Posted by Bret4207 on December 05, 2015 at 14:30:04 from (64.19.90.196):
In Reply to: Farming with Horses posted by John in La on December 05, 2015 at 07:33:08:
I've farmed and logged with horses a bit and worked around oxen. Mules take a certain kind of person, horses and cattle tend to be more flexible. As was noted mules have good attributes, but they can't breed. I don't know how they do in the cold. Horses tend to be fast, smart, good workers, require decent feed to really produce. Cattle are slower, a bit harder to get the message across to sometimes and good workers on worse roughage than horses or mules. Horses do better in the cold the from what I've seen. Horses do better in deep snow. A smart horse is better than a dumb ox. A dumb or mean horse isn't worth as much as a smart ox. SOME oxen will get down and just pull and pull, others won't. OTOH, a horse can produce up to 150% of it's weight in pull for short periods, or so the experts claim. Some horses can be trained to work without a driver, but so can some oxen. 2 large oxen will handle the about same implement as 2 large horses usually, but they will do it slower. Horse harness is more complex than ox yoke type rigging. But you can alter a team harness to a single easily. A single ox yoke or collar set up is rare and some oxen won't work single unless trained that way from a calf. It's much, much easier to find someone with experience with horses than oxen. It's even easier to find a harness maker than someone to properly make and fit a yoke or head yoke. Oxen can be male or female, usually the makes are steered, but I've heard of people working bulls. A cow can work while in milk. So can a mare. There are lots of stallions used in harness. In fact some of the breeders I know use their stud horses daily to keep them in shape and work off the hormonal energy. Mares in heat, or just being mares, can be a handful at times.
Long legs make tall, "hitchy" horses but they don't necessarily make better draft animals. I prefer a more compact, stouter horse rather than the modern "hitch" type horse. An extremely tall horse in the woods is a giant pain. Hitch type overgrown hoofs are useless in the woods and almost as bad in the field. a GOOD draft horse can farm barefoot (no shoes). They can usually work in the woods barefoot until you get into big wood, ice or mud. A horse that has to be shod, or an ox that has to be, to do field work because of poor feet is not an animal to breed. No foot, no horse/ox.
As far as breed, these days it's getting harder to find Belgian, Shires, Clydes or Percherons that haven't been "improved" by the hitch and show breeders. It's not as bad as trying to find an Irish Setter or Cocker Spaniel that actually hunts, but todays show horses are not yesterdays farm horses. Suffolk Punch, American Cream (if you ever find one), Haflinger and Fjord draft ponies (darn big "ponies") haven't been hit so hard by "hitch-itis" yet.
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