[OldKat]

bivol,

Thanks for the interesting post. I guess sometimes I am guilty of thinking only of the breeds that I am already familiar with & forget that there are other good options in other parts of the world.

Regarding your choices; several other people probably more knowledgeable than I have weighed in, so I will too.

I’d think that if I were in your situation I would probably first select an individual from a breed known to be hardy in your environment. I see people that disregard this all of the time in my extreme climate, as far as cattle go. They pick a breed because “that is what grandpa had in (some other region)” and then are surprised when the animal doesn’t thrive in this area. I can’t help but think that this would apply to horses as well.

Second, I’d pick one that I thought would thrive on the resources that are available to me. No point picking an individual, or breed, that you will have to “baby” to survive your local conditions.

Third, I would pick from a breed that has a large local population base. More choices = better chance of finding one that suits you. Then again, you may be interested in helping to preserve an endangered local breed or strain. There is value in that, I must admit. Still this would fall further down the list of my priorities.

Also, while I don’t think you mentioned if you prefer a mare or a gelding, keep in mind that if you pick something that is rare in your area you will have a harder time finding a second one if you ever decide to have team or a stallion to breed your mare to if you are thinking that you want a mare.

and Fourth. Since you have said that horses are not your strong suit, I would pick one from a breed that is known to be tractable (manageable and easy to work). No point wasting your time on an individual that doesn’t have the physical size, strength and temperment it will take to do the work you want done.

Regarding feeding hay to non-working animals. Keep in mind what hay really is. It is just a cured form of some type of forage. We put it up in that fashion for storage into a time of year when it won’t grow, or for ease of transport or whatever other reason (real or imagined) that we may have. The point I am trying to make, is that horses are grazers. In their feral state they survive on nothing but grass (or forbs, etc). So when we put them in a domesticated situation, they still are grazers. They may like grain, and they may need the energy it will produce to do really hard work. Still, absent the high energy requirement of steady work they SHOULD be kept on grass and or hay. I say this, admiting that mine are kept in a dry lot situation because I have no pasture nearby to where I keep the horses. Ideally, they would be on pasture nearly all of the time I am not using them.

Sounds like you are thinking about all of these things anyway. Please update us if and when you make your pick.

[OldKat]

At one time we lived on a 350 acre place that I leased for cattle pasture. I generally left the horses with the cattle with no problems, except in the winter. When I fed hay the horses would try to push the cattle away from the hay rings. Also, I generally fed some grain to the horses in the winter months I so wanted them to get the grain without the cattle bugging them.

Currently, when I am not using him on the cows I keep a Red Angus bull that weighs in at about 2,500 pounds with three horses in a dry lot. I divided off part of it, so he can be fed a lower quality hay than I feed to them. About every other day I turn him in with them for a day & then back into his smaller pen. They generally ignore him, but if they get to pestering him too bad he will stand his ground.

I would not suggest running any cattle with horns with horses, a horse hooked in the gut is not a pretty sight … usually fatal. Probably few Longhorn cattle where most of you live, but if you ever do run upon any WATCH OUT. It seems to me that they will go out of their way to hook a horse. Other than that no problems.

[OldKat]

@turk 3523 wrote:

I was wondering what I should do about worts on my colts nose. The just appeared in a week all over his nose. I am worried if I don’t do something they will go down to his mouth and get sore

Both of my mares got warts on the left side of their muzzle recently, say within the past 6 months. One mare got them about two months before the other. I was sort of worried about them, but remembered that when my cattle had an outbreak of warts the vet said that warts are a virus and when the body recognizes them as a foreign body it will reject them. Sure enough, they fell off my cattle.

Just about the time that I couldn’t stand looking at the warts on the first mare (elpased time = 1 month +/-) & I was going to take her to the vet for an evaluation I noticed some of the warts were falling off. In a matter of about a ten day period they were all gone. These were small, gray warts that looked to be about the size of a tick, before it is engorged with blood. They left no trace of having been there when they fell off.

However, when I was a kid a friend had a mare that had great big, crusty looking warts (round looking things the size of a childs finger tip) on her entire muzzle & they stayed there for about 2 years or more before they started to fall off.

Hope your colt has the first type and not the second, because those on my friends mare were really hard to look at all the time. They also left small scars when they fell off. Good luck.

