Skills to acquire BEFORE getting your own team?

[Erica Frenay]

Hi folks,
I have a small farm raising pigs, turkeys, sheep, and raw honey, but I currently have neither horses nor tractor equipment. Most of my farmer friends (including MuleManDonn) farm with horses, and I’m really interested in having a team here a few years from now to help with mowing, plowing snow, cultivating in hoophouses, moving water tanks, and probably a few other things that I would find for them to do.

But I have essentially zero experience with horses currently, so the idea of having working horses in a few years feels totally overwhelming. I’m trying to break this down into do-able steps – skills that I need to acquire – so I can figure out how I will go about becoming a teamster.

Realizing that much of the learning can only happen once I actually have my own team, what I’d like to hear your thoughts on is: what skills are essential to acquire BEFORE getting my own team? Thanks for your ideas!
Best,
Erica

[Rebekah]

Get a job and/or volunteer with someone who has horses in your area to learn about basic horse care and management. When you have worked with one place for 6 months or so, find somewhere else to work – get experience with AT LEAST three different places because there are lots of different management styles and preferences, not to mention barn designs and systems to learn about and experience. You may only be able to be there 1-2 days a week for a few hours each time but even that amount will teach you a lot.

Take a workshop or two or three to learn to harness, drive, hitch, etc.

Go to plow matches and demonstrations and watch the teamsters. Which are most effective? Which are styles that you could learn from?

Read books: Lynn Miller, Stephen Leslie, Mark Rashid and other authors out there have good information to share about horse psychology, physiology, the art and science of working with horses.

Come to the DAPNet cultivating workshop and Annual Gathering to meet folks, watch and learn.

Good luck!

-Bekah

[dominiquer60]

Erica,

In addition to Bekah’s great advice I recommend that you get a beef calf (diary or beef) while you work your way up to a team of horses. Since you already have a farm this may be a good fit. Read up on how to train oxen and train your beef animal, this will get you used to handling a larger animal and integrating it into your daily routine. Cattle and horses have some differences, but more similarities than not. You will be able to make mistakes with your trained beef animal and in the end it won’t matter so much, you will have more confidence and the animal will be easy to handle.

I think that there are a lot of basic training strategies that are universal not matter what species you are dealing with, dogs, cattle, people, horses. Much of what you take from training one kind will aid with a transition to a new kind. My partner started with oxen then changed to horses, I started with horses, dogs then oxen, someday we may have people to train too.

Just my 2 cents.

Erika

[Donn Hewes]

Hi Erica, I told you I would write if you wrote! Great advice so far, and great question by the way. For established farmers or families it can be so hard (or impossible) to get away for a big chunk of time just to learn a new skill. This is a big challenge, but not insurmountable. I would break it down into two parts. The first is figuring out exactly what you want. Once again a lot of short farm visits were you get to actually work with different sizes and breeds (and cattle) will be the best way to making a good first step in bringing animals home.

The next thing I would do is figure out what the tasks you hope to accomplish are. Through you farm visits and work with other folks figure out what the easiest one or two tasks from your list are to perform with a draft animal. Then when you start learning some basic skills, make sure you learn everything you can about this one or two tasks. The purpose and goal for this is to be ready to perform these tasks the day you bring something home. Often when folks bring their first horse home they have everything, but part of the harness is missing. It might take six months to get that piece. sometime they hope to skid logs and they have everything but the chain. It will be a month or two before they get to the hardware to pick up the chain. I would like to the animal to be unloaded in the morning and working in the afternoon. ps. I am available that day if you would like a hand!

Then you can keep practicing this basic skill while you are preparing to add each new task you want to accomplish.

[Erica Frenay]

Thanks so much for all the good advice!
I realized I left a really important piece of information out of my first post, which is that time is an extraordinarily limiting factor, at least for the next year. I have a part-time off-farm job, 2 young kids (one of whom I’m home with 2 days/week), I manage the farm without other help, and my husband is building our home in addition to managing his business, so I usually don’t even have weekends available as an option for learning horse skills, unless I can bring the kids along. Note that even if I was an experienced teamster, I wouldn’t be bringing horses home in this next year because I simply don’t have enough time to properly train and work them. My hope is that in the next two years a lot of things will shift for us, allowing me to have more time on the farm.

As Donn said though, even with these schedule constraints I think there are more farm visits I could be fitting in to get experience with a range of breeds doing a range of tasks.

Erika, you mentioned that many training concepts are universal across species. That resonates with me, and gives me hope. I attended the Draft Animal Powered Field Days at UMass a few summers ago, and in an oxen session the presenter talked about the concepts in training oxen, which boiled down to being patient, kind, but firm. A light went off for me – those are the same principles we apply in parenting! So I’m hopeful my time with our 2 kids has helped in some small way to prepare me to be a good teamster 🙂

We are thinking about getting a couple of beef calves this year, but this may not be the year for me to take on trying to start training them, due again to lack of time. I am, however, attending a horse/mule training day in a couple weeks at Donn’s farm, and will start looking for other opportunities this summer to attend events and interact with draft animals.

