FULL STRENGTH UTILIZED AND
EFFICIENCY ENSURED
BY PROPER HARNESSING AND HITCHING
PRODUCED CHEAPLY AND EASILY AT HOME
(a fully illustrated workshop manual)
Peta A. Jones © 2020
,ABOUT USING THE PDF VERSION OF THIS BOOK
This book comes to you electronically as a single file, complete with cover
page and Table of Contents. The page numbering follows that given in the
Table of Contents.
Advantages of electronic version
No index has been provided, but of course search/find is easy enough with
electronic versions. Hopefully the headings are clear enough, and the
document short enough, that this will not arise as problem.
The greatest advantage is the capacity for view enlargement, so that the
various labels can be easily read on those figures that had to be squeezed in
order to format a page properly. Of course, a magnifying glass can be used on
a print copy, but the result would not be as good.
No index has been compiled, mainly because such a thing is not necessary for
ebooks. Adobe has a perfectly good search engine that can locate any word or
phrase in a file. If you have chosen to print a copy, this book is short enough
that the headings should provide enough clue.
Printing
Each page has been formatted so as be printed at A5 size, portrait orientation,
14.8 cm wide by 21 cm long.
i
, TABLE OF CONTENTS
Diagrams and photographs on nearly every page
Page
1 INTRODUCTION 1
2 COMPONENTS 3
Strips and straps 3
And a little bit of rope 7
Joints and buckles 7
A whole harness 9
Cutting straps after braiding –1st stitching 10
Assembling a whole harness – 2nd stitching 11
Placing and fitting a breastband harness 12
HITCHING 11
Traces 13
Swingles and eveners 13
The horror of the neckstrap 15
3 A POWERSET 18
Assembly 23
The swingle set 23
Adding harnesses with donkeys 24
Adjustments 25
4 EXTENSIONS AND ADDITIONS 27
Additional donkeys 27
The two-shaft cart 30
Fieldwork teams 31
5 METAL PIECES – BUCKLES ETC. 32
6 USE OF A GIRTH OR CINCH 33
7 BACKLOADING DONKEYS 34
Adaptation of the ‘diamond hitch 38
Reasonable weights for donkey backs 39
ii
, 1. INTRODUCTION
Especially in southern Africa, almost every donkey encountered seems to be
suffering from wounds, mostly around its chest and the top of its leg an on its
neck. Welfare workers offer wound treatment, and mutter darkly about ‘bad
harnessing’, but there is little sign that anyone has recognized what is actually
bad about the harnessing.
When I myself acquired donkeys and a cart to be used on a couple of building
projects in a remote part of northern Zimbabwe, what I naturally got was the
pulling equipment that everybody else using such carts was accustomed to.
It did not take me long to see that my donkeys were being presented with
serious problems in the use of such equipment, and that the problems resided
not only in the harnesses, but in the ways in which those harnesses were
required to operate. At the same time, since nobody else seemed sufficiently
involved, I was engaged in providing advice and training to various donkey-
using projects, and also writing a training manual for Zimbabwe’s agricultural
extension service, as a companion to their manuals on cattle, goats, etc. I
attended meetings and conferences on animal traction, usually finding that I
was the only person speaking for donkeys.
None of it was very satisfactory, because I was virtually learning as I went.
Eventually the South African Agricultural Research Council, for which I had
also been working on a consultancy basis, sponsored the production of my
book ‘Donkeys for Development’ in 1997, which incorporated much of what I
had learned up until then, but I was certainly not finished with learning.
Although it first came out in print, I have been updating the book at intervals
ever since, making the latest editions available in electronic form.
It did not take long to see that the main problems occurred when two donkeys
were hitched abreast and had to share the load presented by a two-wheel,
single-shaft cart. It took a little longer to recognize that there were more
problems for donkeys than there were for horses and oxen, and that some of
this was due to the different anatomy and different behaviour of donkeys.