[OldKat]

@Does’ Leap 3326 wrote:

I’m not sure how a curb fits on a riding bridle, but we had information to have 2 fingers fit between the chain and the chin, we also attached the reins at the midpoint position on the curb. I since read somewhere on here, (from Jason?) that he fits them by pulling the chain up to the hook and as it slides down the hook the result is the correct fit. Ours is a little looser than that but it has worked so well we haven’t changed it.

I also wanted to mention that we purchased this team from a dealer, so we didn’t know what bit they had used previously. We were pretty committed to the idea of a snaffle so it took us a long time to switch. The lever made such a dramatic difference I’m pretty convinced it was what they were used to.

Kristan

Good deal. Two fingers space is about what I always used with what we called a grazing bit for stock horses. Sounds like that is about what you have done.

[OldKat]

@Does’ Leap 3324 wrote:

Here’s a quick follow-up before I go off to milk. The concensus at the gathering was that we should stick with a regular snaffle. We did….for a while. We finally went with a levered bit with a chain because we felt our horses had a slowly eroding respect for the bit. I didn’t feel fully in control with a snaffle. After the transition, it was like having the team we purchased back. They stop on dime, start calmly, stand etc. and if they do spook for whatever reason they might do a little jump up, but never into the bit. We drive with very light lines and things are going well. It’s been about 6 months since the transition.

George

George,

Glad to hear the result was positive. Couple of questions: What type of curb chain are you using on them? Does it fit about like one on a riding bridle?

As I was reading this whole thread last night I was wondering how the levered bit would work & how you would use the curb chain. Darned if you didn’t answer 1/3 of my questions right off the bat.

[OldKat]

@TBigLug 3297 wrote:

OldKat’s got the right idea. My filly did the same thing when I first bought her. One thing to remember is to always yield your pressure as soon as they give to your command so they’ll correlate the release of pressure with doing the right thing. Hope it helps. Oh yeah, and be patient.

A couple of other things that I thought about today after I read this post. TBigLug is correct, when I apply the index finger to their hip I basically keep my finger stationary, or at least move with them only so much as to get them started moving over. Once they move my hand remains where it is, giving them the release they are looking for.

The other thing, don’t forget that you can use the same process to move their front end … finger pressed into the shoulder, or their whole body … finger pressed into their ribs. I most admit mine are not as good with these last two as they are with their rump ends. Then again, I don’t ask them to move their whole body or their front end as often as I do their rump.

I think you will find that over time they will begin to give you space whenever needed without your even having to ask for it.

Good luck with the training.

[OldKat]

@Carl Russell 3259 wrote:

I was thinking a bit more about this. Although I never have the need to drive at high speed, I do engage a high energy forward gear when pulling heavy hitches of logs.

As I thought about the concept of fear and energy level, it became a little clearer for me. I don’t think about my animals being scared. Yes I can see the nervous activity, but at it’s root it is adrenaline release, the fear may be real for them, but only until I show them there is nothing to fear.

I can’t afford to wait until a particular situation, to interrupt, or condition a horse to the specific stimulus, so I am constantly conditioning them to de-escalate. Starting with a hoe in the barn cleaning manure, or at the water trough, if they jump or shy, then I work on it right then. Rather than letting them get numb to a situation, I want them to learn to come down from the heightened sense of response, right then, under my guidance. Sometimes I only make the smallest gain, but I follow a quote I heard years ago,(I think it was John Lyons) “Recognize the slightest tries”, and make a point that this is a lesson that they are learning from me.

In this way, I never try to guess what stimulus I may need to expose them to, because I have them conditioned to follow my lead. First time the school bus goes whizzing by, yes they pay attention, but they pay more attention to me. Then when it comes to the hard pushing of heavy loads, when they have to raise their adrenaline level to a place in an experience where they have never been, I let them get fidgety and flighty, and work back down to a relaxed state.

There are times when they can put on quite a show, but “so what, there’s nothing to be worried about” (my thoughts), and they know that I expect them to calm down. Eventually, we can turn on the adrenaline and turn it off without any fear.

I know there are people who use the fear-adrenaline-run-power equation for pulling contests, but working horses on heavy loads in the woods, or on the farm, is quite different that on level ground in a pulling ring, and there needs to be control. The photo that Jason posted on the gallery recently shows that very well. There is a team that is putting all they can into that effort, and there’s a very relaxed teamster (JR) just letting them do it. They have all been through that transition together many times.

