paintponylvr
Well-Known Member
Now I've forgotten who is where with getting "ready"... This isn't Wish's first foal is it? Do you now how far out she fills her udder. She's a very pretty mare!
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The first time I "worked" Iggy (for me), a neighbor had offered to let us have a whole lot of chain link fencing and the posts that it had been attached to (still encased in large amounts of cement). I didn't have a working vehicle at the time that we could put that in - and decided to use Iggy (& our other stallion, AJ) as singles. I attached the single tree to a chain link gate and put two rolls of chain link on the gate for each "pull". With Iggy, I was by myself and I hadn't had him pull anything at all yet. He was soooo confused when asked him to move and the weight pulled on his chest, years before I had our first work style harness. At first, I spent more time pretty much at his head, before I dropped back and ground drove him. The fencing was stacked at the back of the neighbors property, but on the outside of our furthest back pasture. I think each pony pulled two loads - would have been about a 1/2 mile of ground driving each trip pulling it with lots of friction one weekend. The posts are still back there right now - I've never really wanted to deal with the cement. I had pics of both of the boys on a (at the time) new digital camera. My daughter went to load the photos on the computer and hit "delete" instead of "cut"... They were gone! I was sad... Think we had 3 pics of one of them and 2 of the other. We never did figure out why they didn't show up in our "trash" files... That was before I knew had to put pics on the computer at all from a digital camera.
In some cases, I've found that using the ponies to do the work is more work than actually making the trees/brush into smaller pieces and using some type of vehicle to move them. But then, I usually have paid help to clear/knock down the brush/trees and rather than paying for all of the "clean up", the ponies are "free" and it's good training. A couple of times, such as example above, we truly didn't have a vehicle available to move stuff that needed to be taken care of. And others, well gas has certainly gone up in cost - both for the vehicles and the chain saws and weed eaters! Those three trees that were taken out by a tree crew - if I'd had them remove them - they would have been cut up somewhat on one truck, some chipped/mulched by another while all the chip/mulch loaded onto a 3rd within an hour of being dropped. Putting those vehicles somewhere when our property was still so wet, would have been difficult. They talked about leaving them out on the road, but would have also created some problems as it's a main through way between 2 highways AND the shoulders were too soft to pull off the road much, ditches still running with water. Then I found out how much I'd save, not having those trucks "come in" w/ the extra crew(s) AND we'd have plenty of wood for several bonfires... The ponies are working - a good thing. Just taking a while! Then I had someone ask about getting some of it for firewood - paying for it. Said "yes" - but haven't seen those guys yet. Wouldn't mind if thy came soon - getting paid back some of what I spent on the tree crew to begin with would be awesome! The larger pieces are now going to need to be cut up - even with multiples of ponies pulling it - simply because it won't get out of where it's at w/o reducing the size (s) and my rope and chain used to pull it simply isn't long enough to safely wrap around/pull those larger round bits. They are short enough, just way too large around (one is over 4' around).
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You are welcome Dianne... Do you stand him at public stud? Hmmm... I'll PM you... But I want little Ami truly driving before I breed her, so might still be a little while (2015 instead of 2014) yet.
***
The first time I "worked" Iggy (for me), a neighbor had offered to let us have a whole lot of chain link fencing and the posts that it had been attached to (still encased in large amounts of cement). I didn't have a working vehicle at the time that we could put that in - and decided to use Iggy (& our other stallion, AJ) as singles. I attached the single tree to a chain link gate and put two rolls of chain link on the gate for each "pull". With Iggy, I was by myself and I hadn't had him pull anything at all yet. He was soooo confused when asked him to move and the weight pulled on his chest, years before I had our first work style harness. At first, I spent more time pretty much at his head, before I dropped back and ground drove him. The fencing was stacked at the back of the neighbors property, but on the outside of our furthest back pasture. I think each pony pulled two loads - would have been about a 1/2 mile of ground driving each trip pulling it with lots of friction one weekend. The posts are still back there right now - I've never really wanted to deal with the cement. I had pics of both of the boys on a (at the time) new digital camera. My daughter went to load the photos on the computer and hit "delete" instead of "cut"... They were gone! I was sad... Think we had 3 pics of one of them and 2 of the other. We never did figure out why they didn't show up in our "trash" files... That was before I knew had to put pics on the computer at all from a digital camera.
In some cases, I've found that using the ponies to do the work is more work than actually making the trees/brush into smaller pieces and using some type of vehicle to move them. But then, I usually have paid help to clear/knock down the brush/trees and rather than paying for all of the "clean up", the ponies are "free" and it's good training. A couple of times, such as example above, we truly didn't have a vehicle available to move stuff that needed to be taken care of. And others, well gas has certainly gone up in cost - both for the vehicles and the chain saws and weed eaters! Those three trees that were taken out by a tree crew - if I'd had them remove them - they would have been cut up somewhat on one truck, some chipped/mulched by another while all the chip/mulch loaded onto a 3rd within an hour of being dropped. Putting those vehicles somewhere when our property was still so wet, would have been difficult. They talked about leaving them out on the road, but would have also created some problems as it's a main through way between 2 highways AND the shoulders were too soft to pull off the road much, ditches still running with water. Then I found out how much I'd save, not having those trucks "come in" w/ the extra crew(s) AND we'd have plenty of wood for several bonfires... The ponies are working - a good thing. Just taking a while! Then I had someone ask about getting some of it for firewood - paying for it. Said "yes" - but haven't seen those guys yet. Wouldn't mind if thy came soon - getting paid back some of what I spent on the tree crew to begin with would be awesome! The larger pieces are now going to need to be cut up - even with multiples of ponies pulling it - simply because it won't get out of where it's at w/o reducing the size (s) and my rope and chain used to pull it simply isn't long enough to safely wrap around/pull those larger round bits. They are short enough, just way too large around (one is over 4' around).
***
You are welcome Dianne... Do you stand him at public stud? Hmmm... I'll PM you... But I want little Ami truly driving before I breed her, so might still be a little while (2015 instead of 2014) yet.
