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Post by Tallpines on Mar 6, 2023 3:45:49 GMT
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Post by mogal on Mar 6, 2023 16:57:05 GMT
I'm a big fan of "Working horses with Jim" on You Tube. Jim Gordon and his family are horse farmers in upstate New York and I'm constantly amazed at how well behaved and responsive to his voice commands they are. It allows him to operate the chainsaw with the horses standing perfectly calmly just feet away. He can stand out of harm's way if he needs them to pull logs out of a dicey situation, starting and stopping them only by voice. He's an exceptionally talented horseman, bar none. My heart stopped the day his Belgian mare Lady fell into a hole and one of her teammates fell on top and over her, pulling a third horse dangerously close to the pile up. All were still, waiting for Jim to come unhitch them. None of them were hurt, thank goodness. Another heart stopper was his being called to help extricate 2 horses owned by an Amish neighbor after the horses had fallen, one on top of the other, into an open trench over 10' deep. It was successful.
Right now Jim is training a 3 year old Suffolk Punch stallion to replace his recently deceased 23 y/o Percheron gelding Buck. He also has two 2 y/o half brothers to the stallion that he's begun training. And Lady is bred to that stallion for a May foal. I can't leave the topic without mentioning Jim's Belgian gelding Bill, Lady's partner, and his surviving Percheron gelding Kenny. Such handsome pairs those horses make and just as beautiful in mixed pairs or all 4 together for heavy jobs.
When I was a teenager, I mucked stalls at a stable for the privilege of grooming horses and later maybe getting in an hour or so of riding. I was one of only a few kids the stable owner trusted enough to follow his rules. Anyway, if I were Jim and Brenda's neighbor, I'd have to volunteer in their barn as well. Winston Churchill said the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man. I'll add or woman to that. In my case, just the smell of a horse, even the "effluent" is wonderful
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Post by mogal on Mar 6, 2023 17:10:06 GMT
I got side tracked.
Warm Springs Farm, the Busch Clydesdale breeding facility, isn't that far west of us near Boonville MO. We've never gone for the tour because I am not interested in being guided through with a bunch of folks who may or may not know diddly about horses. Besides, at the brewery, they give away free samples at the end of the tour (of NO interest to me as a teetotaler) but I've never heard about anybody being sent home from Warm Springs with a sample foal... THAT would attract my attention.
Anyway, it comes as no surprise to me that the horses in that hitch remained calm. Yes, they had grooms out there in an instant but so much is due to handling and training from birth and a lot of study is done of breeding stock as far as temperament is concerned. There was an extended story on our local news in the last couple of weeks about the farm entering foaling season. They have all kinds of electronic devices to monitor the mares in their roomy box stalls, even one that records the mare's system when she begins labor. All this sends signals to the home of the farm manager and he joked about how much sleep he's gained since the days of spending nights in the barn to be near the mares. The foals are handled almost the moment they are expelled from their mamas' bodies and that kind, gentle treatment continues through their lifetimes even to being trained for and used in the hitches.
My one big complaint is the continuation of docking the horses' tails so the bit of tail hair left can be braided to make the hind quarters look "better."
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Post by countrymom22 on Apr 18, 2023 22:59:50 GMT
I know what you mean about the tails. My DIL has 2 Clydesdales and they both have long, flowing tails. Such a blessing during fly season! I feel sorry for the horses with docked tails whenever I see one.
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