I run into a certain mind-set among people with animals that they need to train them to do certain things, or accustom them to certain situations. I realize that it is a convention, and it obviously works, but I also believe that a successful communication process can be established that will transcend any situation, even a really scary completely new experience. It is also fundamental to actually performing work, because there are times when you just have to do something for the first time, and your expectations for completion need to be high.

So as little use as I have for cantering horses in harness, and a preference for practical application, I can see how the exercise has similarities to things I do with my horses.

Carl

… what Carl is saying here. I sort of take the same view. My issue is that I DON”T work my horses for a living, so I have to fit in harness time as I can. I have decided to actually SCHEDULE into my day the time I want to spend down at “The Horselot” as we call it.

While I don’t try to figure out what stimulus to expose them to (in Carl’s words) I do try to take advantage of the free resources that are right under my nose to give them a broader exposure to real world situations. Let me explain what I mean by that.

We live in a town of about 4,000 people. While there is no ordinance against keeping horses in town, ours are about .6 of a mile to the east of our home (which is in a residential neighborhood). I bought a few acres about ten years ago that just happens to be on the street that bounds the city limits & this is “home” for the horses. This property is about .4 of a mile north of the junior high & .6 of a mile from the high school. Cattle pasture in between. This means traffic is frequently heavy coming and going to these schools.

School buses, boys (and some girls) gunning their engines as they zip by … nothing seems to faze the horses as they graze. From there it is just a small step to getting them out on the road as this traffic passes. They don’t seem to notice it. Far different situation than when they first came down from Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. EVERYTHING rattled them then. I also can drive them down to the high school as the band practices out beside the football stadium. Plenty of sights and sounds that they won’t see in the round pen.

To the east of the lot maybe 1/2 mile is a city owned baseball / soccer facility. I haven’t taken them down there when the kids are playing, but there is an access road on the back side that looks to be the perfect place to make them work while the chaos of youth sports goes on around them. The great thing is that it is fenced off from the park, so I won’t have to worry about the children getting “too close”. Only a block further east is a US highway & a railroad track. While most people would prefer not to expose their animals to these sights and sounds, I look at them (within reason) as a free education for the girls. As long as the experience is positive and the situation is something I can control, I welcome these opportunities to work in a different environment. There are other examples I could cite, but I think you get the picture.

If we were working several hours a day to a full day like Carl and some of the others on this site do I wouldn’t even consider the need to do the things I mentioned. In my situation it is a reaonable alternative.

[OldKat]

I had the same problem with my mares. I found that sheer brute force did NOT work in getting them to move away from me. In fact generally the harder I tried to push, the harder they pushed back. Luckily I noticed that they were doing this while they were still young, so I started working with them in the slip (tie) stall while I was feeding. Generally they have to move to one side or the other to let me by when I am bringing their feed and/or hay to the trough/manger.

What worked for me was to catch them side stepping to let me by and I would say “OVER” in a firm, but matter of fact way. Everytime they moved out my way I would praise them and pet their necks. Eventually I added pressing a single finger into their hip just behind the middle of the flank with the normal “OVER”. They caught on in just a matter of days that I wanted them to move away when they heard the word “OVER” OR when they felt my index finger pressing into their hip.

Sometimes they will still get confused and move the wrong direction, in other words INTO me instead of AWAY from me when I say over … especially if we are not in the slip stall. At that point I have to remember DO NOT push against them. Generally as soon as they contact me they recognize their error and start to move back away. However, if they don’t I press the index finger straight into the hip & give the over command. Remember to praise when they do yield right of way to you and in no time you should have a well mannered team.

Hope this helps … it is what worked for me.

[OldKat]

… Carl, Plowboy & Neil. You guys have given me several good options when I had none. 🙂

Thanks again,

[OldKat]

I’ve only ever seen a few teams of the pony type drafters in my area, so I had kind of wondered about their relative pulling power. They look plenty stout, I’ll grant you that.

I did know of a guy that had a similar question about full sized drafters vs. about a 36 hp Kubota tractor. Several years ago he was discing with his Percherons. I think he was hitched about 4 or 5 strong, but maybe he was at 6. No more than that, because he had 7 head total. Anyway, his guys were struggling with the disc so he unhitched and hooked to the Kubota. He found that it was bogging it down just about like it had the horses. So he harnessed the blacks back up and threw in one more. He said they “walked away” with the disc. Don’t know what size disc he was talking about, but I do know that his place was what we call a “sugar loaf” sand (meaning about the texture of granular sugar).

