[Matthew]

Ben I am sorry for your loss, I wish you and your family the best. Loosing animals can be real tough.

[Matthew]

@Scott G 18362 wrote:

Another looming issue we have related to the bark beetle epidemic is severe obesity being observed in our woodpecker population…:D

Nothing wrong with having a big pecker.:D

[Matthew]

This is just my opinion on the subject, I feel that young horses still growing and horses under heavy work need grain. Idle horses usualy don’t need grain, but it depends on the time of year and if they are on pasture or hay. One thing I dont think anyone touched on was hay quality we always bought hay and ware I live good hay is hard to make the soil needs lyme and fertilizer people trying to skimp have poor quality hay. I have seen hay from Canada and up state New York that was so high quality with almost all tymothy that you could get by feeding just hay, but if you are feeding a lesser quality hay you might have to ad a little grain especially in the winter. Another thing not touched on is the horses fast digestion rate now I am no expert on the internal workings of a horse but with a single chambered stomach the horse does not digest food well like a cow. If you feed whole grains like oats it is best to feed a crimped grain to speed up the breakdown, I have also seen horses fed hay first then grain to slow the grain and kinda stop it up so it is digested better. You can be wasting alot of money if your horses are pooping out un digested grain. The green grass is definatly the best thing for any grazing animal the vitamins, minerals and protien can’t be beat. My friend who has a darry farm across the street from me has a huge jump in milk production when his cows go on spring pasture and they get fed alot of grain, soy, hay and silage through out the year. Grain is a good tool to get horses in the barn even just a hand full but to many people think they are doing thair horse a favor and feed to mutch grain if they are not burning it up it just makes hot horses.

[Matthew]

It sounds like you can get a lot, explain to the land owner what you intend to cut and do so with out a (licenced) forester, am I corect in saying this? You are being hired by the landowner to cut and skid the trees and what trees are cut are choosen by you. It seems like you would ether need to 100% trust the landowner or have something in wrighting. I know lots cut in the past the trees were marked on the tree and stump so you could not be accused of cuting more than was marked. If you are accused by the landowner of cutting more than they are getting paid for how would you be able to defend your self. I use to sell alot of firewood I had a one ton flatbed with oak sides I would throw the wood on and stack the back row. I went to a coustomers house that orderd a cord of wood and they thought the stacked back row was thair full cord, they had no clue what a cord was. A nother coustomer orderd four cords I droped of one and said I was going to be back in a few hours with another load they said we only orderd four cords, I said I know that is only one cord they said oh we thought that was four. I would think you would run into these types logging also, they think that they will get a lot more money than they get and if you don’t have a number before you start they have nothing to go by. You can show them the tally sheets but you need more to cover your butt. Maby I am just to use to the sue happy people of connecticut. Carl you wrote on your farm website a horse logger can make between $175 and $225 a MBF. If you are charging a landowner that to cut and skid by the thousand and then take trucking out and give the landowner the rest that can run in the red with soft wood and low grade logs. How do you convince the landowner that they are really making a investment and how long untill you come back and put thair investment in thair pocket. I have all these questions because I am seriously looking to getting into logging with horses part time at first then hopefully full time. I live ware thair is a ton of small pieces of land and I know If I do good work and get my name out I would be able to log for years.

[Matthew]

I started this thread because I wanted to see peoples point of view on the topic. It seems everyone is pretty mutch on the same page. This is 2010 not 1810 things change if people want to see things done the way they were 200 years ago go to Old Sturbrige Village (a historic tourist atraction whare I live) we live in modern times and must adapt and use what makes our lives easer. If people see horse farming or horse logging mixed with modern equipment as not pure or 100% horse farming they are on the outside looking in. A horse logger doing his best to save the enviorment is not controdicting himself by using a chain saw, he would be out of buisness fast cuting with a crosscut saw and limbing with a ax. A organic farmer who uses a tractor on the farm is still producing the same product. We have not even began to take into consideration the computer or modern medicine.

[Matthew]

From the picture I would say locust or mulberry.

[Matthew]

I was always told your corn should be knee high by the fourth of july. I live in Connecticut so that maybe only works for similar climates. Further south the corn almost looks like you could chop it by july.

[Matthew]

This is my 1942 Farmall H my son john is driving he is 6 years old. I am in the prosess of fixing it up.
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[Matthew]

My friend and I rebuilt a farbanks morse model Z gas one lunger in high school ag mechanics class. It ran the first vacuum pump for the milking machine when they stoped milking by hand. The engine was in the milk room with the exaust being vented outside with a pipe. The engine held a small amount of gas to get it started but the fuel tank was filed with karosene once the engine was warm it would be switched over to the karosene. Bivol thanks for the post I like old machenery as mutch as draft horses.

[Matthew]

I also made a donation good luck I hope it works out for you.

