[OldKat]

@jac 15670 wrote:

Hey Oldkat.. No we dont have any dealers for any American equipment.. ther is a few people bring in wagons,hitch carts and show stuff but I find them rather pricy.. I know they have to make a living but I priced up the plow from one person and it was going to cost £2700 and at the exchange rate thats around $5000 plus!!!. What I’m doing is sharing a container with a guy who imports antique tractors and it comes out of the USA in March. Pioneer are moving the plow up to Fort Waynn to meet the container ,. If I could get a couple more interested we could fill a container with horse equipment.. my next big buy will be a manure spreader. Joe at Pioneer offered to find equipment and even load it for us.. Will see what happens next year.
John

WHOA! That would be some seriously pricey stuff. I thought I had an issue with shipping from the Northeast to where I live; most stuff I priced would double with shipping. I’m still trying to talk Mrs. OldKat into taking a “vacation” to Ohio, Pennsylvania and/or New York, but she is suspicious because I want to go in my pickup truck … pulling a flatbed lowboy trailer. Guess she saw through my rouse!

[OldKat]

@jac 15666 wrote:

Hi Geoff. We priced up and eventualy bought a Pioneer plow.. After both plows were spec’d up the same, Pioneer came out cheaper than Whitehorse
.. though not by much.. I would just like to say that our choice of a new plow was based on the scarcity of sulkies over here and I like the kv bottom.. Also both companies were very helpful and friendly.
John

John,
Are there dealers over there for these cmpanies or did you have to order from the company and ship the unit?

[OldKat]

I would be interested in reading of your progress, too. I always find your posts to be interesting, informative, humorous and witty. If not all of those in each post, at least most have one or more of those qualities! 😉

BTW: Where is your Texas donkey currently residing? i.e. what part of the state? If he isn’t more than a couple of hundred miles from me I might just drive over and have lunch with you while you are here.

[OldKat]

@jac 15174 wrote:

Hi guys.
Thanks for so many replies.. I do a bit with a saw, have my tickets for felling and climbing and a bit of tree surgery. We need all sorts of tickets over here to even pick a saw up.. Im well impressed you guys file up your own chains. The reason I asked was I got a small woodlot we can take firewood out of and take the odd mature ash.. I build my own wagons and stuff so thought I could get a mill kinda cheap !!. soon found out different though. This sounds like an option for a poor boy in Scotland. thanks again guys
John

John,
Just curious; when you say “ticket” is that some sort of permit or license you are talking about? If so, does that indicate that the person with the ticket has demonstrated some degree of proficiency in that particular area or perhaps has attended some required training in that area or specialty? Also, if you are doing only work for yourself do you need these tickets?

Interesting how different countries have a different approach to these things. BTW: I am glad you are posting your experiences from Scotland, that is an interesting country. One which I hope to visit at some point in time, along with England and Ireland, Germany, France, Argentina, South Africa, Australia …. Oh well, so far I have been to Mexico and Canada!:)

[OldKat]

Holy smoke! That is one massive log. I had looked at the pictures of the tree laying on its side, but absent anything to give it some scale it just looked like a nice sized tree.

I thought the challenge was because it was down hill. It was down hill AND a behemoth. Very impressive accomplishment indeed.

[OldKat]

@grey 15064 wrote:

OldKat, A raised floor is typically used with tie stalls in order to achieve a particular desired slope, causing the urine to run out of the stall rather than puddle in the middle.

Thanks for the answer. I had imagined that it was something to do with the ground freezing under their feet or something exotic like that. You know, I had forgotten that I asked this question so was reading the most recent posts and was sort of surprised to see an answer directed to me! 😀

[OldKat]

@jac 14735 wrote:

Hi .. Just thought I’d tell you about a book I got. “The Quest for the Original Horse Whisperer” by Russell Lyon.. Traces the roots of the old horsemen and their secret society that was at its peak in the early 20th century Scotland. A great read and the cover price islisted in dollars as well as pounds so it might be available over there with you.. Here is a recipe for fly repelant that might just work.. I would have tried it myself but cant seem to find any wallnut trees in these parts..

3 handfulls of wallnut leaves and pour on 3 quarts of water. Let them infuse all night and pour the whole next morning into a kettle and boil for a quarter of an hour. When the mixture is cold it is fit for use…

Some of the other recipies for horse ailments contain very dodgy looking ingredients.
John

There are some walnut trees growing just off the shoulder of the road just about 1/4 mile from our house. I think I’ll try this next fly season.

[OldKat]

@Robernson 15631 wrote:

This spring for a team. I have my neighbor as a mentor and will help me with my purchase and along the way. I have saved a total of about $3500 for this draft project since I was 8 years old,6 years later I think I am ready to jump on the bandwagon. I looked at all of my options, Oxen,mules,horses,and even donkeys and I decided that horses are the way to go. (no worries I will be keeping the donkey,she is a great pet…..)

I am needing advice though,how do you charming individuals like haflingers? I was looking at a haflinger team because they look small and easy to harness.
However I would wonder if they would be able to keep up with our work schedual as we are always on the move. We are avid “brush cutters” clearing land for pasture. We work in 100 degree heat and 32 degree snow,for the most part every weekend. Not to mention my chores every day.