I have no reason to doubt this guy, because he seemed to be a straight up kind of a person. Did find it surprising though.

[OldKat]

@becorson 3100 wrote:

i think you could probably work a young bull but i sure wouldn’t want to work a mature dairy bull! maybe i’m just chicken, but my guide line is “don’t trust your life to an animal whose testicles weigh more than his brain”. most stallions are right on the border line when it comes to brain/ testicle weight ratio. But bulls’ testicles weigh more than twice as much as their brains. (i’m a vet pathologist, that’s how i know). lol

Sounds like some guys I went to high school with! 😉

[OldKat]

@Does’ Leap 3075 wrote:

Plowboy:

My wife and I currently make two full time incomes off of our small farm. We milk 45 goats and process all the milk into a variety of fresh and aged goat cheeses. We also recently started making goat’s milk kefir (a type of drinkable yogurt). While I understand your questioning the economic viability of small scale farming, it is possible with sacrifices. We purchased 130 acres of undeveloped land for $63,000 11 years ago. We lived in a yurt for over 5 years while we built our barns, cheese facility, house etc. I taught high school for 9 years while building up the business and quit two years ago. Yes, that income helped capitalize the farm and was essential in reducing debt and enabling us to pay as we went. However, the business was also growing and contributing as well. We are now debt-free and live comfortably.

What did it take for us? Getting a good deal on land we purchased, willing to rough it for several years (yurt with no water and no electric for several years), doing everything ourselves (building, plumbing, electric, etc.), searching the country for cheap equipment that we could fix up (cheese regs are extremely strict), and working extremely hard for long periods of time (still going!). Did I mention interns? Yes, we have relied on them as well, although we are now in a position – with less projects, fence building, renovations, etc. – to wean ourselves from intern labor if we choose.

These are all aspects of the cost of running a business. On the income side, it wouldn’t have worked for us without a value-added product. For example, we could sell goat’s milk for $30 – $35 / cwt. That same milk processed into cheese and kefir averages $185 / cwt for us. Additionally, we have the power to raise our prices rather than accepting a price from a buyer. In fact, we have raised our prices twice in the past 6 months due to our rising costs (we are now paying $635/ton for organic grain!) Our customers haven’t blinked and we still don’t come close to meeting demand. Another key for us has been direct marketing 40-45% or our cheese through the Burlington Farmers Market and local CSAs. This insures we are getting top dollar for our products.

I don’t want to paint a overly sanguine picture of our farm because I would be making a lot more money and working a lot less if I continued teaching. We often work upwards of 80 hours weekly in the busy season and I bet if you calculated our hourly wage, it would be modest indeed. That being said, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

George

Very interesting thread. I have thought about this very subject a number of times over the years & certainly don’t have a clue as to the ultimate answer, so I guess the best I could offer is “it depends“. George makes some great points; one is what you pay for your land. Maybe that depends on where you are. Yesterday we went to homecoming at our beloved university, which is in the community near where we hope to retire. On the way home we saw two pieces of property for sale, both in the part of the county where we would like to live/farm. I called on both, no answer on the 35 acre piece. The other was a 64.8 acre piece that the owner said he would “take $6,500.0 per acre” for. If I had CASH IN HAND that is over 420 thousand dollars! (By the way, this land was in a very rural location at least 100 to 120 miles from a major city … it was not “suburban” land) I can’t think of any LEGAL crop that could make that work. I’ve got a few years left to work, and as the reality of the credit mess starts to sink in I expect prices to soften considerably around here. Enough so that I can make a buy like George did? I doubt it. Short of a complete economic collapse I can’t say if it will ever come down enough to make farming this land feasible again. I once heard that horse traders say you never make money selling horses, the money is made when you buy them; i.e. how cheaply you can buy the animal. I guess the same could be said with farmland.

It depends ,also, on what you sell your product for … as detailed in several of the posts above. I can’t add anything here, as I don’t currently have a product to sell. I do know that an Amish guy that I know has customers that drive about 50 miles to buy his raw milk (which he has no license for, so he sells it as “For pet use only”) I have no idea what he gets for it, but the market is obviously there. A guy that I went to college with was the department chair for the Agriculture & Industrial Technology Department at our alma mater for a number of years. He told me that a few years ago they had a big crop of Angus bull calves & the market had gone south. Rather than cram them into a depressed market they fed them out on corn off the university farm. He was unsure about marketing them, so he sold them as halves on the university intranet. They called them “Bearkat Beef”, after the school mascot. They stressed locally grown, no antibiotics, no crowded feedlot. They were priced out at about 50 cents a pound higher than halves sold through the local markets. They sold out in a matter of days.

