Horses With Pulll - work horses

Ranger Rick, March, 1999

Meet Pat and Major--hard-working horses that are gentle on the land.

What has eight legs, is seven feet tall, weighs 3,200 pounds, and sweats like crazy? If you guessed a pair of big horses pulling logs, you'd be right!

Using horses to pull big logs can be great. Just ask Jeff Knudsen. He works with a couple of Belgian horses named Pat and Major. Jeff has worked with trucks, helicopters, and other big machines to haul trees that have been cut from woods. But he prefers working with these two gentle giants.

Big machines work faster, but horses do less damage to the forest. Horses don't make big, deep skid trails the way many machines do. (Those trails can cause soil to wash away in rainstorms.) Horses also don't damage young trees. They don't pollute the air the way machines do, either. And horses sure aren't as noisy as machines are!

1, 2, 3, HAUL!

So just how does horse logging work? First, Jeff cuts down some trees. (That's called felling.) He cuts the branches off the trees and cuts the trunks into long logs. Then he moves the horses into position (see photo at right). He attaches one end of a chain to the logs (above) and the other end to the horses' harness.

Once the chains are attached, Jeff picks up the horses' lines and gives the animals a command. With Jeff directing, Pat and Major drag the logs to a place where they can be loaded onto trucks (left).

WORKA-HAUL-IC HORSES

Pat and Major can haul a lot of logs (right)--up to 70 each day. Big horses can pull logs that weigh as much as they do. That means that one of these horses can haul 1,600 pounds of logs at one time. Two horses working together can haul a load that's heavier than a very large car.

ICE--NOT NICE

Horses can't be used for logging everywhere. Sometimes the logs are too big for horses to pull, or the ground is too steep. And if there's snow up to their knees, the horses have trouble walking.

One time the ground got so icy that Pat slipped and landed on his haunches (below). Hey, Pat, quit sitting down on the job! Get back to logging--the gentle-on-the-land way.