tractor for horse?

[Dylan Keating]

Hi folks, i’m looking for some advice. We have 70 acres in western MA. 2 years farming on this site. Took out a farm loan to start up, bought a nice kioti tractor, had lots of problems with it. I farmed with ponies back in England before moving here, with a neighbours tractor as backup.
Now we only have 2 acres flat land for crops the rest is woodland. I have been logging with this tractor for my sawmill and keep thinking I could dothis quicker with a horse! Spend so much time getting up and down off the thing.
So with the problems with the tractor and missing my ponies, im wondering what all of you would do in this situation?
Selling the tractor would pay off half my farm loan in an instant. Im figuring it would be a couple thousand to get set up with some ponies and sefond hand, home made quipment additions. A lot of the logging is smaller diameter stuff which im sure a pony could pull
What im not sure of is the cost of hay year round in this climate, what are the pros and cons with this switch etc…
Ive got neighbours with tractors to do some heavy cultivation, earth moving etc
Ive read stephen leslies book which was helpful though I seem to remember he had tractor as backup..
Thanks for your input

[Livewater Farm]

sell the exspensive tractor buy a team and a used tractor to handle logs around the saw mill

[Tom Coughlin]

good advice. I got just the team for you ,2 black percherons with lots of woods experience. 5000.00 in western ma . Tom

[Livewater Farm]

Tom I am looking for a second team for my son to use give me a call
Bill Acquaviva
802 387 4412
Livewater Farm
Putney Vt

[Donn Hewes]

Dylan, great question, many folks try to answer a question like that with economics alone; or with the economics as the primary consideration. I am not suggesting that economics need not be considered. Unless someone doesn’t want to go on living they better consider their local, and immediate economic situation at some point!

I start with what I most want to do. For me how I do something is as important and maybe more important than what I am doing. Then I would consider how what I want to do would effect my community (my community includes the soil of our farm, the air, water in the soils, and water in the streams, family, neighbors, friends and the wider world.

After all that I probably have a pretty good idea of what I want to do, and then I consider the economics. Or how I can do what I want to do in this silly global, corporate dominated world we live in. What do I need; and what can I live without? How can I support the people and things that are depending on me?

That is a long winded answer to say; by all means, ponies on a hill side in Mass, and what ever you have to do to make it work. Keep in good with the neighbors and borrow their tractor, or buy a junker that just runs enough to do a few chores around the barn. I keep a real junker tractor that I hope / believe will die just about when I no longer need it! You might be able to find a neighbor to make hay with? Help with raking and tedding (ponies!) and moving and stacking (humans, ugh) might get your hay for free.

Also I hope you will make plans to join us for the Draft Animal Power Field Days, in Cummington, Mass, Sept 24 to 27th. Your back yard. Good luck with decision making and don’t hesitate to keep us up dated on your thinking. Donn

[Rick Alger]

Last year I paid $2.85 a bale for hay picked up in the field. These were 20-30 pound square bales. I figure 200 bales per draft horse per year along with pasture. A pony would obviously eat less, around .015 pounds of hay per pound of body weight.

For many years we have plowed, harrowed and cultivated roughly an acre of ground with a single horse, sometimes doubling up just to give the second horse some exercise. No need for a tractor except for breaking new ground if it is rocky.

For logging, which I do a lot of, I’ve had half-a-dozen people who know logging say that I skid more in a day with my horse than they skid with their tractor.

Front end loader work is where the tractor is desirable.

Either way, tractor or horse, I’ve found it an uphill battle to make the enterprise pay, but it’s a damn site more enjoyable with a good animal partner.

[Brad Johnson]

Could not agree more with you Rick. I do think it is imperative to have a machine on the landing, as you can lose 20% or more of your overall time monkeying with logs and top wood on the landing. And, for some stems, it is handy to have the winch. In terms of cost, my team costs me $2-3 a day, depending on feed costs. That includes one vet visit a year for teeth and shots, and shoeing supplies (I do my own). And the horses are super fun to work with!
-Brad

[Dylan Keating]

Hey everyone thats some great advice coming in,im in the middle of maple syrup season so havent got to check until now.

Hmm lots to think of, those percherons sound great but a bit big for me at the moment.

So many times ive moved say 1/4 cord firewood with the bucket and thought, man I could just have used little maude, my old pony, to shift this. I do find the fel invaluable and its like anything, the more power you have the more you can waste it or just use it to throw more power at a situation.