I would also think that it depends on what your expectations are. Several years ago I was at conference put on by The Stockman Grass Farmer magazine. Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms was a speaker there. The crowd had been very enthusiastic about everything he had to say. He was saying that they had three families making a “middle class” income off of what amounted to about 150 acres of cultivatable land. Then someone asked what he was calling a “middle class” income. When he said”35,000 to 40,000 dollars” you could visibly see the audience deflate. They all seemed to miss several points that he had made earlier; 1) they can build homes and barns on their property at very low costs due to their sawmill operation providing most of the material required & all of the family members are handy with tools 2) his family had virtually no food bill, they raised it all themselves 3) their home heating bill was minimal because they used scrap wood from their sawmill operation to heat their homes & 4) their “other” expenses are lower. With no off farm jobs they didn’t need to budget for special clothes to wear to work, their automobiles last longer because they don’t wear them out getting to work, their gasoline bills were minimal due to the same. (Most of their customers come to the farm to buy from them) Still the audience seemed to focus only on the money in; not the whole picture, including their reduced cost of living.

As it relates to the price a product commands in the market place; I’ve seen several studies over the years that dealt with the pricing of agricultural products. While it is true that the producer has no control over the price they receive when selling in a commodity system, not so when selling to the end user … as you all know. What may surprise you is what was discovered when queried as to what marketing terminology works best. The following terms were tested; “organic” and “locally grown”. Turns out locally grown has much greater appeal to the average consumer. Organic is not bad, just not as effective.

Finally, I once worked for a firm that had a belief that we could “add value” (and therefore price) to a commodity product. They, actually we, thought that we could add enough service to the delivery side of this commodity so that the consumer would be willing to pay a premium for it. In retrospect it was a goofy concept, but we spent about 7.5 million dollars proving ourselves wrong! Bottom-line time, people WILL NOT pay a premium for a commodity. Lesson learned; if you are trying to extract a premium for your product NEVER let it be equated to a similar commodity. You MUST somehow differentiate your product in the eyes of the consumer.

[OldKat]

This will probably be my one and only venture ever, posting wise, into the MULE forum … as I have absolutely zero experience with mules. I take that back, as a kid a friend of mine had a miniature mule that worked quite well in harness … until my friend soured him by asking him to do things that he could not do. I drove the little guy a couple of times early on and was really impressed with him. Beyond that nada.

However, bivol makes several good points and one of them is the historical use of mules. Mules were THE draft animal of choice in the rural South from post Civil War until after the turn of the century, with horses making a late charge before being phased out by tractors. At that, most of the horses used for farming were light horses or light horses crossed on the drafters. Primarily though what they used was the so called “cotton mule”. These were probably about 700 to 800 pounds on average. The reasons that mules were so popular are numerous; they were considered more durable, they lived and worked under conditions that were difficult for horses to endure. They were thought to manage the heat much better than horses, but whether this was actually ever proven I can’t say. They were cheaper to buy and they were cheaper to feed; important considerations in a poor, agrarian society. They could work at a steady pace for hours on end, just right for cultivating the vast acreages of cotton then planted across the region. They also had smaller hooves and were thought to be more careful in where they placed their hooves, which was a big issue with cotton as the cotton plant will not stand a bunch of abuse.

In the last 20 or 25 years this light mule has made a big comeback in the parts of the South, Texas particularly. I think they are probably breeding them at about 950 pound or so now and are used under saddle more so than under harness. Some people are driving them as well; however it is usually in the show ring. Our county fair parade was a week ago yesterday and there were about 5 wagons in the parade, which is down from what it normally is. Regardless, I thought it was amusing that every wagon in the parade was pulled by a team of mules. One team was a pair of mini’s, three were the size we normally see around here & one team was a really nice draft type team, probably Belgian cross. What I didn’t find so amusing is that every team save the draft team had collars that were at least three or four sizes too big. Even more troubling was the team that were being driven in plow harness; LOOK MA’ … NO BRAKES! Scary.

[OldKat]

Jason,

Thanks for the informative and in-depth reply. Wow, you really put some thought into that! Not in the form of arguing with you, because I don’t care for that sort of thing, but I have taken the liberty of copying parts of your post to clarify what I was saying in mine.

