Owning and managing a horse farm is a physically demanding job. While there are an estimated 2 million people in the United States that own a horse, many aren’t aware of how helpful a tractor can be for everyday care and maintenance on a horse property.
Aside from taking care of pastures and stalls, you still have to maintain the property itself. This doesn’t even include the general household chores, like gardening and hauling items. A tractor can help take some of the physical burdens off of you and free up time to spend on other activities, like getting your horse out on the trails.
If you still need more convincing, here are five undeniable benefits of having a tractor on your horse property.
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Tractors are Essential for General Large Property Maintenance
If your property is more than one acre, having a tractor is almost a requirement. While a high-quality riding lawnmower can be used to maintain your lawn, this equipment is limited to just that—cutting grass.
With a small tractor, on the other hand, you can cut the grass, as well as maintain your garden and pasture land. You can easily till a garden or haul supplies with a tractor using little physical effort:
“With the capability to mow, tow, lift, spread, scrape, drag and till, the possibilities of what you and your tractor can get done on your horse ranch are endless. Think of any project around the barn or horse ranch, and a tractor is probably the right tool for the job, according to experts at Equisearch.
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Tractors Make It Easier to Keep Multi-Acre Property Cleared
If you own a large property that spans several acres, one of the biggest challenges you face is keeping the property cleared from overgrowth, brush, grass, and weeds.
An upgraded lawnmower can certainly help to keep the grass trimmed, but it doesn’t extend much beyond that. If you have brush that needs to be cleared and tall weeds that need to be cut down, you can easily and quickly do all of this with a tractor.
Unlike lawn mowers every tractor comes with a three point hitch. The three point hitch allows you to switch from a finishing mower (for a more manicured looking lawn) to a rotary cutter (for the rougher stuff like tall weeds and brush). This three point hitch makes your tractor the most versatile piece of equipment a horse farm can have.
- Tractors Help Spread Hay
Getting hay bales out to your horse pastures is another backbreaking job horse owners are all too familiar with. If you have a lot of horses or your horses are spread out over several pastures, you need a more efficient way to deliver the hay and feed. Hooking up a small trailer to your tractor can help you take care of several bales at one time, saving you not only energy but precious time. Learn more about attachments, also called implements, at the end.Â
- Tractors Reduce Laborious Fencing and Pasture Upkeep
A single horse requires a minimum of two acres of pasture and an extra two acres for each additional horse. This means pasture maintenance can take a lot of time out of your day and week. When fence posts start to come down or need attention from wear and tear, a tractor is the most efficient tool to help you pull out posts and haul the fencing material to and from the areas that you need them.
You can also use your tractor to dig and lift materials that would be too cumbersome to do by hand or with smaller equipment.
- Tractors Help Keep Stalls Clean
Not all horse owners keep their horses in a stall, but if you do, stall maintenance is another task you have to manage on a daily basis. Maintaining horse stalls requires a lot of work, from mucking the stalls to moving the wheelbarrows filled with manure and unloading it at the muck pile.
Tractors can help you haul manure you can easily fill a front-loader and take care of your mucking duties without too much time or energy. This is especially helpful if you have or board more than one or two horses, which increases the amount of work you need to do.
Put Your Tractor to Work for You
The key to making a tractor valuable to your horse farm, allowing you to complete all the tasks that have been discussed, is finding the right implements. These attach to the tractor and Horse and Rider recommends the following:
- Front loader for paddock and arena cleaning or resurfacing, and for carrying loads
- Rear blade for dirt-road grading and snow removal
- Manure spreader (if you have fields in which to disperse manure)
- Dump cart for handling manure and landscaping and gardening materials, moving hay and feed, and other hauling duties.
With a tractor you can get tasks done faster, and more effectively, and still have time to hit the trails with your favorite horse. For most horse owners, more time on horseback is enough to make the initial investment, so take the plunge and buy your first tractor.
Bio: Will Nelson is the President of Nelson Tractor Company with locations in Blairsville and Jasper, Georgia. Will is a past President of the Southern Equipment Dealer’s Association and has been a dedicated board member for more than ten years. Nelson Tractor Company is actively involved in the local community participating in FFA events to support young farmers and coaching local team sports, to name a few.
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