A lot more time was spent figuring out, mostly through trial and error, how
these problems could be solved and – most important – easily and cheaply by
rural people with the minimum of resources and limited technology. More
and more did my training programmes focus on teaching people how to hitch
1
EFFICIENCY ENSURED
BY PROPER HARNESSING AND HITCHING
PRODUCED CHEAPLY AND EASILY AT HOME
(a fully illustrated workshop manual)
Peta A. Jones © 2020
,ABOUT USING THE PDF VERSION OF THIS BOOK
This book comes to you electronically as a single file, complete with cover
page and Table of Contents. The page numbering follows that given in the
Table of Contents.
Advantages of electronic version
No index has been provided, but of course search/find is easy enough with
electronic versions. Hopefully the headings are clear enough, and the
document short enough, that this will not arise as problem.
The greatest advantage is the capacity for view enlargement, so that the
various labels can be easily read on those figures that had to be squeezed in
order to format a page properly. Of course, a magnifying glass can be used on
a print copy, but the result would not be as good.
No index has been compiled, mainly because such a thing is not necessary for
ebooks. Adobe has a perfectly good search engine that can locate any word or
phrase in a file. If you have chosen to print a copy, this book is short enough
that the headings should provide enough clue.
Printing
Each page has been formatted so as be printed at A5 size, portrait orientation,
14.8 cm wide by 21 cm long.
i
, TABLE OF CONTENTS
Diagrams and photographs on nearly every page
Page
1 INTRODUCTION 1
2 COMPONENTS 3
Strips and straps 3
And a little bit of rope 7
Joints and buckles 7
A whole harness 9
Cutting straps after braiding –1st stitching 10
Assembling a whole harness – 2nd stitching 11
Placing and fitting a breastband harness 12
HITCHING 11
Traces 13
Swingles and eveners 13
The horror of the neckstrap 15
3 A POWERSET 18
Assembly 23
The swingle set 23
Adding harnesses with donkeys 24
Adjustments 25
4 EXTENSIONS AND ADDITIONS 27
Additional donkeys 27
The two-shaft cart 30
Fieldwork teams 31
5 METAL PIECES – BUCKLES ETC. 32
6 USE OF A GIRTH OR CINCH 33
7 BACKLOADING DONKEYS 34
Adaptation of the ‘diamond hitch 38
Reasonable weights for donkey backs 39
ii
, 1. INTRODUCTION
Especially in southern Africa, almost every donkey encountered seems to be
suffering from wounds, mostly around its chest and the top of its leg an on its
neck. Welfare workers offer wound treatment, and mutter darkly about ‘bad
harnessing’, but there is little sign that anyone has recognized what is actually
bad about the harnessing.
When I myself acquired donkeys and a cart to be used on a couple of building
projects in a remote part of northern Zimbabwe, what I naturally got was the
pulling equipment that everybody else using such carts was accustomed to.
It did not take me long to see that my donkeys were being presented with
serious problems in the use of such equipment, and that the problems resided
not only in the harnesses, but in the ways in which those harnesses were
required to operate. At the same time, since nobody else seemed sufficiently
involved, I was engaged in providing advice and training to various donkey-
using projects, and also writing a training manual for Zimbabwe’s agricultural
extension service, as a companion to their manuals on cattle, goats, etc. I
attended meetings and conferences on animal traction, usually finding that I
was the only person speaking for donkeys.
None of it was very satisfactory, because I was virtually learning as I went.
Eventually the South African Agricultural Research Council, for which I had
also been working on a consultancy basis, sponsored the production of my
book ‘Donkeys for Development’ in 1997, which incorporated much of what I
had learned up until then, but I was certainly not finished with learning.
Although it first came out in print, I have been updating the book at intervals
ever since, making the latest editions available in electronic form.
It did not take long to see that the main problems occurred when two donkeys
were hitched abreast and had to share the load presented by a two-wheel,
single-shaft cart. It took a little longer to recognize that there were more
problems for donkeys than there were for horses and oxen, and that some of
this was due to the different anatomy and different behaviour of donkeys.
A lot more time was spent figuring out, mostly through trial and error, how
these problems could be solved and – most important – easily and cheaply by
rural people with the minimum of resources and limited technology. More
and more did my training programmes focus on teaching people how to hitch
1
