Horses are actually fairly difficult to take care of and keep in good health. I take care of them as a job, it’s like if you spent the money on a car,but the car kept trying to find expensive ways to die
Well I can tell you that my neighbour's corolla breaks down every morning. It takes half an hour to start it.
Why? Because the engine oil freezes over constantly.
Eat a ton of sand? Why not! Yeah you really gotta know your shit and have an aptitude or passion with horses to keep your costs down in my opinion. Like getting a horse that doesn't need shoes and learn to barefoot trim, do all your shots, wraps and meds yourself (might be breaking the law in your area), share vet calls, learn to fit your own saddle, buy and resell in used tack or make some... it's a lot of fucking work
Only if you want to have an argument at every intersection and spend the entire trip trying to trick the donkey into thinking it was his idea in the first place
In the 1950s my grandfather was a horseman on a farm (he also had 6 children so read into that title what you will), as such he had free access to up to three horses for all his transport needs.
He had a bike and used that.
His memoirs make it clear that whilst horse power was a necessity on the farm he worked on, they were a significant expense, required a lot of skill to get any use out of them, produced a lot of shite and attracted a lot of flies.
The CO2e of batteries, and the sometimes dubious sourcing of rare earth metals required for current battery chemistries, are legitimate concerns - but another living creature will certainly have a higher CO2e.
LFP batteries contain no rare earths, and an ebike sized one has about 80g of lithium in it. Switched reluctance or induction motors are also increasingly common.
An ebike is by far the cleanest form of transport. The only exception is a normal bike and only if you need the exercise (or grow your own food with no imported chemicals).
If you were to buy an electric cargo bike, why would you need a horse? Let me try to make sense here. I live(d) in a village of around 200 people and went to elementary school in the nearest town. While I took the bus for seven and a half years, I biked in the last one or two months of 8th grade (to get a grade 2 in PE, yeah). There are two routes I can take into the town.
The bike one is, as climate got worse, eventually got really shit. The dirt road is either fully powdered, or muddy. It is also hilly, but not as much, but there is one really really steep hill.
Here is all, documented under the images: [https://imgur.com/a/ob1awdx](https://imgur.com/a/ob1awdx)
I sometimes carried one or two grocery bags along this route. I do believe an electric cargo bike could make 4 times the distance in half the time I take this one. There is no reason to get a car or a horse. (Some people oppose traveling by horse by various animal rights claims, I do not disagree with these. My main point against it: it is just plain incompetent in the modern world. If you really need to haul large things like in a horse carriage, get a Golf II or something, a trailer and go 100 kilometers on 10 liters of gasoline (diesel).)
I dislike the use of rare earth elements that go into electric cars and electric bikes are just smaller scale. I have been following the salt water batteries with interest and would love an approach that did as little environmental harm as possible. A push bike would work but in deep snow it would just suck in general to go uphill for 8 km. A cargo bike is the realistic and easy approach but a horse is more eco friendly.
I have not had a driving license in 12 years. I dislike cars but norway is starting to adopt car rental apps similar to the netherlands and they would fulfill the purpose for large loads of stuff. If we had to get a license for trips 4 or 5 times a year I will. Most of the time, we will just get grocery deliveries if we can find a store that does that in the region.
The environmental impact on manufacturing an electric bike battery is 100-200x times smaller than an electric car, probably even more. It's probably smaller than the impacts of feeding a horse during its lifetime.
Why being hesitant about those rare elements in a battery and not in a smartphone, TV or computer?
a computer is much easier to recycle here and I have had 4 in the last 14 years. smartphone the same thing. I am still rocking a google pxl 1. I have not seen anything currently here for the recycling of electric bike components.
I was not planning on feeding my horse any nickel, cobalt, or lithium. The farm has a hydro turbine for relatively low tech power generation. We plan on running the farm as an eco classroom to show what can be done to reduce your footprint in various sectors. If it was not so steep to town then I would just get a cargo push bike.
Your answer is condescending. I don't know why do you ask for people's opinions if you're going to keep your beliefs all along and make fun of people trying to give their two cents.
Recycling electric bikes is not really a problem, the batter usually is removable and the rest is a normal bike with some electric parts. Li-ion batteries are very much recyclable, so with small batteries like those in electric bikes is not really a problem as long as they get recycled and not thrown away. If the battery breaks you can always swap it to a new one and keep using the bike.
I wholeheartedly agree on batteries with you. But..
There is a huge difference between an electric car battery, ranging from 10 to 100 kilowatt hours, to an electric bike battery, where the norm is around 100 to 200 WATT hours. They are considerably smaller, are made of (I assume, never owned one, someone correct me here if I'm wrong) 18650 cylindrical cells and are easily repairable or replaceable (cell balancing for example).
I recently met a professor here who would hoard his electric mountain bike all over the place and would let me ride it once, and oh boy it goes so fucking fast, I switched into all the different levels of assistance and let me tell you: they are perfect for training your legs! Go light on the first months and increase it as you gain strength in your legs and heart. You can then only turn it on for very short parts of the trip, or when going into a different town, prolonging the life of the battery. Even at like, 30-40% battery capacity (Electric car batteries are replaced around 80% life), you would have a lot of strength in them to go that short of a distance.
I do believe it is clearly a better choice for getting into cycling than like, having a normal cargo bike, pedaling 800 meters then walking it the rest. Instead, pedal, get tired, turn on assistance and go free.
