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simon lenihan
ParticipantWe did a job a few years back for a company that owned and worked a stone quarry. We worked right up to the face of the quarry all around which was not easy as there was no railings just a straight drop for a couple of hundred feet. They also blasted the quarry face 3 times a day, we were warned half an hour before blasting and were not allowed take the horses off site as it would have involved a 3 mile round trip to get them off site. The maximum distance we could go back with the horses was about 40 meters. When they blasted it shook the ground, gave us pins and needles for a while but never bothered the horses. I insisted in cutting everything in to 3 meter lengths for safety reasons, long poles can roll and pull a horse with them. The site supervisor never came to see us working, said it made him nervous just looking up from below.
simon lenihanParticipantTop class job.
simon lenihanParticipantThey could point their tin whistles at the boulder and play until the cows came home and it still would not move. This was the job of the slaves and pesants, this was the priests way of getting out of doing a hard days graft.
simon lenihanParticipantBoat from holland to canada cancelled, not enough intrest according to willy mertens, pity.
simon lenihanParticipantThere are a few suffolks up in scotland along with ardennes, comtois, percheron, etc, i know it is clyde country but you would be surprised in what has been imported over the past few years. The most common logging horse in ireland for many years was the irish draft x clyde, i owned a few myself. The feather was reduced significantly along with the greasy heels. It might be worth considering one of these suffolks. malachite and master apple jack.
simon lenihanParticipantWe had a small oak thinning job which we used apollo to do, he did very well, but he is still only green broke.
simon lenihanParticipantjac
The dutch draft came about as a result of crossing the brabacon [ brabant ] with native dutch draft type mares, and yes you are right it all goes back to the flemish horse. The flemish horse however was a clean legged animal and believe it or not the nearest to the original type is the american belgian which a few europeans have started to import back to its homeland. cpl is present in a very high percentage of all european draft breeds.
simon lenihanParticipantI will try and post pics of the different european breeds over the next couple of weeks. Here are some dutch drafts.
simon lenihanParticipantscott, There was no report carried out on the said work and for a very good reason too, most foresters are not interested in using draft animals and the idea that a combination of both draft animal and mechanised forwarder being more competitive would not go down well. The state forestry now give grants for the purchace of smaller machines, they have the cheek to say these are more enviromentaly friendly, they burn less fuel and do not compact the ground as much, i have never heard so much s_ _ t in my life but it gives the public the idea that the forestry divison are a real eco group.
simonParticipantold fashioned percherons on this side of the pond usually go for meat, saw one recently that was rescued from the meat man, stood 15.2hh and must have weighed 1700 lb, had a tremendous front on him, great feet and overall confirmation was as near perfect as you could get. This was one of the lucky ones.
simon lenihanParticipantfirst of march and still getting spam from the same dennie adamz.
simon lenihanParticipantpete,
Not sure yet, will keep yee informed.
simon lenihanParticipantsemi ancient natural woodlands [ oak, birch, yew ] were underplanted with conifers 50 years ago, the idea behind this was to utilise the space between the hardwoods and it also would give a cash return down the road. This system did not work for alot of reasons, the conifers were planted too close together leaving no light on to the forest floor and in turn there was no regen from the oak or birch. The forestry divison decided in the early 1990s to remove all conifer from hardwood stands. They never gave much thought as how to extract these conifers, harvesters / processors were no good, sky line would be too awkward and end up doing too much damage so they decided to try a skidder and horses. we worked alongside this skidder for one week and extracted double what they did, the skidder crew packed it in the following week, they said that it was frustrating to watch horses nip in and out between trees and put timber at the landing, they had to follow the load out from the back of the wood, stop and readjust so as not to damage any hardwoods which took time. Comments like horses are too slow, you should be in a museum were well and truly gone out the door. The satisfaction gained at that time was immense, now here we have a harvesting system where horses are not only the best method but also the fastest and most economic. We ended up extracting over 5000 tonnes of conifers for this company alone. The best method is to cut the timber to length in the wood, skid the sawlogs with swingletree and load the smaller produce on to a sledge and extract to track side for secondary extraction with horse drawn forwarder. I know this does not relate exactly to conifers and aspen but i am sure the same system could work very well indeed.
simon lenihanParticipantfrench ardennes.
simon lenihanParticipantI meant to post these earlier. [ swedish ardennes ]
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