[Matthew]

I have wanted to be a horse logger since I was a kid, I did not live on a farm as a child. My closest friends were dariy farmers so I was exposed to the farm life but they used tractors not horses. I would go to the fair and longed to have anything to do with draft horses. In my late teens I worked with a guy whos father had belgans and did a little logging. He tought me to drive, log, plow, and care for horses. As life went on for me and the older I got I found my self getting further and further away from my dream. I got married, bought some land, built a house, had some kids. All these things changed my direction in life, not for the worse but my priorites and responsabilitys have changed. I hear people talk about logging with horses is a low over head low start up buisness and I agree to a point. I bought my land and payed it off before I built my house I took a morgage out to build my house and did a lot of the work my self so my morgage is not huge (for the area I live in) the point I am trying to make is if you are not inheriting a farm and you need to buy land and build a house and barns and clear land and build fences you need lots of money. I am getting a little off my point, to have a place to keep your horses or to raise a cow or plant a garden you need land and unless you live in a tent you need a house and all these things cost money. My town taxes alone cost me over $7000 a year and the land is in open space. In my persuit of a life of being a horse logger with a small homestead I have lost my way, making more money to pay for all these things has pushed me in directions I didn’t want to go. Full time employment for me and my wife means daycare for my kids $300 a week if she quits her job we loose are health insurance If I quit to log I couldn’t aford to pay my bills and would loose my house and land. Then you have to think about retirement you don’t want to get old and unable to work and loose your farm because you can’t afford the taxes, if my taxes are $7000 a year now what will they be in 35 years? I under stand the whole sense of worth and doing good for the enviroment but how can the avrage guy make ends meet making so little per year in this world having to pay for so many things. I would like to think you can make dreams reality with hard work but I am getting fustrated. Any words of advice?

[Matthew]

Being able to shoe your own draft Is a huge help to you for the average draft owner. In the farming world keeping drafts is a huge expence and unless you are in the show world we could all use any savings we can get. They eat more grain more hay, cost twice as much to worm and by all rights the farier gets twice as much to shoe them. The farier is in buisness to make money and when he has a foot that is twice as big a leg on a horse that weighs twice as mutch and a steel shoe that is twice as thick he is going to charge you twice as mutch. It is true that some horses can go bare foot and do exelent with out shoes but some horses need shoes all the time thair feet become a mess with out shoes. A frend of mine had a belgan that had such flat feet if he was with out shoes he could hardly walk, he had no hoof wall and was walking on his soles. I went to horse shoeing school a few years after I got out of high school I ended up chooseing another carreer but I am glad I will be able to shoe my own. It in my opinion is not some thing you can learn to do out of a book you need someone to teach you how to corectly trim a foot before nailing on a shoe. More harm can be done to a horse than good if the foot is not level, balanced and at the proper angle. The shoe needs to be properly shaped and flat too many people hot shoe a horse because they cant level a foot and shoe. Hot fitting is fine but you have to first level the foot and shoe you cant burn the foot level. You also need to learn to nail on a shoe for your benifit and the horses finding good hoof wall can sometimes be tricky if the horse dosent have a lot of new hoof growth nailing the back nails into the quarters can also be tricky the wall is very straight and you sometimes need to bend your nails so they come out and dont qiuck the horse. Nailing on a shoe is in my mind the most dangeros part of shoeing a horse once the nail is through the hoof wall you must ring the nail off if a horse decides to take his foot back when you have a size 10 or 12 nail sticking out of thair hoof that could really hurt in your leg or hand. I dont want to discurage anyone from shoeing thair own horses I beleve that it is a must for most owners and the horses will usualy act better for the person who cares for and drives the horses, but for the well being of the horse and the safety of the shoer it in my opinion is something that should be assisted in learning by some one who has experince.

[Matthew]

A gelding will give you 90% every day, a mare will give you 110% one day and 80% the next. % meaning brains, power, attitude.

[Matthew]

This world is getting so screwed up. In my state you can leagaly take a dump on your lawn but it is illeagl to build a outhouse that does not sit on a approved septic system. I used to do a lot of tree work removing trees in peoples yards, leagly anyone can remove a tree with out a arborist license but to cut a branch on a tree that is not being removed you need to be licensed. I operated under the terms that the tree triming was free but I was charging for the clean up of the wood and brush. I wonder if you could give someone a pig for free killed and cut up but charge ex amount for the wraping to cover the total fee you intended to get for the pig. Our government is slowly turning the average person into a criminal one stupid law at a time. Thare was a movie called the Cowboy Way with Woody Haroldson at one point these two cowboys from New Mexico are in New York city and they spend the night camped out in Central Park, in the morning they are awoken by a mounted cop that gives them tickets for sleeping in the park. After the cop gives Woody Haroldson his ticket he askes them are you guys real cowboys? (This is the line I love) he responds ( NO WERE MOSTLY CRIMINALS WE DO ALL SORTS OF BLOOD THIRSTY SH#T LIKE SLEEPING IN PARKS.) Im not saying that commercial meat plants should’t be inspected but give the backyard farmer a break.

[Matthew]

I was always told a mule would never do any thing to hurt themselves if they got a leg stuck in a gate or fence they would stand thare, ware a horse would panic and hurt themselves.

[Author]

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