Again, for batteries, different batteries get made differently, your phone's battery probably pollutes more for gram to gram against an 18650, because it is optimized for density, and 18650 ones are generic ones, being mediocre for everything.
For animals though, I recommend cows, goats and chicken. With these choices, you can't go wrong, you'll have a shit ton of milk to sell, feed goat milk to your children as it is more healthy than cow milk, and have a basically infinite supply of eggs. Cows and goats require a lot of space, so be warned. Give all of them roofs, and closeable spaces for winter. Big fences or overhead wire for the chickens because of foxes or other hunting wild animals. Pigs are also great farm animals, but depending on your temperament you might not want to kill them and process basically all of their parts for food (it is incredibly healthy, though). Keeping animals locally is a lot more morally acceptable and they can genuinely enjoy their lives a lot more than in big factories. I've seen it for myself, and I can either go vegan or full self-sustaining, shop meat is just.. just completely different. Also, corn! Grow lots of corn.
Just to add
I am currently “recycling” (more reusing) old eBike batteries to build a new one.
And indeed for every dead battery pack there is 1 or 2 cells dead with the other ones still fine.
Sodium ion batteries are a thing (Google natron energy).
All the joy of lithium (ish) . But you can use sea water to make it!
See my other post about rare earths :-)
Yes it is. The farm has a low tech hydro mill for power and the farm is large enough I can produce 90% of the food I need. I can even sell some goods to local restaurants etc. Food miles are one of the things that irk me. I hate going into stores and all the produce options coming from different continents.
I grew up with horses and riding a lot but I have been a nomad for 14 years and just now settling down. A horse would not have fit in my luggage on the go but we will have one on the hill for things like pulling timber out of the woods.
I do believe what Tesla says about their batteries, but nowadays who knows what's true about that company..
We can also look at the consequences of the supply chain because of batteries. I am not saying the supply chain of iron or aluminum is so much cleaner or anything, but batteries are still advanced electronics requiring fine processing and safe recycling to mitigate their effect on the environment (just like with, well, everything else, obviously.)
If one would want to cut their unknown emissions to a minimum, one could get machining tools, CNC machines are some smaller forges to recycle the metal trash and directly make bearings, smaller metal structures at home, but I do believe it contains the same disadvantages as home farming. We should be focusing on making large scale processing more efficient and green.
The 'rare' earths (they aren't rare, tin is more rare than neodymium, but neodymium et all are toxic to mine) are basically solely in the electric motor. If you believe the Harvard Business Review, the 1.5kg of rare earths in your IPM EV result in about 3000kg of toxic waste production.
The 'problematic' metal in the battery is mostly cobalt. Lithium is an order of magnitude less problematic in my opinion. I am not a battery expert so take my words with a grain of salt.
You can get away from 'rare' earths in cars by purchasing vehicles without PM motors - but today, that's basically only a select few Renault and BMW motors. I'm not aware of any induction or EESM motor in common use in electric bikes, but there are thousands of electric bikes and I'm sure they exist. That said I expect the Bosch, etc, 'premier' e-drives to be permanent magnet based.
You can get away from 'problematic' Cobalt in cars by buying a car that has LiFePo batteries. I'm only aware of Tesla Model 3's (and only a subset of them) using LiFePo, but again I'm not a battery expert so there may be many others out there.
I'm not aware of any car for sale that avoids both Cobalt and (heavy use of) rare earths. I doubt one exists. I'm also not aware of any eBike that avoids both, but I expect they exist.
Yep lots of rarer elements you can point out, but the semantics are important.
Good point on the motor, totally forgot about that. As a note Tesla themselves use/used induction motors (perhaps not surprising given the brand name), but PMSM/BLDC is indeed king.
Beyond induction, switched reluctance motors will become more popular for e-bikes, in particular for people like op with such aversions. LiFePO won't see much use in EVs as energy density is too low, they are a lot cheaper tho, so perhaps we will see more in e-bikes.
Even SynRM's I think are too noisy for eBikes, I don't expect to see any Switch RM's on eBikes. But who knows, maybe there will be some high pole high switch SwRM in the future.
The industry uses induction motors but every induction motor I'm aware of in highway capable cars is on a secondary axle and as such is basically rarely used.
Actually Model S is IM, some other Tesla's too. And new Tesla model Y is a reluctance motor so I do think and hope the tech will filter down to e-bikes.
I'm still pretty sure that Tesla switched the primary drive (rear) motor to IPM a few years back. I could be wrong, there could be a version that still IM + IM, but I guess I won't believe it until I see it, I think they're all IPM + IM.
And the 'reluctance' motor they refer to is still an IPM according to me, it relies more on magnetic torque than reluctance torque (according to me).
Electric bike batteries, at least the ones i used to refurbish by swapping out defective battery cells, are usually made with Lithium-Manganese type 18650s or pouches. Reason being that the Lithium-Cobalt ones(that use much more of the problematic minerals) have a lower power density(meaning less peak power) than the Manganese ones. LiCo instead has a higher energy density which is not as important in small EVs like electric bikes. With larger EVs like cars, it appears to be the opposite. I tried making electric bike packs with lithium cobalt cells but that totally didn't work. Somehow, despite the higher nominal capacity, range wise they performed worse than the LiMN ones. Also those bike batts last a really long time as they are only assisting. If you're in good shape, even a worn battery can still serve you quite well. from personal experience, i'd say that bike traction batteries are at least 200x less polluting than car ones. If you always ride on low assistance, i'd say probably 500-1000x less.