… I bought/swapped for a stud colt from an Amish that had bred the colt by crossing a sire back on a daughter, generally because he had not other sires available. This was the first Suffolk I owned and he was intended to be crossed on the mares from the killer barn that I had selected for conformation and color (chestnut). This horse was smaller than some, which I think may be a problem with breeding related horses. They can become diminutive or smaller. This first Suffolk colt (Samson) crossed very well on unrelated mares and produced horses that we much larger than him and were very true to type, color and maybe most important in this day and age disposition.

I think Sampson would have been defined as inbred, rather than line bred due to the fact that he would have had 75% of his fathers’ blood. There are very often problems that arise when crossing that closely. That is why Mr. Lentz in his work had cautioned against it.

I did have an accidental breeding of two half brother and sister pair a few years ago. This means the deer ran through the stallions electric fence while I was off the farm, out of town and the stallion joined the herd where all was fair game and he bred one of his half sisters (same sire for both). The offspring of this cross was an extremely common type Suffolk, being dark chestnut and short coupled, blocky animal, again that was extremely easy to work with. However the female that resulted from this line breeding is smaller than her herd mates from unrelated matings. She is sweet and beautiful, but is smaller. So I think that may be an issue with line breeding although this cross representing both parents only having half of the same blood through the having the same sire.

When breeding animals that are half sister & half brother you derive at an offspring that is a grandson or granddaughter to the common ancestor, but would percentage of blood wise be equivalent to a son or a daughter. When I was line-breeding rabbits which by the way was an excellent species to utilize (for obvious reasons), I never experienced the problem of smaller offspring. Though honestly, with an animal that has a target market weight of only 5 pounds it could have been happening and I couldn’t tell. Unless the bunnies could only reach say 3&1/2 pounds I probably couldn’t tell the difference anyway. This would be a good thing to watch for however, so I will be sure to monitor this with my cattle.

Also, isn’t the gene pool of the Suffolk breed in the US fairly small to begin with? That was the case originally with Red Angus cattle and they had to be very careful when making any given mating to make sure there where not too many closely related ancestors. Now that the registrations are in the million plus range there are obviously more individuals to select from.

Since we now have DNA and blood typing it would seem that we could evolve our horses based on science of inter breed hybrids or breeding horses within a traceable bloodline to horses that are not closely related at all, say third cousins. This is what we are basically doing in some cases now. I haven’t had a foal of this crossing yet, but will this spring. One of our current sires is a third cousin on the dams side with a couple of mares we bred him with. It will be interesting to see the results.

Actually, I think breeding third cousins would still be considered line breeding … though admittedly not really close line breeding. Good luck with this batch of foals, I am particularly interested in the how the foals turn out from the two mares you mentioned.

Now, we do have a local facility that collects and ships fresh semen all over the world. We advertise this on the Suffolk Association site and have not had a single taker thus far. We just charge the same fee for the stud service and let the rest of the cost be a matter between the A.I. lab and the customer. I think it is very expensive for someone that just wants a great work horse. I know artificial insemination has been used on mares in England from American sires and vice versa.

I guess it may have to do with some difference between handling bull semen vs. stallion semen or maybe a it is case of scale (i e demand), because bull semen is generally priced at about $15.0 per straw. That makes it a viable alternative for AI breeding cows. If the semen was priced at the same price as a live cover then I could see how it would not be an attractive option for most people. Of course, in my case it still might be because there are so few drafter stallions in my area. Also, I wonder how much of this has to do with the difficulty of finding a vet or AI technician that will AI the mares? I know in our area most will not fool with it.

Frankly at this point I am charging the same breeding fees as twenty years ago and don’t have that many outside mares. Folks seem to want to bred there mares for less than $500.00 and that is not enough to make keeping a stallion worth it unless …

I fully understand what you are saying. Really very few draft horses in my part of the country, and there really never have been. However, there are PLENTY of light horses here and the keepers of stallions say the exact same thing that you say. Certainly there are people that will pay more for a stud service, but most wont.

