Rear Facing Horse Transport

Post 2

Rear-facing horse float journey

Rear Facing Float

Forward Facing Float

 



Sixty percent of the horse's weight standing still is on the front end.
If we turn a horse around to face the rear end of a conventional forward facing float it will become unbalanced and as a result be dangerous to tow.

To convert our conventional float to rear facing we needed to add to the length and reposition the axles.

We decided to leave the original chest bar that was welded into the float.

This would form part of a bulk head wall. So on deceleration of the float the impact of the horse's rump would be well supported. The original chest bar position determined how much we added toward the back of the float.

We kept the original divider which was 6' long to which we added chest bars.

(There is no need for chest bars in a traditional sense. The horse does not rely on partitions to lean on as he is able to maintain better balance facing to the rear of the float. These were placed in the float purely as a physical barrier in front of the horse when the tail gate is lowered.) This determined the length of the bay area. We thought this amount of space for the horse to stand in would suffice as this was the standard length in conventional floats. In hind sight the bays should have been longer than 6' to allow a larger horse more room to lift their tail and pass manure.

We added close to a metre of new metal beyond the chest bars. This was so the head and neck of the horse could extend forward when the float accelerates.

In this photo you can see the original chest bar and the extended section at the front of the float.

We wanted to maintain the extended area at the front of the original float for housing tack and bedding.

Original float with front sheet metal, observation window and wooden floor removed.