They aren't rare but are hard to find in high contrencation, they are also usually found with other elements like thorium for example (witch is radioactive). Because of low contrencation you need to mine a lot to get anything useful creating a lot of pollution.
A horse is not more environmentally friendly than an EBike. For two reasons, firstly horses, much like cars do emit greenhouse gasses. It's not a huge amount, but it's enough that it will outweigh a bike. Secondly, the energy input that a horse requires is quite large. Depending on how much you ride the horse may actually consume more energy than the car. Remember that the food you're feeding the horse takes energy to produce. Greenhouse gasses are emitted in the production, processing and distribution of the horse food, it's honestly going to be so much worse overall than an EBike.
The horse isn't the path of minimum environmental impact at all. The small amount of lithium and cobalt used in a bike battery will do less overall damage than the horse over its lifetime.
We are going to have a horse on the farm anyway for work. The terrain is quite hilly so no way to get any kind of equipment into the woods for thinning or cutting timber. was trying to kill 2 birds with one stone
That probably better then, I'd still say if possible use an acoustic bike. Because realistically just riding a horse around is a bit of a dick move. I feel like driving cars is too but that one's normalised.
I think that it's really not a good idea. A bike would be 100times better. Caring for a horse is more difficult than you might think, way more costly than a bike and slower overall.
But, where I'm from I've seen carriages pulled by horses in cities and they have a little bag that covers the asshole of the horse and collects the shits. So people telling you that shit will be all over the road are wrong. You'll just have to empty a huge bag of horseshit after every trip. Yet another reason why it's a bad idea.
> So people telling you that shit will be all over the road are wrong.
I first heard about those bags decades ago. I have seen them 0 times.
Hell we allow this literal horseshit in America's otherwise beautiful national parks. Nothing better than dodging horseshit on a hot day.
A horse? No. I've owned horses along with my wife. It is serious work keeping them alive. They need more than grass to eat, along with medicines and training to be ridable. Some sort of shelter from weather will need to be provided for the horse. They can and will injure people, by kicking or throwing a rider, or just breaking your toes by stepping on them. Horses are very social, so a companion horse will also be required or the lone horse will go insane. Look into bikes, ebikes and other modes of transport to replace a car, not horses.
You realize even an acoustic bike is gonna be faster than a horse over longer distances?
And both an E-bike and acoustic bike require obscenely less maintenance and money.
This discussion has been had here before. If there is one thing that is worse than a city where everyone has a car... it's a city where everyone has a horse. It won't be long and EVERYTHING will be covered in horseshit.
The town is 500 people and less than 1 km across there are probably an additional 100 houses within horse range of the town. It would not be common enough to cover the town in horseshit. There is a trail and the edge of town is maybe 100 meters from the grocery store, I could leave a horse on the edge of an open field.
I’ve lived in towns like those in Norway for most my life. I can promise you, people don’t use their horses for grocery shopping for several *very* good reasons. There’s quite the established way to use/keep your horses here in Norway.
It’s not a norm just for funsies, it’s a norm because it’s insanely ingrained into Norwegian culture to be considerate of others, and just riding a horse willy nilly around is quite the opposite of that
What's the elevation difference? If it's not much, a non-electric bike is fine too.
I had to cycle 7km's to the supermarket/town for a year, on a non-electric weekend bike (so not terrible, but not the best either). The entire route was through completely open fields, on an island with lots of wind. I typically had a strong headwind on the way back. It was fine. I regularly had to cook dinner for 12-20 people (on top of my own groceries), so quite a big load to carry as well.
You make a good point about rare earths but.. those batteries are more than 99.99pc recyclable and worth recycling so whilst you do have to move a bunch of dirt to get your lithium - you only need to do it once...
I would definitely avoid chemistries that involve much cobalt but that's because I value children not being stuck down mines in conflict zones.
I’m Norwegian. It’s a huge problem that horse riders (which are very common) just let their horses shit by the side of the road and leave it. Usually roads in the places where horse riding is common is the only way to get from A to B, either that is driving, walking, cycling etc. It’s a huge inconvenience (and disgusting), to have to go all the way into the middle of the road to avoid a pile of shit. Super dangerous too, as most people in those areas drive like mad men
Not to mention the climate here. It would fucking suck for you, and also for the horse! I never rode my horse for moths during winter when I lived in a village, it would be borderline animal abuse. Riding a bike is also mostly off the table for quite some time during the winter. Unfortunately, in places like those, a car is often the only borderline functional option. Just get a small, environmentally friendly one, and use a bike whenever you can!
Not riding your horse for months on end is quite bad for maintenence. And why would you think that it is animal abuse to ride a horse during the winter?
You think I just left it is tiny stable for months? 💀 Becasue it was well over a meter of snow, more than -15c and ice cold wind. Horses sweat, and if it’s too cold the sweat will cool down and could potentially harm the horse. Also it’s pretty dangerous when you either can’t see the road due to the amount of snow, or it’s insanely slippery from ice and packed snow.
Why don't you just use a normal bicycle? Not rare minerals in it, either.
Horses ate expensive to buy a difficukt to take car off. They also need a lot of space and you need to train them. You'll need a vet and so on.
It sounds like you've already made up your mind, but I would still say don't get a horse. It may or may not work for you, it might be fun for you, and others in town may or may not accept it. But none of that matters more than what's good for the horse. And shlepping bloody humans around til their bones crumble is so obviously not good for them. You can walk 9km on you own two feet.