So that puts me in a bit of a pickle…small easy to harness animals VS large, harder to harness animals that might prove more useful.
I don’t know:confused:

Anyhow thanks for reading my ramblings

~~R

I can’t add anything of value for you, Robernson re: selecting the appropriate team. Sounds like others are giving you sound advice relative to your question, but I will add that sort of like Donn said; if you are about 14 years old (& a male) you will PROBABLY be more capable of harnessing a bigger team in a couple of years than you are now so don’t let that dissuade from picking a bigger team if you would otherwise be thinking that way. If your mom and dad are of average or above height and build, you PROBABLY will be too. (Doesn’t ALWAYS follow true though: my dad was maybe 5’10”, I am 6’3&3/4″, my older brother is about 5’9″!) Of course, from the discussion feedback, above, sounds like Halflingers or Fjords may fit the bill anyway.

What I really wanted to comment on though is your ability to stay focused on your goal for almost half your life AND your ability to save the amount of $$$$ that you have to realize that goal. Quite an accomplishment! Tip of my hat to you Robernson!

[OldKat]

@Joel 15588 wrote:

No different from any other horse except for the last month or so. My experience is mares in shape seem to foal easier.

Same with cows. A fat, soft cow will have a far greater chance of calving problems … in fact a far greated problem even being settled than a leaner, more muscular one. I suspect this is true with all females, including those of our species. NOT that I am comparing women to cows or mares! (I’ve made THAT mistake before and it isn’t taken too kindly :D)

[OldKat]

From the Southwest; a colder and wetter than “average” winter. Temperatures have been below average; with the lows seldom reaching record low levels this year, but consistently staying 7 to 10 degrees below the average. High temperatures have run 12 to 15 degrees below average for weeks at a time, and we have been in one of those spells for the last two weeks. Seldom snows here, but we have had two days this winter when it snowed all day long; once in early December and again in mid-January. Neither resulted in any significant accumulation, as the temps had been in the mid to upper 40’s for several days before either occurrence. It has been WET here also. Drought broke in October with few breaks of more than a day or two without rain. Unfortunately we got little late season growth on the warm season grasses as the days were too short and the temps too low by that time. November was fairly warm and dry, maybe only an inch of rain total. December was very wet and cold (by our standards). January rainfall totaled just less than 2 inches, probably close to “normal”. February has been VERY wet so far. I have measured over 4 inches through today; all of it a very slow, steady rain …meaning the soil is finally saturated. Ponds and creek bottoms are full to the brim, rivers are running nearly bank full for the first time in several years.

I think I heard that the Drought Monitor either did or was expected to show NO DROUGHT anywhere in Texas as of this week. I can’t even recall the last time that happened. I am just hoping that this carries over into the growing season. What has been most unusual for us though, is that we have probably only had 4 or 5 sunny days and about the same number of partly cloudy days here since early December. We seldom have more than a day or so of cloudy weather here a month in the winter, so we are unaccustomed to seeing day after day of cloudy, gray skies. This too shall pass …

[OldKat]

@mink 15371 wrote:

been well over a month now and the horse dont crowd me anymore.now im thinking it was her way of trying to intimidate me. i use the same tone carl spoke of and now its almost automatic that when i speak her name she steps over and makes room.. excellent advise ……..mink

I’ve had a similar experience with one of my mares. I injured my back twice last year, once in January and just when I recovered from that I did it up royally in June. So much so that the doctor said if I insisted on doing things to destroy the disc in my L4 lumbar I should plan on being fitted for a wheel chair. That slowed me down enough to listen. During the time period from June to now I have not harnessed my girls one time; hard to when you can’t lift over 15 pounds.

I now have a “cautious” release to resume activities, but unfortunately Rachel has used the period of inactivity to stake out her claim as alpha horse on the place. The other day she had Maggie hemmed up in a tight corner and was trying to use her heels on her. She has already worked the gelding over so much that I can no longer turn him out with the mares. She runs both of the bulls that I have in the lot with her; including one that outweighs her by app. 1,000 pounds. The incident the other day got my goat for sure. I hollered at her three times to leave Maggie alone, but she only looked at me and resumed what she was doing. The fact that she looked at me told me that she knew full well what she was doing was out of bounds, but she didn’t care. She was also starting to crowd me around the barn, standing too close to me in the stall etc.

I went down to the little trap where I had them while they were eating hay from a round bale feeder that I have rigged up with a cover over it and I let Maggie out to return to the barn. Then I made Rachel feel a little of the heat she was dishing out. I’ll not get into specifics, but let’s just say her nostrils were flared and her eyes were big when we got through. She had no halter on, but I happened to spy a piece of light weight chain that I use to hold one of the gates open hanging from the post where I keep it when not in use. It was too short to put around her neck to lead her with, so I slipped it in her mouth like a bit and then pulled it snug under her jaw. As I walked her SLOWLY back to the barn she was trying to work that chain out of her mouth. The more she worked it in her mouth the more she was rubbing her bars raw. When we got to her slip stall (with feed already in the trough) I would let her take a step forward one at a time with the command “step”, with a strong “whoa!” in between. (no halter on her, nor with the chain in her mouth) Then I would give her a “back” command until she backed 10 to 15′ from the feed trough. Then I repeated the whole process, again and again. The others were nearly finished eating before she was even allowed to nibble a bite of her feed, but you know what? Her behavior is markedly improved since then; she is not trying to boss everybody around anymore…especially me.

