[jac]

And this is legal !?! British government is sleep walking into this. I think your education system is more open to researching this stuff.. We have a more strict carriculum that darent touch on the contraversial.. I knew about the alleged “bumper” crop and drought resistant crops and even the dropping of roundup to check if you had paid your “royalties” but had no idea that they were building in this crap.. So.. potentialy if the majority of say wheat farmers switched to their seed and an unforeseen disease or pest that the seed wasnt imune to struck. , we could have mass crop failure in one harvest !?! this makes my blood boil.. thanks for the education Joshua.. Im away to google
John

[jac]

50 years ago a young couple got married in Scotland. For the honeymoon they toured America. They visited New York, Empire State, Hoover dam, then a native American reservation. As they strolled among the teepees admiring the traditional crafts the young man spotted a sign.. “Chief Crazy Horse.. Best memory in the world”… entering the teepee he sat down and said “Hello”. The chief replied “How”… “Ok” says the young man.. “Who won the Scottish Cup for soccer in 1950”?.. Chief replies .. “The Rangers.. 2 1”.
Suitably impressed the young man rejoined his new wife and finished their holliday.. Years passed and for their 50th wedding aniversary they did their honeymoon again.. New York,Empire State, Hoover dam Then the native American reservation.. As they wandered, the by this time old man, said ” Look honey its the same Chief with the great memory , I’m going in again”.. Entering the teepee he sits and as the chief enters he tries to show some of the panache and sophistication he had learned over the years and said to the chief “How”.. The chief replies ” Penalty shoot out in the last 3 minutes”!!!
John

[jac]

Hi Joshua.. Terminator gene !!! that sounds scary. am I right to think their seed is a “one use only” thing..and they build this in deliberatly !?!?
John

[jac]

Hi Countymouse.. A brewery horse was one that pulled the beer in what we call a dray over here.. a version of the Budweiser team..Hi to you Charlie.. The article was in an old Heavy Horse magazine.. I will dig through them and get back to you but if I remember right there wasnt an address. And greetings to you Near horse.. More ammo thanks.. My grandfather told me a story of how his brother left Scotland between the wars and set up farming in Canada. Your mention of outwintered horses was exactly as I was told.. He did the harvest then shut up the house and got a job in town.. had to be back before the thaw as the horses would have been gone in search of grass otherwise. A hard life by all accounts.. for both man and horse..
John

[jac]

We have a friend who lives in Brandon up in Manitoba and he says that Monsanto will fly small planes over corn fields and drop small bags of roundup. then a week later fly back over and check for dead patches.. no dead patches and they check up and if the farmer hasnt paid a limo pulls up at the door with a demand for payment !!!!! Those guys arent interested in helping 3rd world farmers or food production.. only money and control !! and that is scary to me.
John

[jac]

Jeez all this debate coz I wanted to hitch a baler :D… only kidding .I think its wonderful that so many great minds are at work on this and the info and exchange is available to us lesser mortals. A credit to you all and great way to use the internet… I once offered my mower to the agricultural college as a project to see if the students could imagine that horses had never gone away and to design a mower with new materials and ideas… not even remotely interested. Any time I mention horses to my farmer neighbours I get the “horses coudnt feed the world” argument..” how are you going to pull a 30ft combine”? I fire back that horses dont feed the world… farmers do. And I pull out the foto of the 20ft HILLSIDER combine from 1927.. Anuther misconception I get is that yields were less years ago because farmers were “stuck ” with horses.. Crock to that I say. Horses are more than capable of handling modern crop volume…Perhaps Charlie from Germany can shed some light on the large vegetable operation I read a snippet about that switched to horses virtualy over night… I hope you guys can get this together. I would dearly like to get over when this gets presented but I rather doubt finances will be needed elsewhere.
John

[jac]

Comparing horses to tractors on purly work they can achieve is a non starter, but as Mitchmaine said, horses can be more flexible and besides that do much less damage. A skidder does root damage to good trees. I believe that in Scandinavia they use horses to feed a skyline which means they dont need to set up so often and save a lot of time.. For me the argument is the amount of wheat or other food product that is used to make fuel. I did a quick Google search and some of the figures blew me away..1.2 million tons of wheat to make 80m galons of ethanol.. now Uk wheat runs at around 3t/acre so on that basis you need an acre to keep just 4 cars going for a year at 40mpg and 12000 miles/year!!!!. Roughly.. Im not that great at the figure stuff.. Am I wrong to think that its ethicly wrong to keep cars going when half the worlds starving ???
John