So grateful for this forum as a resource!

[carl ny]

Erica

Where do you live,there may be other people near you that can help….

carl ny

[Erica Frenay]

Hi Carl,
I live in Brooktondale, NY, near Ithaca. We have friends nearby who farm with horses, in addition to Donn, but I would love to know any folks you’re aware of within an hour’s drive of Ithaca who like to share their horsemanship and teamster skills with novices. It often feels like too much to ask busy farmers – even those I consider friends – to take on trying to teach me anything. But sometimes there are folks who are so passionate about teaching that they don’t see it as a burden at all.
Cheers,
Erica

[dominiquer60]

Even if they don’t have time to teach you there is a lot that can be learned from observation. Next thing you know, you have a brush in hand, picking out feet, maybe you are straightening out the harness after the teamster put it on, after a while you are asked to hold the lines while the teamster checks on something, this progresses to you driving the wagon back to the farm. The more time that you spend around them actively observing the little details, the more things begin to make sense, and the more you learn the more comfortable you become handling horses and with the idea of farming with them your self.

[carl ny]

Erica,

I live up north between Lowville and Croghan,NY so I don’t really know anyone in your area.
Also, I agree 100% what dominiquer60 said.

carl ny

[Carl Russell]

The most important thing that I think you need to have is grit. Ingenuity is also a strong aspect of success with draft animals. I have seen quite a few beginners starting out, and it all comes down to commitment. If you believe that you cannot go forward without draft animals in your life, you will find the time, and opportunities. I don’t mean this in a harsh manner, but it will not come to you, you will have to overcome the obstacles.

It seems these days that it is politically correct to suggest the long slow learning curve of exposure and experience. I once stood where you are. I approached an old horse logger about my interest in learning to log with horses, and he said “if I wanted to go logging with horses, I’d buy a horse and go logging”….. Which by the way is what I did….

This may not be the best approach for you, but it doesn’t mean you should sneak around the bush either. This is an immersion process. Dive in. Don’t overthink it….

It is a lot like the bandaid… Long and slow is more painful. You will need to make significant changes, particularly regarding time. Holding off will only make the transition even more difficult.

That’s the way I see it, Carl

[Tender Soles]

I agree with Carl, strike while the iron is hot. However, I also recommend lots of initial observation and learning time with someone who can mentor you for however much time you can allot to it. Having no prior horse experience other than allergies, I’ve had the luxury (depending on how you see it) of apprenticing on two different horse-powered vegetable farms which allowed me to see different ways of speaking to, responding to, interpreting body language, and generally communicating with the horses. As with anything in the world, the horse, the harness, the implement, and you are an integrated system that can work together to formulate action and beauty in motion.

It does take a certain commitment, pride in work, confidence, grit, or stubbornness. Probably a combination of all those things as well as compassion for the animal. I do think it is important to definitely understand basic horse behavior beforehand. I am learning more everyday about reading and communicating with the horses, but a fundamental understanding of how they behave has helped me grow immensely as a teamster over this first year of owning a team. The past two days I have been experimenting and learning by doing in regards to line pressure and how little I need to use it in the woods and have even figured out how our Suffolk Jess “likes” to be told to back up.

I’d also like to add that observing other teamsters and what they do is helpful in another very important aspect: safety. Just make sure you are safe and feel safe taking the next step, whether it is simply harnessing and bridling, ground driving, or ground work on a lead. It is easy to jump too far ahead for you and the horse. I’m sure everyone on this forum has experienced this; I have many times this past year and have learned a lot without getting hurt. It is a risk that we take, but one that you must be calculating at all times, and mitigating as much as possible. An experienced teamster is invaluable in providing the guidance for creating a safe environment and conditions for you and your animals. I may not have had the confidence to begin working with my own drafts if I had not developed a foundation of teamster language and skills.

To build on Carl’s comment: Immersion with a small dash of precaution.