Similarly, it is rare around here for people to bring a cow to have it bred to someone’s bull. Usually if they have more than just a few cows they will buy their own bull. However, few want to pay more than about 1&1/2 to 2 times what a cow will sell for. This has resulted in some serious problems for us. I can say without reservation that the cattle within a 50 mile radius of where I live (and there are tens and hundreds of thousands of them) are generally the sorriest they have been in my lifetime. Probably the sorriest they have been since they roamed semi-feral in this area in the days after the Civil War. This results from the continued use of inferior bulls, the bull-of-the-month mentality (where every time a new breed came to the US people would buy one to put into their herd) and generally poor management practices. We now have mostly what I call “Shegotsum” cattle … which is what you hear when you ask the question; “What kind of cow is that?” The answer goes something like this … “Well, she got some Hereford, she got some Angus, she got some Charolais, she got some …. (any of about 10 other breeds)”. No inbreeding here, but unlimited crossbreeding seems to have resulted in a mongrel cow herd. Kind of like the Canardly dogs Carl mentioned in another thread.

Good post Old Kat, keep us up with what you are doing, because the future could include transportation cost that prohibit the choice of distant sires. Maybe A.I. could be an alternative, but it isn’t cheap either.

No, it seems that nothing that has to do with horses is cheap.

The point is to work the horses in the settings that presents the culture as a superior practice and therefore making them worth more to anyone. That is our goal and approach in the practice of restorative forestry.

This is a VERY good point. I hadn’t thought of it like that before. I’ll have to remember this.

Thanks again for your reply.

[OldKat]

@416Jonny 3019 wrote:

I was thinking more along the lines of how much the equipment costs to start with and the up keep that it takes to maintain multiple batteries.

But all is not lost. Part of the weight involed helps traction to run such implements. Either way it takes energy to store up energy to use in another form. Wether it’s hydraulic or electric, it’s going to take power to use.

In a hydraulic system running a positive displacement pump and accumulator, there with be some sort of pressure relief valve that will direct fluid back to the reservior when the system is charged. It’s application is much smoother than that of using an electrical system with a voltage regulator because of it’s ability to meter fluid pressure.

The general electrical charging system is either on or off. When the power bank lowers to the specific point (automotive regulators turn on around 12.45 volts, the industry minimum charge a 12 volt battery should hold on it’s own) the regulator energizes the stator of the alternator creating the magnetic field needed to produce electricity. This causes the alternator to not want to turn at all. To test this, turn an alternator over by by without the field being energized, it’s easy. Energize the alternator then try to turn it over, it’s almost impossible to do by hand.

Both systems create a degree of drag relative to the load. Under serious load conditions that extra weight is a bonus in terms of traction. Another thought is wheel and tire selection. Steel wheels with big evil looking lugs might give you all the traction you’d ever need at the expense of a bumpy ride that shakes your kidneys like a paint shaker if you take off down the road. And your neighbors probably would stop speaking to you (or start for that matter) for tearing up the road.

It wouldn’t be out of the question to retro fit a forecart to accept hydraulics. The three point hitch might be iffy to fabricate if you’ve never done it before.

I once had a thought that you could run various types of implements on hydraulic power using multiple circuits. For example, you could hitch a haybine to the back of the forecart, run a hydraulic motor to turn the PTO shaft and have a seperate circuit to control the cylinder. Running a system like that should carry a larger reservior and a heat exchanger of some sorts.

It’s entirely possible to build one of these systems for much less than it cost to buy something new. I read the cost for some of the hydraulic forecarts and the Yard Hitch and it makes me cringe. I’m poor and don’t really like the idea of paying somebody else a large amount of money if I can build it myself.

Just some more thoughts.

Jonny B.

Interesting. I guess I’m blessed enough to be able to say that I am not (currently) poor, (was considerably more well off a year ago than I am now; if you know what I mean. DJI 14,000+ vs. 9,387 and shaking!) but I know what you mean about building things yourself if you can. I’ve got way too much German in me to want to start spending hard earned dollars if I don’t have to!

I looked at the stuff from Yard Hitch, very slick looking products. I am sure they are well designed and well built, too. Still you are looking at over 4K if you go with a forecart with brakes & the power cart. That is way more $$$$ than I can justify to Mrs. OldKat, as this is still a HOBBY at this point.

The weight thing is a puzzle to me. I hear what you and Carl are saying about enough weight for traction, but how would you measure THE OPTIMUM weight for such a forecart? Too little weight and the mechanical or elctro-mechanical functionality is lost. Too much weight and it may take more ponies than I want to keep around just to lug it.

By the way, the Yard Hitch idea of using a stand alone cart for the power unit really makes sense when you think about it. Just drop it when you are doing something that doesn’t require hydraulics. Appears that they use an auto steer front end on the forecart, which is something I had also thought about. Lots of possibilities.

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