Im also aware of the key benefit of the tractor whilst being expensive and smelly is that if it has an “injury” I can leave it for a month or a year whereas witha living power source like the racoon that got a chicken the other night, it needs dealing with asap!

So also with starting a new farm, figuring out markets, 7month old boy and living off grid
we have a lot of other time constraints.

In England where I farmd there were dartmoor ponies going for dog meat so you could get them cheap or free and save their lives. They were feisty but could pull well, I had a very instructive day where our horse trainer ended up being dragged by a swingletree hook embedded in his hand….that sure taught me to not keep applying pressure in a tense situation.

So much to consider and all this input is greatly appreciated, when most conversations revolve around how working horses are a bygone age, its here and small farmers journal which keep it relevant.

Anyone know where I could get some ponies, or where to start looking?

[robie robinson]

http://www.cedarbrookridgehaflingers.com/Laura-and-Star-team.html

[Will Stephens]

I have a 9(? I have to double check) year old Canadian gelding. 14.2 and doesn’t need much to eat. I am looking at a team (Donn, if you are reading this, the negotiating is back on!) and would need to move my Canadian. Good boy, green but does harness and go. He needs every day work and I don’t have enough for him. I need a horse that can go down the road and the road is not for him.

By all means, come to Field Days this fall!

I have a tractor I got really cheap but I borrowed a skid steer for a number of years. A lot of people have them and don’t use them much.

[JayChase]

If you wanted to visit, I could probably put a team of haflingers together for you. 607-643-2385
I am located about an hour south west of Albany in Oneonta.
Jay

[Dylan Keating]

Thanks for all the replies, i’m after a small team for economic reasons and having enough work for them to do. Also this is still all just knocking around in theoretical space for the moment. I will absolutley be at the field days and the nearby halflingers are interesting.
In starting the farm we are very low on infrastructure, so its build it as we go hee hee

The figures on costs are valuable to project some kind of cost plan for the future, ive been throwing money into this tractor in order to diagnose the problem and now to fix it, $800 later, and im still looking for the solution.

Maybe its been written about before but i’d love to hear more about board foot taken out in a day. Also what kind of horse power i would need to haul out the 20″ maples we have here.

Our woods need some tidying and i have done just 2 truckloads that went to canada and thence to China. Im not that interested in providing veneer for a businessman in China. Right now i am looking to localise my logs so to speak.

I have a sawmill just need the local market. Also have lots of small diameter logs to haul out for firewood.

Im formulating how to rig up a gin pole to do some of the lifting of logs that i would do with the tractor. Again power and convenience are great but id love a low tech, horse power way to achieve the same ends at a slower pace

Any of you loggers know some good mechanisms for lifting logs?

Also anyone using small ponies in the woods?

“Either way, tractor or horse, I’ve found it an uphill battle to make the enterprise pay, but it’s a damn site more enjoyable with a good animal partner”
That pretty much sums it up Rick!

[Carl Russell]

I don’t seem to be able to post pictures here anymore, but I built gin pole crane in the middle of my home for lifting and placing logs. I built it like a ships mast with 360* rotation. The boom was lifted with a 4:1 block and tackle on a windlest capstan. I also hung a large evener from the end of th boom with two more attachments so that the logs could be leveled when lifting and moving them. I have built smaller models by placing a pole in the root crotch at the base of a tree, and attaching the top of the pole to the bole of the tree. Hanging a come along from the pole, I lifted and swung logs over my sawmill to lower into place for sawing.

It can be done. Have fun, Carl

[Carl Russell]

Furthermore, to the original point of the thread, I worked for 25 years without any tractor on my farm, or woods operation. It is not easy, and not every lot can be worked in like that, but if you plan to work mostly on your own place, you can put I in the time to set up a system where you can move and land logs without the tractor.
That being said, I will echo Brads comments. Since I bought an old crawler 3 years ago, I have found that my production has increased by 1/3 or 1/2 just because I am not handling wood on the landing anymore.

We still need to be able to afford the machinery to do the work. For me I have always been able to find ways to work the logs without the power equipment, but scoring a cheap ($3000) bulldozer has made having the equipment financially in line with the rest of my operation.

[carl ny]

Just my humble opinion but I don’t think that you would want anything smaller than a good stout team of Haflingers. Those Maple logs are heavy. Like I said,JMHO.

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