So are horses really used as work animals anymore?

[mountaintopchicken]

There is a small diversified farm in southern Vermont that uses draft horses for everything - that's where I took a clinic to learn how to drive our drafts. You should see the farmer working with his old mare who he has been working with for, like 20 years. I think they are communicating telepathically at this point!

If you really want to see a working horse extravaganza, go to Horse Progress Days. It's a big event that happens yearly, but the location changes each year. It highlights working horses and horse-drawn equipment. It's mostly the Amish who attend, along with an assortment of the non-Amish oddballs still working with horses. It is a very cool event. Especially because you'll see little Amish kids driving pretty little miniature horses hooked up to miniature wagons all over the grounds.

 

[ChickenToes]

There are a few people around here that still use horses to skid logs. One of my neighbors has 3 Belgians that he sometimes skids with if his tractor can't get to the trees.

 

[mom'sfolly]

There is a group that is near Waco that I think is part of the Hutterite movement, but I'm not sure. They are a Christian group that does communal type living, and many traditional crafts. As a group they are moving back to using horses; largely due to sustainablitity issues. They say horse compact the earth less than tractors, can help grow there own food, are self reproducing and are not dependent on foreign oil. They are not a larege group, but I'm sure others are doing it too.

Lots of horses are used for therapy, and almost any decent sized city has a mounted patrol. Horses are actually better for crowd control than most other police "vehicles". They get the cop above the crowd, and most people don't want to upset them.