Now if it will just dry out enough to let me get the harness back on them everything will be as it should be. NOT complaining about the rain though; not after the 100 year drought we had last year!

[OldKat]

@jac 15048 wrote:

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

That is exactly why the University of Nebraska developed their tractor testing lab. A state legislator from Nebraska bought a tractor circa 19-teens that was so underpowered that it literally couldn’t pull its own weight. He was so mad that he introduced a bill and it passed & was signed into law establishing the University of Nebraska testing lab. Any model of tractor offered for sale in that state must be tested in the lab on a dynamometer before a single unit can be sold there. I think they measure draw bar and PTO HP, but I can’t recall for sure.

Over time they became the official testing lab for all tractors sold in the US. Not sure who, if anybody does this internationally.

[OldKat]

I seem to remember from an Ag Mechanics class that I took in college that the basis for a single “horsepower” was never actually measured. In other words the 550 ft / lbs per second was only a speculation on the part of whoever initially developed that equation. I have often wondered what the “real” measurement of horsepower would be.

I know that I have mentioned this before somewhere on this forum, but I forget where. Anyway, a guy I know told me that he was trying to disc his sandy loam property with a disc pulled by a certain number of Percherons. I think he said 7, but I could be wrong … maybe it was 5. Anyway, he unhitched and latched on to it with his 38 HP Kubota tractor and he said it was struggling to pull it as well. This much I remember for sure; he said he went back and added two Halflingers to the original hitch and they “walked away with it”. The reason I think he started with 7 Percherons is that I know that is how many he owned at the time.

Now he allowed as how he had to stop and rest the hitch, which he wouldn’t have had to do with the Kubota. Regardless, the Kubota could not effectively pull the disc where the hitch could. I did not witness this, but I think he is a straight shooter so I don’t think he was fibbing about it. I do remember that he had an odd number of animals, so I was wondering about how he strung his lines. I never did ask him about that though.

[OldKat]

Can I ask you guys something & not have you laugh at me? This is a serious question; why do stalls, either tie or box up in your part of the world have raised floors?

The reason I ask is we don’t use them at all. Typically I put down a fine red clay about 6″ thick and then a red sandy clay mix about 2 to 3″ thick and then shavings on top of that. Some people use a similar process and put rubber stall mats down on top of the sandy clay mix, but I have never seen anyone use a wooden floor. I have seen a few people use a concrete floor, but they then have to put down about 3 layers of mats when they do that. These are in box stalls. Almost no one uses tie stalls, but there are very few draft horses here so maybe that is why. Our ground doesn’t freeze, so maybe that is why we don’t use a raised floor. I have always been curious about this, but never thought to ask.

[OldKat]

@Does’ Leap 15000 wrote:

I’ve tried disking hayland with relatively little success. I would graze the land you want to seed tight to the ground with horses, put some weight on your disks, and keep the disks straight ahead or slightly angled.

George

I guess it depends on the soil type and the type of grass that you have. In our area the hybrid Bermudas almost have to be disked to keep them from forming a thatch. There are some people that use a “pasture renovator” which is like a chisel plow with a little more of an angled foot to it, with a tip that is case hardened to rip through the surface and open the grass up a little. It only runs about 3 inches deep.

I have one which is about 5′ wide with 6 shanks (uses a shear bolt in case you encounter a root or a rock), but which I primarily use like a chisel plow for a first pass in front of a disc harrow on heavy soil. I do not use an offset disk at all.

Very few people grow it, but the “improved” varieties of crabgrass (Red River and Quik-N-Big, both are trademarked) do great in our area on sandy to loamy soil, but ONLY if you disc the surface LIGHTLY when the soil temps reach 55 degrees F. In the heavy bottom land several people have given up on trying to eradicate Johnson grass and have instead started growing it in pure stands for hay. I bought some two years ago and the guy I bought it from said he discs very lightly in the fall to slice up the roots, which grow just beneath the surface. He said the more he disks the thicker the stand gets. His was baled when it was hip high and the stalks were the size of a mans little finger in diameter. Very leafy and the cows at it like it was candy.

Most range specialists will say to NOT disk native grasses; which in our area are the bunch grasses like Little Bluestem, Side oats grama, Dallis etc and in the bottoms Eastern gama grass. We also have Bahia, which is an introduced grass and is extremely hardy and invasive as all get out. Everyone that I know that has disked any stands of these has generally lost their stand entirely, except in the case of the bahia … it seems to thrive on it.

If I were disking hay ground I would do it exactly as George suggested; gangs straight or angled at the first setting and weighted down with concrete blocks or something similar.

[Author]

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