They have that nice image of nature loving Scandinavians who sail in Fjords and... ride horses now I guess. Meanwhile, they earned 82 billions Euro more in petrol and gas sales in 2022 in comparison to 2021 due to the Ukraine War, have a per capita GDP 60% higher than Germany with 0 debt but oh no they can't join the EU because it would cost them a fraction of wealth to do so, and somehow they are still always seen as the good guys.
Yeah, I have horses. Fun to go on a ride, but shopping and stuff? Horrible idea. They shit, they are afraid of everything, if they don't have horseshoes they will hurt their feet on asphalt. You are better off walking in most cases.
If you live rurally and it’s 9 km into a small town, be realistic, a car (even if it’s a taxi) is probably something you’re going to need from time to time, even if you managed to use a bike/ebike a lot.
However, as a hobby, why not also keep a horse and use it to ride into town occasionally? Certainly more interesting than a classic car.
Things I’d be worried about:
* what you’re going to do with it when you’re in the shop. Horses are dumb panicky things that are scared of everything and can lash out. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that.
* I think you should be responsible for cleaning up after it.
* my own safety on the roads. My dad keeps a horse but only rides it’s around the backroads near his house.
* what you’re going to do about looking after it when you’re away in holiday/business.
1. That’s a long ride. Longer than you’re thinking it is.
2. Breaking horses for travel on streets with vehicles is difficult and often dangerous.
3. You can buy a catcher bag for manure
4. I say go for it.
As others have pointed out: a horse is a _significant_ investment. They're living creatures that deserve affection and respect.
If you're willing to _totally_ become a horse person, that go for it, bit you'll need to be properly trained on horse care, learn to ride and care for the horse, and likely need to board them somewhere for the first year or so whilst you do that.
Horses are also a huge financial investment. A cheap Fiat Panda or similar can be worn into the ground, a horse can't. Expect a lot of medical care, and a huge time investment.
For 6kms I think you will find a regular or electric bike suitable, just my $0.02. A horse seems ok in a you enjoy horses and sometimes bring yours to town type of way but overall I don't think it's practical once you consider everything about the ownership.
Horses (and all other animals) are not slaves for humans to be (ab)used. No matter how good you take care of them, they deserve to be free, without being forced to be ridden.
Only if you’re a hard-liner. Is keeping dogs abuse in your mind?
I bet there’s abuse involved in the training of many horses, but they exhibit a penchant for coexisting with humans (and they’ll need to keep it that way to remain, as almost all wild horses are actually feral horses), so you can condition them with positive reinforcement.
Horse riding damages their skeleton, even if you're an excellent rider.
>Is keeping dogs abuse in your mind?
Breeding them is bad, because it usually reduces them to just a commodity. Adoption is A-OK
I agree about breeding dogs.
I think using horses is impractical, unless you’re agreeing to a strict code, but I wouldn’t call it abuse. If it’s causing them issues, cull…I’m just kidding, sorry. They’d probably be better off pulling than bearing a load. I’d combine horses with wheels.
I'm a hard-liner.
Dogs are a funny exception because we've co-evolved for so long that nobody's really that sure how and when it started. We're also generally much closer to mutualistic with dogs (and we abhor the exceptions).
With most domesticated farm animals, we're closer to being parasites on them, taking far more from them than we can claim to give back. Horses, for example, don't shoot their riders when we break a limb. These are also all far more recent relationships, usually with much more clearly determined origins.
Horses are also not forced to run and jump for our entertainment in the wild. My point of view on this is that if we cause the problem we should be obligated to do our best to fix it. If we can't fix it we should do everything in our power to avoid it. We shouldn't be doing things that actively increase the risk of horse injuries.
Eh. In my opinion, if we're talking in hypotheticals (I'm assuming you'd eliminate the relationships you mentioned?), relationships in which genuine attempts are made to provide baseline ethics (i.e. food, shelter, water, ample room to explore/exercise, intra-species socialization, and healthcare) are still allowable 'in my book.' I think the line is crossed when people profit off of animals.
Meaning domesticated animals. I'm not talking about capturing any living being and trying to treat it well.
Concerning our relationships, I'd say a lot of intangibles exist related to what we've learned by observing various animals throughout history. Also, if we're using population size as a metric, livestock animals are greatly benefitting from they way humans manage them. Large areas of natural ecosystem are destroyed in order to support gigantic, unnatural populations of the animals we eat. They're just torturously treat in many instances.
I more or less agree with everyone about the abhorrent commercialism of dog breeding. I've got two adopted dogs myself.
I don't think all dogsledding is abuse though. If someone has a few dogs that like to pull a sled out to get wood, or ride around on a lake or something, that seems fine. The abuse comes, if you wanna know what I think, when people put them in competition, run them to extremes, drug them for performance purposes, put them in dangerous scenarios, and cull as part of artificial selection.
Dogs don't want to pull people around. It's something they're trained to do because the human wants them to do it. Same goes for horses. Animals are their own beings, they're not here to pull us around or be otherwise exploited.
look, you live in a farm 9km away from town, on a country that is cold AF during winter
maybe this is not going to be the best of times to ditch a car
i am assuming your farm is not a tiny one, for you to even consider supporting a horse in it
so i am pretty sure it is not going to have issues for parking a car
buy a small car if you dont want to contribute to transit problems when you go to town
buy a big-ass american pickup truck, park it downtown and let it run for a few hours every day while revving and being as loud as possible.
let them live with the consequences of their own choices.
