For the love of horses
Power pair: Norman and Sam
When Sam’s working hard, he sticks his tongue out
Essentials: a hitch rail and a forecart
Bringing in hay off the meadow
Carry-out
Klaus is an experienced teamster who has been working with draft horses for over fifty years. He farms our seventeen acres with two Percherons, Sam and Nash, and a Haflinger, Gandhi. This work includes logging, mowing, snow plowing, soil and garden management, growing vegetables and getting hay in off the meadow with our hay wagon.
Klaus believes working with draft horses teaches us four important lessons in managing our work: 1) to plan ahead; 2) to organize more thoroughly; 3) to be considerate; and 4) to accept limitations. He can outline the reasons to work with drafts just like H. Edgar Messerschmidt did in 1954. Horses eat what grows on the farm, resulting in the fertilizing value of horse manure which contains more nitrogen than that of any other farm animal. They last about twenty years and can even raise their replacements. They’re great at traction in mud and snow, too. Just ask the cable guy who, with great chagrin watched a couple draft horses pull his truck out of snow-filled ditch one winter day. Horses don’t compact the soil like a tractor tire will
Horses and other draft animals are the most economical farm power available. As such, they’re a viable alternative to tractors on a small farm and provide ecological solutions to farming practices.
We support the use of horse power on small, diversified farms and for vegetable production.
EQUINE ADVOCACY
Horse-drawn Carriages in the City
Only 120 years ago transportation of people and goods was implemented almost exclusively with horses and mules in the cities. For example, in 1890 there were more than 120,000 horses working in New York City alone. Across the country back then, there was generally was one horse per 4 inhabitants.
Today there is still the astonishing ratio of one horse per 35 people! Yet most people, especially in big cities have never had close contact with a horse. Tourists like the opportunity to have a horse-drawn carriage ride in the country or on city streets. Carriage rides in the city are not always greeted with enthusiasm and occasionally there are protests by animal rights activists.
Most of these protesters know little about how horses can be trained to work in traffic without being psychologically harmed or injured in an accident with a motorist. Horses can be de-sensitized to noises and alarming sights, but they are not invulnerable to inattentive drivers or inexperienced teamsters. Accidents have happened and it is usually the horse that suffers the most.
For those who enjoy the sight of horses even within the bustling life of a modern city, and for the safety of people and horses, disentangling modern traffic and horse-drawn carriages is possible”
- Restrict certain streets or certain times for carriages, perhaps horse-only routes, e.g. as one-way streets.
- Parks could be opened to horse-drawn traffic; pedestrians, cyclists and equestrians mingle more easily with each other than with motorized traffic.
- Entire areas or districts could be reserved for non-motorized traffic only. In a number of touristic centers this is done with great success.
Horse Slaughter
With roughly 9 million horses, the USA is the most equine-populous country in the world. With so many horses, what happens to those that have reached the end of their life span, are not usable anymore, or are unwanted by their owners, but can’t be sold or given away, either?
More than 80% of the US population is against horse slaughter for human consumption so Congress has not appropriated funds for supervising horse slaughter facilities. Strangely missing in this discussion is the fact that horses are being slaughtered for dog and cat food.
Despite best efforts by animal right activists, it is still legal to export horses abroad, so every year tens of thousands of those horses are being transported to slaughter houses in Mexico and Canada. Transport conditions for the horses are even more horrific than those conditions cattle and pigs have to suffer. The horses come from many different places and are jammed together in trailers. Their psychology does not allow them to just endure and they fight each other for room.
Some owners just abandon these animals somewhere in the countryside. They cannot afford or want to end the horse’s life naturally where it lived for many years, or put the horse down when there are irremediable, painful health conditions.
Many backyard horse owners do not have that option. Sentimentality aside, the best solution for such horses is a fast and pain-free death in familiar surroundings, avoiding the stressful and cruel transport. Horses not treated with medications that render them unfit for consumption still could be used if we had more local slaughter houses.
The centralization of slaughter facilities, euphemistically ‘packing plants’, in distant regions of the country, brings many hardships even for animals specifically bred for human consumption.
Submitting any of these horses to cruel transport could be avoided by establishing supervised horse slaughter facilities throughout the country if Congress would appropriate the necessary funding for inspections of these operations.
Show Horses: Horseshoes and Over-Checks
Klaus has become increasingly troubled by a couple practices he’s seen in horse shows that are to the detriment of the horse. He is alarmed about the effects of show horseshoes or Scotch-bottom horseshoes, used to change the horse’s natural looks, posture, gait and conformation. “These shoes are shaped and weighted to change the gait but can cause pain and lameness by putting stress on muscles, ligaments and bones, leading to lameness and possibly crippling the horse.”
“The horses are shod to result in unnaturally enlarged hooves on big plates with wedges, at times double. Some hooves are flared so wide they looked like over-sized pancakes and were barely an inch thick along the edges. A good number of vets and farriers, of whom my son is one with more than 20 years of experience, have told me that over-sized hooves are not conducive to maintaining sound limbs.”
“I understand that hitch-type horses are supposed to be up-headed, but a lot of over-checks were so short the horses were forced to hold their heads high, not as a result of their natural posture. Holding a horse’s head up with short over-checks is apt to cause discomfort and can contribute to back problems.”