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@Donn Hewes 22756 wrote:

Mitch explained that after I cut it and repair it I can simply flip it end for end and put the repair clip at the hames and put the all leather end on the ring where they will absorb some of the shape.

OHH! Yes, makes perfect sense and now that you say it, it is perfectly obvious.

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How did you attach the end of the fore tug to the D-ring?

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Oooo I bet it was hard to make the first slice through perfectly good leather traces!

Did you seal the cut ends on the stitching? Or tie them off?

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Very nice!

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I dunno, Big Horses, I might have to argue that a unicorn is a little more risky than a four.

That one horse out on point is more nimble than having a lead team in front of your wheelers. A team of horses – in general – is less apt to turn around on you than a single, if only because it requires that two minds get the same idea at the same time.

Also, most horses are more comfortable with a partner by their side, rather than being alone out front. So the lead horse in a unicorn hitch is more apt to get nervous out there. A guy tries to make up for that tendency by putting his best horse out there.

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The unicorn is for applications where you want a narrower profile. The unicorn isn’t physically as efficient a use of three horses’ worth of muscle as hitching them abreast. Lines are more complicated with the unicorn, too. Three abreast you just have two lines. Unicorn you need four lines. And as mentioned, unicorn isn’t as safe; that fellow out on point had better be your top horse and have steady nerve.

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@jac 22263 wrote:

One slight disadvantage with liverpools over the military bit is when they are used with a team.. the cross checks tend to pull the circle into the inside of the jaw. I got some stainless wire in the mig welder and fixed the inside port solid. Then I got the military bits which dont have the big circles of the liverpool… In the days of the royal mail stage coach in Britain the bottom slot on a 3 slot liverpool was known as “the duffers hole”…. A book written by Max Pape of Germany in the 1930s on coach driving maintained that the cross checks should be buckled to the shank which stopped the bit being twisted into the jaw…
John

Over here, at least, one can get a Liverpool that has fixed shanks *or* pivoting shanks like the ones you are describing. I always wondered why the shanks should be able to pivot on the mouthpiece. I had some of each and got rid of the pivoting ones early on because of the problem you described. I eventually got rid of the Liverpools altogether and now I have the (military) elbow bits for use when I want a shanked bit to drive in. They have pivoting shanks too but it doesn’t seem to present any sort of problem, unlike the Liverpools.

I put the elbow bits on when I’m going to be hitched to a vehicle and driving in public. The rest of the time I use snaffles of one sort or another.

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Shredded/chipped wood or hogsfuel is GREAT the first year. Not too shabby the second year either. But by the third year it starts to break down. By the fourth year you’re looking around, scratching your head, saying “Didn’t I have a bunch of wood chips here???”

You will need to remove and replace it at some point because it decomposes to the point that it is just dirt and then you’re back to having the mud problem again. To remove it, you need access to a Cat or a tractor with a back blade or some similar equipment.

It helps if you grade the area first, too. If you scrape it down to hard pan, but leave dips and wowies, the water is going to pool under the wood chips and make a bog in high traffic areas.

Also, make sure that you know what kind of trees/brush were shredded to make the chips. Black walnut is bad news. That’s the only one I know for sure to watch out for.

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Due to our climate and our small amount of horse-appropriate pasture, my horses only spend about half to one-third of their free time on pasture. The remainder of the time is divided pretty evenly between sacrifice paddock and tie stalls.

I don’t have much use for box stalls. If I were breeding anything, I should like a foaling stall and a safe nursery paddock, but I long ago converted my foaling stall to a shop. I like some tie stalls in the barn and a sand-footed paddock with some kind of shelter outside the barn.

The sand-footed paddock is the sacrifice area in the winter when the pastures are too soggy and the grass has gone dormant. I feed in a manger in the shelter, to avoid feeding on the sand. Although sand increases the risk of colic, it is so many orders of magnitude easier to sift manure out of, versus hogsfuel. We don’t freeze up hard here, except maybe for a few days at a stretch, nor do we get anything but a dusting of snow here and there. So manure pickup is a daily thing in the sacrifice area.

When I’m using my horses regularly, they stay in the tie stalls at night… unless they’ve had a really hard day, in which case they get the paddock or the pasture so they don’t get stiff overnight.

If your climate is damp, you’ll want a climate-controlled tack room to keep stuff from molding. My nice stuff and the things I don’t use as often get stored in such a way as not to mold. The daily-use stuff hangs near the tie stalls and does mold a bit, even with daily use. It’s pretty humid here. Oh! Make sure your tack room door is extra-wide to accomodate carrying saddles and harnesses through it without having to turn sideways. Don’t store harnesses too near any stalls – the ammonia is hard on leather and stitching.

I compost my manure, so the covered compost pile structure is away from the barn a bit, so the leachings from the pile doesn’t trickle out onto the driveway. If you’re going to use a spreader, see if you can’t arrange it to house the spreader as close to your stalls as possible, under a shed roof.

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I have heard that is a heck of a cross, Bill. Who’d you chose as a sire? Is he one of the old style?

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Didn’t you live over here once upon a time? Member of Hames N Tugs?

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I’m about 50 miles northeast of Seattle. Town called Monroe.

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This is very relevant to my interests. I will be watching this thread. I too would like to go D-ring but I have so much belly-backer harness and equipment that would require conversion, I have been dragging my feet on it.

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@Robernson 21165 wrote:

I will add to Robert’s donkey thread. I bought a harness for my donkey in July,and have been trying to get her used to it. She does pretty good but we have a problem with trying to bolt and run off,she has done it 3 times now but is yet to get away from me, she seems to try to bolt when we turn right,I don’t know why but she does. I don’t know if anybody has any thoughts on that,but they would be helpful.

Sorry to steal your thread Mr. Moonshadow….:eek:

~~R

Is she wearing blinders? If so, perhaps when she turns right she catches a glimpse of something that spooks her. Does it happen when she is ground-driven or only when hitched to something? Don’t forget that equine are not very good at equating left and right. Which is to say, if something happens on the left and it makes them feel a certain way, they won’t necessarily feel the same way about it when it happens on the right. You have to specifically train each “side” of the equine.

Equine are also left or right “sided” the way that people are left or right “handed”. That can occasionally result in some odd behavior.

As far a something physically causing discomfort and causing her to bolt… when a horse bends to the right, they are pushing harder with the left shoulder. Definitely scrutinize the left side of the collar. Go over every part of the harness and make sure that things are symmetrical. Have you tried a different bit? It could be a tooth problem.

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I don’t mind saying, Bill, that my throat got a little tight reading that.

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