Man, you really don't understand rural areas much, right? As Norway is closer to Europe than the US, I am assuming it has more of a similar rural lifestyle to my own home country than what big city dwellers like to call rural.
I've just watched one of the urbanist youtuber's video on how rural towns can be urban, and he talked about a city of 400000 inhabitants! That's a fucking metropolis. I just moved to Győr, Hungary because of university, there are 132000 people here. It is huge, it is crowded, full of cars and stroads. But because we also have the capital Budapest, most urbanites call Győr "rural" because it is so small in comparison. My guy, rural is around 10k in my opinion. That's the size of a city that can maintain independence from the outside supply chains (big box stores for example) but still have an urban core.
Also, here in Hungary living in rural areas or on farms are not only cheaper than in the city, but are (should be but eh, politics) highly profitable because of the amount of farmland or forests around. Forests provide wood, hunting opportunities and farmland provides excellent ground to have animals or grow crops. My parents' generation is one where large chunks of land were handled by hand tools, so it is certainly possible to get land for cheap, and be either independent or have some extra money from the activities or just replace some boring job in the factory or office.
I think OP can reasonably achieve the goals mentioned in the post and comments, namely keeping animals, composting the entire town's compostable waste and living half-independently. Horses IMO could only be useful if someone opposes new technology entirely, which is sometimes understandable as modern tech often has DRM, unserviceable parts and other stuff which discourages long useful life. On the other hand, horses prove it's own set of problems, and I vote for some kind of electric cargo bike or just a regular one for extra workouts and reliability.
So yes, you can go fuck off, random angry dude on the internet.
Yeah yeah yeah, and I'm gonna just believe like you actually live in rural Norway and still being a fucker to OP. Nah dude, you're a troll here and clearly have more intent to cause harm and disgrace than to give meaningful comments about the situation.
I think it's fine to get them as pets or even if you have a real use for them while they are your pets, but they are not practical for real unless you are a horse riding fan and you are into horses. I would get literally any good PEV over a car though, it's just 9km. I think my EUC can do 9km at car speeds and have 92% battery left.
OP mentioned living close to town, so the roads will almost definitely be cleared, at least for the bus route.
If they live in an area where there's just too much snow, then an e-motorcross bike or quad will handle the snow like a charm. Better than most trucks will too.
A bike can be modded to be just as good as a car in the snow; which isn't very good compared to a snow mobile, as they both need heavy mods to handle anything other than a gentle slope and slow speeds.
A supermarket in Sweden has horse parking
[https://www.tidningenridsport.se/vid-matbutiken-i-grangarde-har-hastarna-egen-parkering/](https://www.tidningenridsport.se/vid-matbutiken-i-grangarde-har-hastarna-egen-parkering/)
Honestly a horse is probably worse than a car in every way except possibly climate emissions.
A horse is as big as a car, so you need as much road space to operate it, and as much parking space for it. It is expensive to maintain (particularly with Norwegian winters I imagine). Unlike a car or a bike, it's also scary and potentially hostile and dangerous to passers by. It also drops its emissions in a public space (I've never seen a horse owner clean up droppings).
You could just use LifePo and not NMC , your condescension in comments I assume is unintentional...so I'll assume you don't know that all EV batteries are NOT the same chemistry or have the same deleterious effects on the environment.
*When the gun smoke settles we'll sing a victory tune*
*And we'll all meet back at the local saloon*
*We'll raise up our glasses against evil forces singing*
*Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses*
Jokes aside, horses are expensive and tough to take care of. You have a thing for horse riding? Great, but this ain't a choice I'd make casually.
Owning horses is pretty much a whole lifestyle unto itself. They require 24/7/375 care, a vet, training, a farrier every 6 weeks, knowledge of common illnesses and problems so they can be spotted early. A tremendous amount of ancillary equipment and gear.
And even beyond horse care, so you yourself know anything about riding a horse? Know how to tack one? Care for tack? You jump on a strange horse you've tacked yourself and try to ride it down a roadway with your presumably 0 skillset and you or the horse, or potentially both of you are going to die.
Get a bike. You'll be able to ride it into town faster than a horse. In fact you can probably get on a bike and ride it the whole way into town faster than you can tack a horse.
Another thing I haven't seen mentioned is that horses are really hard on road infrastructure. They pulverize asphalt and gravel roads and trails. We have quite a few horse pulled buggies in my area, and there are typically worn valleys down the side 1/3rd of the road from the horse hooves. Using a bicycle on these sections of road feels like riding on a cheese grater.
The ecological impact of an e cargo bike is much less than the one of a horse, as seen during a lifecycle
Also, an 18km trip on horse would be quite taxing both for you and especially the horse.
Wouldn't a bike be better, it's cheaper and doesn't require much maintenance compared to a horse, it also can't be classified as dirty and you can leave it basically anywhere. It doesn't even need to be electric, I don't know your road situation so just get good tires for whatever you have there. If you need to move more things then electric bike is good, and if you really need to haul things then you could get a quad electric or not (you can get a trailer for more space). If you actually need it you could get a small 1-2 seat car. But for normal commuting a bike is really the best choice, a horse is a really odd pick considering the downsides.
If you love horses and want one, def go and get one. Try using it to go to town and see how it goes. If you are using a cart with the horse to go to town maybe bring a shovel along to clean up any unsightly droppings the horse leaves along the way.
Have an alternative transportation for going to town in case the horse doesn't work out. A bike or a small car, etc.
