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You do need a roof on your stock rack so the animals don’t volcano out the top in a panic. Even if it is just another cattle panel or a piece of plywood.

Rather than try to bolster up your current ride, I would upgrade to a 3/4T and 4WD that’s equipped to tow. You won’t be sorry and it will be cheaper in the long run. I liked the additional traction and tighter turning radius I had with my gooseneck but resented the loss of bedspace while the trailer was hooked up. This could have been cured by simply getting a slightly longer trailer.

I invested in the turnover hitch, which was totally worth it. Pull a pin and remove the ball. Re-insert the receiver ball upside-down. Results: a nearly-flush bed.

Two drafts hauled much better in a gooseneck than in a bumper-pull. I didn’t have any anti-sway bars, though, and that would have helped the bumper-pull situation.

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Or maybe Lone Star specifically denotes steel hames with hame balls on top. Maybe the wooden ones aren’t called Lone Star. In any event, hopefully the image above will help you understand how the traces attach. The missing component is the specialized hook that fits on the trace rachet. It is a good design, in that it provides for an adjustable point of draft.

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I know those as Lone Star Hames.

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Pressure on the britchen is okay, so long as there’s no welts or chafes.

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To get some of the weight off their collars, you can hang some weight under the seat of the mower.

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If I had others handling my horses on a more regular basis, I’m sure that my horses would eventually tire of testing every new person. If you can work your horses through this insecurity and teach them that they don’t need to interrogate every new handler – teach them to be more trusting – you’ve got horses that are worth their weight in gold. Mine aren’t there and likely never will be. I sure admire a team like that.

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With my horses, too, discipline can start to slip when I let novices handle them for any length of time. There are infinite, infinitesimal ways in which we constantly reinforce “place” and “security” with our own animals. Other people don’t react the same way that we do, and the horses can either become insecure or just start following their own agenda. Some tools and devices (whip, lead chain, rope halter) can help bridge the communication gap between the novices and the horses, if those novices must continue to handle the horses. In any event, this horse’s newfound habit of running away has already reached the level of “vice” and must be squashed ASAP. In my experience, each successful runaway adds another 30 consecutive days of “non-running away” that will be required to cure this habit and make him trustworthy again. He has already gotten up to needing close watching till mid-August! He’s running away in hand now – next will be during hitching.

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I go to great lengths to capture the urine component of my horses’ wastes from the tie stalls. Makes my compost piles cook much hotter and makes a better finished product. But if I had a way to divert some of it – say, with a gutter – to capture it in a tank, I would definitely dilute it at add it to the garden in that fashion. But I know everything that goes into my horses and I wouldn’t hesitate to put their urine on my crops (at the appropriate time of the growing season).

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I would think that one of the big drawbacks to using human urine on crops would be residuals from medicines and drugs. Like the dairy line, you’d have to make sure your sources were clean. I know some people are a veritable walking pharmaceutical cabinet.

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She is the supposedly-nonexistent “I” in “TEAM”.

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In artillery situations there is often no britchen involved. This greatly simplifies matters. Put on saddle. Put on collar and traces. Run like blazes. Try not to fall off.

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If there was a way to incorporate/integrate/secure it to the harness, then it could be made safer.

I ride mine pretty often. I have a bareback pad that I like a lot. I herniated a disc very badly a few months ago and haven’t been able to lift my heavy western saddles. I have found that riding for an hour each morning is very therapeutic to my injured back and makes the rest of the day much more comfortable. The bareback pad helps keep the horse’s sweat from soaking through my pants, cushions them from the rivets in my jeans, and provides a bit of grip to help me stay aboard – yet only weighs about 5 pounds.

I have ridden my horses while they are in harness but I find it uncomfortable, since the back pad of the harness sits right where I want to sit. I would like to make a saddle and harness to ride postillion. I have a substantial collection of illustrations and drawings of such harnesses from carriage and cavalry use, to guide my design. It’s on my extensive “someday” list.

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I don’t like to say anything that directly contradicts what someone else has said but in this case I have to pipe up. The riding pad with stirrups is a recipe for disaster. If you put more weight in one stirrup than in the other, the pad spins ’round their barrel and down you go – usually with your foot still in the stirrup. I have seen so many people get hurt this way with a bareback pad with stirrups.

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I don’t know if it helps to hear this any but I have a horse I’ve been working for 6 years who only in the last week FINALLY figured out how to really back up instead of her habitual toe-dragging shuffle. I had to go hunting for another method of teaching for this particular student/lesson/teacher combo.

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I love making hay but it is so nerve-wracking watching the weather. We’ve had a lousy spring for haymaking. A few dry days here and there with rain in-between. Most everything around here is past ready to mow – seed heads in most of the fields and getting stemmier every day.

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