goat/miniature horse/pony walk-behind cultivator

[sean518]

Has anyone ever used one of these three tine cultivators with their small draft animal for garden work between rows?

http://www.hoeggergoatsupply.com/xcart/product.php?productid=3502

http://www.farmingwithhorses.com/horse-drawn-farm-cultivators

If so, do they work well?

– Sean

[Steven F]

I reckon that it should work very well. You will need some way to attach it to a swingle tree. Preferably something adjustable. It looks like an excellent way to cultivate between rows with a small horse.

Steven F

[Andy Carson]

I am toying with the idea of getting a drivable animal “helper” for cultivating. Has anyone used a small cultivator like this with goats? A back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that two large goats would cultivate better than one. Tim’s draft data says a single row horse cultivator takes 85-135 lbf (110 lbf average) to pull. It cultivates both rows, though, so I cut this in half to get an average of 55 lbf for a single row. This is 12% of 450 pounds, which might be the combined weight of two large wethers. Given this, one goat (based on it’s body weight) seems margional for cultivating a single row, but I have seen photos of single goats pulling cultivators… All I know of this is what I have seen in photos, and do not know anyone that does this so do not know if using goats for work like this is really practical. I do like the pasture improvement and weed eating bonus that goats provide. I have also read that because of thier browsing, one can pasture a few goats with cattle and have little or no impact on the amount of cattle the pasture can support. This makes sense to me too and I have really gotten into pasture improvement lately.

Thoughts anyone???

[Jean]

I have used mine some. It worked pretty good. The ground I was working on had been plowed by draft horses and it was pretty rough, but the cultivator worked good. I just had one mini horse attached to it.

Jean

[Andy Carson]

Thanks for thoughts, Jean. What would you guess you mini weighs? Was it an easy job?

PS. I would consider a mini, too, but an kinda enjoying my current horseless lifestyle. The other animals are so much less work. 🙂

[Author]

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