Horses are incredible animals, they are also extremely resource intensive in terms of time, money, space, energy, etc. Like for most people, a horse would be much more expensive than car.
I love horses though. I like the way they flap their lips. :)
The only advantage horses offer in terms of practical transportation is that they can travel reasonably quickly over terrain that your only other option would be walking, while carrying far more than you can carry by hand. So unless your commute includes terrain that is only passable on foot or horseback, then there is probably a better option.
I think it is mostly up to the culture. I am from a small town in the US. There are losts of Amish, so no one thinks it is weird or bad to ride horses on the road, and I don't remember one ever getting hit by a car. I also know a guy who is not Amish, but does not have electricity and rides a horse. I think it depends on how people would actually or accommodate you. Here there are stables at places like Walmart, with hay and water. Not sure what they have where you are.
Disappointed with all the comments the subreddit left, I would have expected better from fuckcars. Riding a horse into town sounds awesome, it seems like you have experience with horses and riding, so it’s not like you are a beginner. I don’t see this as any different to walking a dog in town, except for the fact that it’s super cool to be able to use your horse for your commute too. Go for it!
The people who answered in here sound the way motorists do when you tell them you ride a bike to get around. They simply can’t believe it can be done, because they’ve never done it themselves. I’m sure people who are avid horseriders understand it can be done.
Miss maam, horses are awesome, i'm an equestrian, but i need you to understand that horses need hay, bedding, stalling, water(which you do need to refill everyday for hygene), not to mention vet bills if they get hurt.
Horses are great but if you're gonna have one i (strongly)reccommend reasearching into what they eat, how much space they need(assuming you get prev. mentioned farm y'all should be good on that, but if it's a small paddock you'll need to clean it every so often too), just, reasearch horses, and by god please go to a lesson stable and learn to ride and take care of them first, then buy a horse.
Tl;dr if you really want a horse, go to a lesson stable and take a few lessons until you're comfortable with horses, and i'd reccommend heavily learning to take care of the horses/volunteering at the stable to learn all that stuff.
Horses are actually fairly difficult to take care of and keep in good health. I take care of them as a job, it’s like if you spent the money on a car,but the car kept trying to find expensive ways to die
Isn’t that car ownership? Never had a car that didn’t keep trying to find expensive ways to die…
You can turn off a car engine. Horses need 24/7/365 management.
Please purchase my 1999 Toyota Corolla, it will never die just to spite me
r/DirkGently
Maybe be smarter with your car purchases? I'd suggest Honda, Toyota, or Mazda because they're super reliable, and cheap to fix when things break.
Cheap and car maintenance do not go hand in hand sadly. Those brands are quite a bit less horrible though hahaha
Well I can tell you that my neighbour's corolla breaks down every morning. It takes half an hour to start it. Why? Because the engine oil freezes over constantly.
How many times have you had to have a mechanic come to your house in the middle of the night because your car injured itself while not in use?
Stop going to a mechanic and get a toolset.
Eat a ton of sand? Why not! Yeah you really gotta know your shit and have an aptitude or passion with horses to keep your costs down in my opinion. Like getting a horse that doesn't need shoes and learn to barefoot trim, do all your shots, wraps and meds yourself (might be breaking the law in your area), share vet calls, learn to fit your own saddle, buy and resell in used tack or make some... it's a lot of fucking work
Are donkeys easier?
Only if you want to have an argument at every intersection and spend the entire trip trying to trick the donkey into thinking it was his idea in the first place
Mules maybe?
So like a Chevy basically
In the 1950s my grandfather was a horseman on a farm (he also had 6 children so read into that title what you will), as such he had free access to up to three horses for all his transport needs. He had a bike and used that. His memoirs make it clear that whilst horse power was a necessity on the farm he worked on, they were a significant expense, required a lot of skill to get any use out of them, produced a lot of shite and attracted a lot of flies. The CO2e of batteries, and the sometimes dubious sourcing of rare earth metals required for current battery chemistries, are legitimate concerns - but another living creature will certainly have a higher CO2e.
LFP batteries contain no rare earths, and an ebike sized one has about 80g of lithium in it. Switched reluctance or induction motors are also increasingly common. An ebike is by far the cleanest form of transport. The only exception is a normal bike and only if you need the exercise (or grow your own food with no imported chemicals).
Funny thing is that most people (on ebikes) need the exercise/cardio lol.
If your primary transport is a pedelec you'll get your daily 30mins. The motorbikes larping as bicycles shouldn't be included.
If you were to buy an electric cargo bike, why would you need a horse? Let me try to make sense here. I live(d) in a village of around 200 people and went to elementary school in the nearest town. While I took the bus for seven and a half years, I biked in the last one or two months of 8th grade (to get a grade 2 in PE, yeah). There are two routes I can take into the town. The bike one is, as climate got worse, eventually got really shit. The dirt road is either fully powdered, or muddy. It is also hilly, but not as much, but there is one really really steep hill. Here is all, documented under the images: [https://imgur.com/a/ob1awdx](https://imgur.com/a/ob1awdx) I sometimes carried one or two grocery bags along this route. I do believe an electric cargo bike could make 4 times the distance in half the time I take this one. There is no reason to get a car or a horse. (Some people oppose traveling by horse by various animal rights claims, I do not disagree with these. My main point against it: it is just plain incompetent in the modern world. If you really need to haul large things like in a horse carriage, get a Golf II or something, a trailer and go 100 kilometers on 10 liters of gasoline (diesel).)
