Re: [RC] [Consider This] How Much Weight Can Your Horse Safely Carry? - marshall Bates
Consider this: Most of us have spent goodly amounts of time and money so that we have decent fitting saddles to properly carry the loads we expect our mounts to carry. How may people insist that their children have well fitting backpacks and that they are properly carried? Ask any experienced back packer or ex military person about the importance of that. In Lorraine Travis's book "The Mule" a study from 1988 on animal based transportation shows the following examples of suitable loads and speeds for a few different species:
Animal Load (kg) Km per 7 hour day
Horse 60 39.2
Mule 90 91.0
136 58.0
181 46.2
Donkey 54 39.2
LLama 40 31.5
Another consideration in this discussion- conditioning.
We normally do a lot of conditioning on our mounts. How much conditioning do most kids get these days? Most schools (at least in NC) have eliminated Physical Ed, so that unless the child is involved in sports most of their conditioning comes from carrying their burden to the foot of the driveway where the school bus picks them up and then for short walks between classes. Marsh the muleman
Have you hefted an average school-kid's backpack recently? Years ago, when some of us were in school, we carried maybe two or three textbooks at a time. Nowadays, however, with many schools eliminating lockers for security reasons, students often carry all of their materials, all day long. One 2004 study of 3,498 middle-school students found an average backpack weight of 10.6 pounds, with some ranging as high as 37 pounds. Not surprisingly, 64 percent of the kids said that they'd experienced back pain, which correlated directly to the amount they carried. That is, the more the backpack weighed, the greater the likelihood the student would report pain.
In response, several health organizations advise that student backpack weight be limited--the American Chiropractic Association suggests that kids carry no more than 10 percent of their body
weight, and the American Occupational Therapy Association recommends 15 percent. If equivalent guidelines were adopted in the equestrian world, the loads placed on a 1,000-pound horse would be restricted to 100 to 150 pounds.
Of course, horses routinely bear far heavier burdens without apparent difficulty. But that doesn't mean that there's no cost...
