What Do You Do With Miles Of Baling Twine?

Murphy’s Horse Law  – “Your barn will fall down without baling twine.”

Horse tip #4

Anyone who has one or more horses in the northern section of North America unwraps bales for their horses nutritional needs. EATING! And a horse goes through a lot of hay.  For example, I bought 30 – 800 lb bales for my three horses for winter plus I have 1000 – 40 lbs bales for storm days.  That is a lot of hay!  If you are like me, you don’t like to waste anything.  So what do you do with all the baling twine that comes off that hay?

I clean the hay out of it, ball it and keep it for when I want something to do. Then I plan and wait to see what it is that I need the most, for the horses.  Lately I’ve been changing the macrame bitted bridles to bitless bridles.  I make all my own bridles, by the way…, and lately all the halters too.  The reason I do this is because I seriously dislike buckles and metal next to my horse’s face.

Frilly came with a new and beautiful halter with her name engraved on a metal side piece.  However, when I removed the halter, where the metal hooks and connectors were, there was no fur.  The metal connectors had rubbed the fur right off her face. That alone turned me away from metal on their halters.  So I started to make halters for my beasties and I think they appreciated them the first year.  This year, I keep them bare faced 100% of the time because the pressure of the halter, whether it is a rope halter or macrame or leather or nylon, will leave pressure marks into their fur and skin.  This year, Gimme A Dream, Willow Breeze and Woodmere Frilifili object to anything on their heads, LOL!

This year, I decided to make bitless bridles for all my horses.  I completed the task early last fall but found that the bridle I had made for Dream was too small. The chin straps weren’t long enough and I had cut the strings.  I could have spliced on a length of strap but Dream can be head strong sometimes with a bit, so I’m thinking that I might need a strong bridle for him.  I didn’t have enough expensive twine that they use for fishing around the islands, and I had a lot of baling twine, hence came my baling twine bitless bridle.

Can you imagine sitting in the saddle on a trail ride?  After a few hours, I get stiff and sore and like getting down to stretch out.  With a bitless bridle, I will be able to allow the horse to graze while I’m relaxing for a few minutes without removing the bridle . I’m not sure about anyone else but usually my horses don’t like to be re-bridled and they raise their heads too high for me to reach them comfortably.  That is a thing of the past for me! Of course, with Dream here, I’ll have to stand on his back to stretch out because I’ll be darned if I’m getting back up after getting off him.  As it is, at almost 17 hands, I use a step ladder to mount the big boy!

Patterns for bridles and halters are $2.50CDN each.

Next week I want to start a sky blue bitted bridle and a breast strap from some very colorful twine I received on the large 800 lbs bales this year.  It should be rather stunning, to say the least.

I also want to complete at least three lead reins, one lunging rein and a collar with a leash for one of the dogs.

So don’t throw out all that good twine…, use it for something valuable, something useful, something necessary.

P.S. I use all the short pieces of baling twine for making temporary paddocks and field repairs to weakened fencing.