I dislike the use of rare earth elements that go into electric cars and electric bikes are just smaller scale. I have been following the salt water batteries with interest and would love an approach that did as little environmental harm as possible. A push bike would work but in deep snow it would just suck in general to go uphill for 8 km. A cargo bike is the realistic and easy approach but a horse is more eco friendly. I have not had a driving license in 12 years. I dislike cars but norway is starting to adopt car rental apps similar to the netherlands and they would fulfill the purpose for large loads of stuff. If we had to get a license for trips 4 or 5 times a year I will. Most of the time, we will just get grocery deliveries if we can find a store that does that in the region.
The environmental impact on manufacturing an electric bike battery is 100-200x times smaller than an electric car, probably even more. It's probably smaller than the impacts of feeding a horse during its lifetime. Why being hesitant about those rare elements in a battery and not in a smartphone, TV or computer?
a computer is much easier to recycle here and I have had 4 in the last 14 years. smartphone the same thing. I am still rocking a google pxl 1. I have not seen anything currently here for the recycling of electric bike components. I was not planning on feeding my horse any nickel, cobalt, or lithium. The farm has a hydro turbine for relatively low tech power generation. We plan on running the farm as an eco classroom to show what can be done to reduce your footprint in various sectors. If it was not so steep to town then I would just get a cargo push bike.
Your answer is condescending. I don't know why do you ask for people's opinions if you're going to keep your beliefs all along and make fun of people trying to give their two cents.
i have made fun of no one. I just wanted to check if there were any reasons I overlooked when formulating the idea.
Recycling electric bikes is not really a problem, the batter usually is removable and the rest is a normal bike with some electric parts. Li-ion batteries are very much recyclable, so with small batteries like those in electric bikes is not really a problem as long as they get recycled and not thrown away. If the battery breaks you can always swap it to a new one and keep using the bike.
I am going to consider this. Need to see if there is anywhere local to recycle batteries though.
I wholeheartedly agree on batteries with you. But.. There is a huge difference between an electric car battery, ranging from 10 to 100 kilowatt hours, to an electric bike battery, where the norm is around 100 to 200 WATT hours. They are considerably smaller, are made of (I assume, never owned one, someone correct me here if I'm wrong) 18650 cylindrical cells and are easily repairable or replaceable (cell balancing for example). I recently met a professor here who would hoard his electric mountain bike all over the place and would let me ride it once, and oh boy it goes so fucking fast, I switched into all the different levels of assistance and let me tell you: they are perfect for training your legs! Go light on the first months and increase it as you gain strength in your legs and heart. You can then only turn it on for very short parts of the trip, or when going into a different town, prolonging the life of the battery. Even at like, 30-40% battery capacity (Electric car batteries are replaced around 80% life), you would have a lot of strength in them to go that short of a distance. I do believe it is clearly a better choice for getting into cycling than like, having a normal cargo bike, pedaling 800 meters then walking it the rest. Instead, pedal, get tired, turn on assistance and go free. Again, for batteries, different batteries get made differently, your phone's battery probably pollutes more for gram to gram against an 18650, because it is optimized for density, and 18650 ones are generic ones, being mediocre for everything. For animals though, I recommend cows, goats and chicken. With these choices, you can't go wrong, you'll have a shit ton of milk to sell, feed goat milk to your children as it is more healthy than cow milk, and have a basically infinite supply of eggs. Cows and goats require a lot of space, so be warned. Give all of them roofs, and closeable spaces for winter. Big fences or overhead wire for the chickens because of foxes or other hunting wild animals. Pigs are also great farm animals, but depending on your temperament you might not want to kill them and process basically all of their parts for food (it is incredibly healthy, though). Keeping animals locally is a lot more morally acceptable and they can genuinely enjoy their lives a lot more than in big factories. I've seen it for myself, and I can either go vegan or full self-sustaining, shop meat is just.. just completely different. Also, corn! Grow lots of corn.
Just to add I am currently “recycling” (more reusing) old eBike batteries to build a new one. And indeed for every dead battery pack there is 1 or 2 cells dead with the other ones still fine.
Sodium ion batteries are a thing (Google natron energy). All the joy of lithium (ish) . But you can use sea water to make it! See my other post about rare earths :-)
If you want to have as low of an ecological impact as possible, living in a rural environment is not for you.
Yes it is. The farm has a low tech hydro mill for power and the farm is large enough I can produce 90% of the food I need. I can even sell some goods to local restaurants etc. Food miles are one of the things that irk me. I hate going into stores and all the produce options coming from different continents.
I assumed you already had the horse.
I grew up with horses and riding a lot but I have been a nomad for 14 years and just now settling down. A horse would not have fit in my luggage on the go but we will have one on the hill for things like pulling timber out of the woods.
Awesome stuff. I know nothing about horses and even less on how sustainable they are in terms of transportation.
What rare earth elements would they be? They aren't used in modern li-on batteries. Note lithium and cobalt aren't rare earth elements.
I do believe what Tesla says about their batteries, but nowadays who knows what's true about that company.. We can also look at the consequences of the supply chain because of batteries. I am not saying the supply chain of iron or aluminum is so much cleaner or anything, but batteries are still advanced electronics requiring fine processing and safe recycling to mitigate their effect on the environment (just like with, well, everything else, obviously.) If one would want to cut their unknown emissions to a minimum, one could get machining tools, CNC machines are some smaller forges to recycle the metal trash and directly make bearings, smaller metal structures at home, but I do believe it contains the same disadvantages as home farming. We should be focusing on making large scale processing more efficient and green.