[jac]

The bio fuel thing is a real bug bear of mine.. fuel from food bi products or animal waste fine… but fuel from wheat or any other food product is an international scandal.The horse can utilise less than perfect grazing but bio fuel needs to be grown on good arable land. As you say the green loby have upteen chances on tv to push animal power but choose to try and find ways to keep the car/tractor running at seemingly any cost.. How much of the bio fuel does it take to get the end product?? The cultivator pulled by a team of say 7 horses is doing part of the cultivating by simply pulling the implement . The tractor leaves tracks that the cultivator needs to eradicate so extra tines behind the wheels need to be added..more power needed..
So Watt increased the readings purely to make his invention look more efficient beside the horse !!! Looks to me as if thats back firing now.. It might be an idea to try and attack this on two fronts.. the efficiency of animal traction and also the subsidy laden ineficiency of bio fuels.
John

[jac]

I remember reading somthing about how the big manufactureres actualy hired dealers to buy up good farm horses and create an artificial shortage !! Over here a major newspaper mounted a campaign in the 30s to rid the british streets of horse drawn transport. Some accountants challenged the figures about the costing of horse versus motor lorry but the horse was swept away regardless. Its interesting to note the amount of small business failures that happened after they made the shift to lorries.. Even today the figures dont add up… for short haul delivery work horses are without a doubt as cheap if not cheaper than lorries.. but the modern road and street layout make it hard for horses to operate A classic case of a lie being sold to the masses.. My original idea behind this discussion and subsequent info collection was that it may help a farmer make the transition back. If he or she knows a certain cultivator needs that 80hp Deere then he could work out how many horses he needs. Or even myself who up till now has done mostly wagon work and is moving towards using tractor implements behind a fore cart . Amazing feed back..
John

[jac]

Wow !!! I had no idea mechanical power was so wastefull guys and inefficient. If these numbers relate to modern tractors just think of the blatent lies the farmers of the 20s and 30s must have been told to make them shift from horses..
John

[jac]

Does anyone know the real “horsepower” of draft horses. Ive heard figures of around 8hp/per average drafter ?? but if thats true then my team only has about 16 hp!! Now mabey Im looking at this to simplisticaly but your average lawn tractor is 16hp.. and I cant see that moving a 4 ton load on a wagon at 5mph or even pulling my grass harrows !!??!!
John

[jac]

Hi Ed.. The only prob I see is that those discs are concaved and even in the straight ahead position I suspect they might slice too much turf. I might be wrong on that coz I’ve never tried a set on grass. I use a slitter with 7″ blades to areate the grass.
John

[jac]

Pretty compelling evidence there Oldcat..It makes me wonder if the modern tractor plow that is taking 18″wide and going down 9 and 10″ is HAVING to do that to break up its own damage.. after all barley roots dont go any deeper now than they did 80yrs ago so why the deeper plowing now than in the horse era ? and what forces are at play to create a hard pan at the point of shear and not below? Over here the big arable farmers use a chisel plow every year on the tramlines that the sprayers use. I knew a farmer a few years back that took advice from the ag college to chisel plow his land.. and burst every clay drain in the field !! Seems to me anuther good reason to farm with horses .
John

[jac]

Hi Countymouse.. Thank you for that contact. Its a great site and seems like a good magazine to..A lot of info on there and some of it contradictory to what I’ve been trying … So I took the plunge and clipped:( I thought if I can cut my own hair and it sure as heck doesnt grow back coarser then surely a Clydes wont either:) The boys going to look odd for a while but hey.. if it works then great. cheers
John

[jac]

An interesting discussion guys. Deep compaction ? Is this problem only a tractor based issue and is it possible to compact the soil next to the subsoil while still having the surface apparantly ok.. I have read in various farming mags over here that the use of liquid slurry changes the soil structure and makes it greasy for want of a better word but thats a surface problem. It would be good to find two farmer neighbours.. one a modern tractor based farmer and his neighbour working a historicaly horse based farm and compare soil structure. Do horses or cattle grazing cause deep compaction or is it just the surface that gets pounded ? I’ve often wondered what does most damage.. a tractor with wide tyres that weighs 8 or 9 tons but a pounds/square ins of 26 or a horse with a much higher poundage/square ins…I have heard a figure of 56… but less all up weight ? Is the horses weight only tranfered so far into the ground ?
John

[Author]

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