How sweet are Shetland Ponies? Look at those little guys. They’re like ants that can carry more than their body weight around on their backs. Definitely sturdy little guys. Many people say that horse logging is the least damaging way to cut down a tree and get it to a mill. Horses are so much lighter than the machines that we use today for harvesting, that it must be better for soil compaction, right?
So if a big horse can lead to less environmental impact, imagine how good a small horse would be. The following is an evaluation of the feasibility to use a Shetland Pony in your harvesting operations.
1) Speed
I would really like to put a Shetland Pony up against a skidder in a head to head 100m sprint. When those little legs get moving I bet a Shetland is up around 25mph. With logs in tow I haven’t seen skidders go much faster than 10mph, but if they ditch the logs I’d still give the advantage to the pony.
Little Horse 1 – Big Machine 0
2) Power
The little horse that could only produces 1 horsepower (hence the term), but those skidders can get up past 200 HP. Too bad little horse. We’d probably have to string 200 of you together to able to pull as much weight a skidder.
Little Horse 1 – Big Machine 1
3) Maneuverability
VS
Look at the pony slam on the breaks at 40 seconds… Horse wins.
Little Horse 2 – Big Machine 1
4) Fun to ride
I’d have to give this one to the skidder. It’s like playing a giant video game, except while playing this game you can run stuff over and drag things almost forever.
Little Horse 2 – Big Machine 2
5) Cost
You’d think the machine would cost more, but think of how much dignity you’d lose over getting a little tiny horse to pull giant trees around and people lambasting/laughing at you for it. Owning a Shetland Pony would be the equivalent of owning a teacup chihuahua; It might be cute, but it’s not a real horse, and you might take one for the occasional walk, but do you really want to own one? My dignity is not worth that much, as I leave it places all the time by saying stupid stuff, but even so, it costs a lot of dignity to own a Shetland Pony.
The Winner Is…
The skidder takes this one in a battle of animal vs large machine. Although horse logging does make sense when you’re doing some selective cutting and trying to maneuver your way through trees, it’s not overly rational when you’re trying to make a cutblock look like a forest fire.
Personally, I would rather play a giant real life video game all day than drive horses. Leisure horses are great, but work horses are probably not fun. You try to wake up a giant animal on Monday morning and getting him to go to work without any coffee.