[PeytonM]

I’ll tell you my experience I had. I grew up on a small farm. my parents had tractors mainly IH stuff largest one being about 90HP, use a NH 1214 discbine to cut hay and really could mow with that. My grandpa passed away a few years back and my grandma finally was starting to get to cleaning the barn out, I got vast majority of his stuff. Wagon’s harness parts, cutter sleigh. bob sled to name a few. I really learned a lot of things after he passed and I couldn’t stand to let that stuff sit. I was going to school and working nights driving semi and tax time came around and found a team of beligan gelding’s. I got them from a guy on the other side of the state. they were 12 and 14 when I bought them in 2012, one is 18H and other 17.2 really solid sound team. I didn’t really know they would be as big as they were. I paid 2450 delivered with everything to make them drive but collars and bits. I went to the local Amish and paid 80 for one collar and 100 for the other. All his bits are 10 dollars and collar pads are 25. so that was another 250 to get a grand total 2900. I had zero experience with drafts let alone working and hitching a team, the only horses I’ve ever been around are mini’s because after my parents sold all the milking cows my mom thought I needed something to take care of and she got mini’s for me to feed and water, and its sad to say but that’s all they ever got. mainly because besides pulling a cart around I could do anything with them and I wanted to spend my time with speed and power in motocross stuff.

I spent a lot of time on here and watching things on youtube how people would work a horse and different things. I’ll be honest I got a really good deal on a great starter team. I could stop them anywhere drop the lines and stand in front of them and do what ever I had to do, adjust something on a wagon, switch poles out. move stuff for 10 min’s and they wouldn’t move, they would rub their heads and scratch on each other and that’s it. They don’t know Gee and Haw. but I didn’t care. My next team came from a horse puller, mare gelding team, that was a night mare from hell, I hooked them twice and I had a run away, it was the gelding, he was really flighty, I took him back kept the mare, I’ll admit shes a little bit of a hand full when you first start Shes 9 now and 16.2ish and she’ll out pull my big Belgian gelding any day of the week. She really digs in and pulls hard and you learn to respect a little bit of a high strung horse, I now also am in the works of paying for a team of percherons that are about 10ish mother daughter team and they are flawless, really caddy on their feet, dance around in the woods awesome took some time for me to get them to pull hard with out a pole between them but they found the gear one day in a snow storm. I paid way more than I would ever thought I would paid for horses, but they are well worth it and I got them with the plans of starting to do horse logging with them. I’m having a slow start to it, I’d like to save some money up because I’m sure I’m in for a rough start and a lot of learning.

At the end of the day if you could work horses for someone I think that would be a good start but if you want to learn how to do something you can find out something in time. I’d find a solid team when you buy your first team or horse. I’ve started to really watch how the horse acts in pasture, when your harnessing them, when they are in harnesses. I’ve learned that horses and read your emotions like a book and if you get grumpy with they it normally makes it worse. My big gelding is really touchy, if you work him single he isn’t really confident and you always have to talk to him and pet him and tell him hes doing good or he needs to calm down. I call him Princess cause hes like a little girl… dancing around and reminds me of my niece’s cause I always have to tell them what to do cause their not sure.

[Erica Frenay]

Hi all,
Thanks again everyone for sharing your thoughts.

Carl, the dive-in-and-just-do-it approach is how we started farming. But I like Tender Soles’ addition of precaution to that equation. I do tend to be accident-prone, and the likelihood of injury seems so much greater with a draft animal than with the small animals we currently have on our farm. I do also want to have a better understanding of horse nature before I begin, especially since most of my experience thus far is with feeder animals. Forming a multi-year relationship with an animal, requiring good communication and lots of time, is a new experience for me and one I don’t want to muck up terribly (I know I will make mistakes, but I don’t want them to be of the irreversible, devastating variety).

While my time is still so totally bound up with other things this year, I will just make it a priority to squeeze in as many farm visits and draft animal events as I possibly can, and then once things shift to allow me more time on the farm in a couple years, I will really dive in and get my own team at that point. Understanding horse nature, good communication between teamster and team, and safety are at the top of my list for things to learn before getting my own team!

Thanks all,
Erica
Shelterbelt Farm

[KMichelle]

I have gotten myself into a situation that I think is a good model for other farmers to consider. I am young, committed and unattached (no farm/kids etc), so now I have my own pair of draft horses and have teamed up with Tevis and Rachel to bring horsepower to their Crabapple Farm in Chesterfield, Mass.

I think if you are very serious about having draftpower on your farm, but don’t feel you have the time or energy for it, look to add someone who does. You will be able to lean on someone else’s ability and knowledge while seeing how horses actually fit into your model. The screening process might take a year or so but I think there are young people out there with the skills and passion to work horses, but not the land base. All they need is the opportunity and the equipment. A lot of nuances effect this type of relationship but it is definitely work considering.

[JayChase]

Erica,
I have had horses for about 15 years, but just jumped into using them for draft power about two years ago. I live in Oneonta, NY and have three young boys who also share in the burden of chores. You would be more than welcome to visit here, with your children, and see what we do. I would also suggest that you visit local county fairs to network with others in your area. A good experienced team of horses can teach you a lot as well. If I could add to the advice given: Immersion with a small dash of precaution and a GOOD TEAM!
Jay

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