoid it. Horses being worked in harness need a strong leader that they can look up to… having a horse that rubs on you means that he doesn’t respect you like he ought. Demanding attention like that is cute, unless you know what kind of horse-thinking is behind it. It means he thinks that he can push you around and get what he wants. Left unchecked, it WILL lead to bigger problems. It is easy to be flattered and pleased when our horses want us to give them some attention. However, that is not an appropriate way for a horse to seek it.

Did you ride on gravel or blacktop? Did they used to wear shoes and maybe now they aren’t?

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Google “saddle chariot”. Looks like a riot to me.

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Cotton would be better but if you’ve got a fat 3/4″ or 1″ soft nylon or poly rope, it’ll do.

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Did the vet leave a drain in place? Watch out for abscessing. They can heal fast – sometimes too fast. If the outside heals before the inside does, there will be a lot of fluid buildup under the scab. I had a similar wound on a horse and I cold-hosed it twice a day in an attempt to keep it draining.

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Sounds a lot like a chariot, Lanny – sounds like fun!

Watch for rubs on the shoulder. If you get rubs, you might need to go back and incorporate a singletree into your design.

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Oh, so you will be using this as a cart saddle? If you will not be using it as a pack saddle but instead as a cart saddle, then you won’t need the deep pad and you can have a longer cinch. How will you attach your latigo/tie strap to your saddle? Will you be attaching drop rings the way that is shown in the picture?

Don’t forget to hold the shafts DOWN as well as UP.

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Kind of depends on what kind of saddle you’ve made, what kind of pad you plan on using, what kind of load you’ll be tying on. In general, you want the cinch to be as long as possible while still keeping the cinch ring off the pad/blanket. Pack saddles often use a pad/blanket that extends further down the animal’s side than a regular riding saddle pad/blanket does. This is to protect the animal from the load he’s carrying. This necessitates a shorter cinch than you’d use on a riding saddle.

http://horseandmulegear.com/products/fullsize/IMG_0250_3.jpg

You can see in the photo above that the cinches are placed a bit behind the usual girth bed. If those short cinches were placed in the girth bed, the front cinch ring would interfere with the elbow.

Hope that gives you some idea of where/how to measure your pack animal for a cinch.

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I use a nice, fat non-abrasive rope. Less chance of rope burn that way. Check and double-check everything. Attention to detail is key to safety when hitching and driving.

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If the team is well-broke and you just need the butt strap to help prevent teamster error, then a strap connecting them at the inside britchen dees will work. However, you CAN tear harness that way if things go all pear-shaped. The safe way to do it – and the way you should do it with green horses – is to go from hame-to-hame. Start at the outside LOWER hame ring of one horse, run the rope around their butts, and come up to the outside LOWER hame ring of the other horse. The rope should be adjusted long enough that it is slack when they are the proper distance apart and only becomes snug when their butts fan out away from each other more than, oh, maybe 20 degrees off the imaginary pole between them.

To keep the rope from sagging down off their rumps, you can run it through the market strap (the strap that goes from the back pad down to the traces) and/or the outside hip straps (the “suspenders” that hold up the britchen) and/or the outside britchen rings. Don’t pass the rope under the INSIDE hip straps because that’s a good way to tear harness.

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No, adjust your lines symmetrically. A 2″ height difference is nothing that requires compensation for.

If they are walking too far apart, bring your check buckles back toward your hands to bring the horses in toward each other. You can hook the neck yoke to the horses but it would probably be bonking them in the upper forelegs and furthermore it wouldn’t do much to keep them together. It’s really the lines that keep them together and not the pole or the neck yoke or any of that. Might want to use a butt rope, though, to keep them from turning inside-out on you.

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Yep, main line goes to the outside of each horse. Right hand main line goes to the right side of the right horse. Left hand main line goes to the left side of the left horse.

When you are re-attaching the check line to your main line, feed the check line through the hame ring of the same horse that the main line belongs to. THEN go to the bit of the other horse. For example: right main line goes through the right hame ring and then to the right side of the right horse. Then the check line of the right line goes through the RIGHT horse’s LEFT hame ring… then to the LEFT horse’s bit. Hope that makes sense.

If your horses are trying to walk too close together, adjust your check line length by moving the buckle forward toward the horses. If the horses are trying to walk too far apart, move the check line buckle back toward your hands.

Leather stretches over time, so you might want to do a “sanity check” with your lines. Attach your lines to the barn wall, pay them out and make sure that the holes for the check line buckles are in more-or-less the same place on each line. I’ve bought a pair of lines at auction without inspecting them too closely and come to find out they aren’t from the same set. Check line holes punched in different places. If they’ve ever been mended or spliced, same thing can happen. Just something to check if things don’t seem to be going the way they oughta.

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Also! Odessa Old Time Plow Days to replace Wilson Creek. April 14 and 15 in Odessa. You need some form of liability insurance, though.

I’ll post the details on the appropriate place in the forum.

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