I have 2 off the track standardbreds at home. One I’ve taken driving lessons with and am confident handling at home. I Was thinking about using him for some light work on our mini farm…pulling a harrow to break up manure in the pastures for example, and hooking the seed spreader to a forecart and re seeding the pastures. I’m unsure how many other realistic uses there are for using a light horse on the farm. Any ideas someone could share? Just was thinking that this could be a way to both use and spend time with my horse as well as get work done. My only other thought right now is rigging a muck bucket up on some type of sled and having him pull it to my muck heap for me because the mud is horrid at the moment. Thanks!
I just want to give a thumbs up to the manure bucket idea. I use my minis for this all the time in the winter when the snow gets to be too much. I use an “otter sled” and it fits two tubs of manure just perfectly.
1 Like
Just curious, how do you hook your sled to the minis? I’ve not purchased a harness yet, as I’ve been borrowing my instructors for lessons
thought about saddling with a wide breastplate, shortening the stirrups and rigging ropes from cinch ring to a single tree to hook to sled and walking behind, ground driving, to just work on our “walk on and whoa/stand” commands
You will want a neckcollar and hames if you plan on dragging substantial dead weight with any consistency. Your horse’s neck will thank you for it! Low line of draft is not appropriate for a breastcollar and neither are heavy loads. You can always get a breastcollar later if you want to work with a lighter cart that has a high line of draft down the road.
Singletrees can function as your “hitch” to anything. I use a super heavy duty spring snap to hook the singletree (or evener for a doubletree) to the tires or our chain harrow. If the object has a lot of drag and you are working at low speeds you don’t need shafts and breeching.
1 Like
On my minis I use a regular breast collar as they are not pulling much weight or going far, but CERT is correct, neck collar is the way to go. I just ordered a new harness with a breast collar that has swivel traces so the line of draft can be adjustable and I am looking forward to seeing how the minis like it. As far as shafts go, I had shafts made that attach to the sled. Sometimes I don’t use the sled with the shafts and use a different sled with without shafts. One mini prefers it this way for whatever reason.
This is spot on. It’s fairly easy to build a simple stoneboat. But for snow - a lot of people like to use an old car hood as a makeshift sled. Two other things to be careful of: 1) be extremely cautious starting out if the horses aren’t used to hearing something actually dragging on the ground. 2) the draft load from something dragging is exponentially higher than the actual weight of the object. A horse-drawn plow doesn’t weigh a lot but between the angle of draft & the resistance against the plow blade it adds up to a lot of work for two large horses.
Your guys are at a bit of a disadvantage because they don’t have a true draft breed build. People that regularly do farmwork tend to prefer the “farm chunk” type draft like a Brabant that have almost a 1:1 ratio of body/leg over the tall leggy hitch type like the Budweiser Clydesdales. But even my tall, modern-type Shire had a leg bones that were a different ratio than my thoroughbred & even my WB. I remember explaining it to my eventing trainer when we looked at an 18.1 monster of a WB for sale. The WB was 6" taller than my Percheron gelding. But you could tailgate on the Percheron’s rump.
Just go slow and you should be fine. You may never want to go back to farm work with machines afterwards!
@What.R.U.Doin -My family has bred and raced standardbreds for years - such a lovely breed. What are the bloodlines/names of yours if you don’t mind me asking?
The “adjustable draft” breastcollars help with small differences from the horizontal line they are designed for (keeps the traces from getting overstressed along the top). You get too much lower than horizontal and the neck strap will start to engage instead of just the breastcollar and the horse is pulling with the top of its neck and not its chest. Do I have breastcollars with swivels? Yep! But neckcollars for low draft and heavy loads. For basic training I do use breastcollars and a light tire, but that’s just enough to get us to the cart.
I’m glad your test run has gone well! Good luck!