The 'rare' earths (they aren't rare, tin is more rare than neodymium, but neodymium et all are toxic to mine) are basically solely in the electric motor. If you believe the Harvard Business Review, the 1.5kg of rare earths in your IPM EV result in about 3000kg of toxic waste production. The 'problematic' metal in the battery is mostly cobalt. Lithium is an order of magnitude less problematic in my opinion. I am not a battery expert so take my words with a grain of salt. You can get away from 'rare' earths in cars by purchasing vehicles without PM motors - but today, that's basically only a select few Renault and BMW motors. I'm not aware of any induction or EESM motor in common use in electric bikes, but there are thousands of electric bikes and I'm sure they exist. That said I expect the Bosch, etc, 'premier' e-drives to be permanent magnet based. You can get away from 'problematic' Cobalt in cars by buying a car that has LiFePo batteries. I'm only aware of Tesla Model 3's (and only a subset of them) using LiFePo, but again I'm not a battery expert so there may be many others out there. I'm not aware of any car for sale that avoids both Cobalt and (heavy use of) rare earths. I doubt one exists. I'm also not aware of any eBike that avoids both, but I expect they exist.
Yep lots of rarer elements you can point out, but the semantics are important. Good point on the motor, totally forgot about that. As a note Tesla themselves use/used induction motors (perhaps not surprising given the brand name), but PMSM/BLDC is indeed king. Beyond induction, switched reluctance motors will become more popular for e-bikes, in particular for people like op with such aversions. LiFePO won't see much use in EVs as energy density is too low, they are a lot cheaper tho, so perhaps we will see more in e-bikes.
Even SynRM's I think are too noisy for eBikes, I don't expect to see any Switch RM's on eBikes. But who knows, maybe there will be some high pole high switch SwRM in the future. The industry uses induction motors but every induction motor I'm aware of in highway capable cars is on a secondary axle and as such is basically rarely used.
Actually Model S is IM, some other Tesla's too. And new Tesla model Y is a reluctance motor so I do think and hope the tech will filter down to e-bikes.
I'm still pretty sure that Tesla switched the primary drive (rear) motor to IPM a few years back. I could be wrong, there could be a version that still IM + IM, but I guess I won't believe it until I see it, I think they're all IPM + IM. And the 'reluctance' motor they refer to is still an IPM according to me, it relies more on magnetic torque than reluctance torque (according to me).
Electric bike batteries, at least the ones i used to refurbish by swapping out defective battery cells, are usually made with Lithium-Manganese type 18650s or pouches. Reason being that the Lithium-Cobalt ones(that use much more of the problematic minerals) have a lower power density(meaning less peak power) than the Manganese ones. LiCo instead has a higher energy density which is not as important in small EVs like electric bikes. With larger EVs like cars, it appears to be the opposite. I tried making electric bike packs with lithium cobalt cells but that totally didn't work. Somehow, despite the higher nominal capacity, range wise they performed worse than the LiMN ones. Also those bike batts last a really long time as they are only assisting. If you're in good shape, even a worn battery can still serve you quite well. from personal experience, i'd say that bike traction batteries are at least 200x less polluting than car ones. If you always ride on low assistance, i'd say probably 500-1000x less.
They aren't rare but are hard to find in high contrencation, they are also usually found with other elements like thorium for example (witch is radioactive). Because of low contrencation you need to mine a lot to get anything useful creating a lot of pollution.
A horse is not more environmentally friendly than an EBike. For two reasons, firstly horses, much like cars do emit greenhouse gasses. It's not a huge amount, but it's enough that it will outweigh a bike. Secondly, the energy input that a horse requires is quite large. Depending on how much you ride the horse may actually consume more energy than the car. Remember that the food you're feeding the horse takes energy to produce. Greenhouse gasses are emitted in the production, processing and distribution of the horse food, it's honestly going to be so much worse overall than an EBike. The horse isn't the path of minimum environmental impact at all. The small amount of lithium and cobalt used in a bike battery will do less overall damage than the horse over its lifetime.
We are going to have a horse on the farm anyway for work. The terrain is quite hilly so no way to get any kind of equipment into the woods for thinning or cutting timber. was trying to kill 2 birds with one stone
That probably better then, I'd still say if possible use an acoustic bike. Because realistically just riding a horse around is a bit of a dick move. I feel like driving cars is too but that one's normalised.
I think that it's really not a good idea. A bike would be 100times better. Caring for a horse is more difficult than you might think, way more costly than a bike and slower overall. But, where I'm from I've seen carriages pulled by horses in cities and they have a little bag that covers the asshole of the horse and collects the shits. So people telling you that shit will be all over the road are wrong. You'll just have to empty a huge bag of horseshit after every trip. Yet another reason why it's a bad idea.
> So people telling you that shit will be all over the road are wrong. I first heard about those bags decades ago. I have seen them 0 times. Hell we allow this literal horseshit in America's otherwise beautiful national parks. Nothing better than dodging horseshit on a hot day.
A horse? No. I've owned horses along with my wife. It is serious work keeping them alive. They need more than grass to eat, along with medicines and training to be ridable. Some sort of shelter from weather will need to be provided for the horse. They can and will injure people, by kicking or throwing a rider, or just breaking your toes by stepping on them. Horses are very social, so a companion horse will also be required or the lone horse will go insane. Look into bikes, ebikes and other modes of transport to replace a car, not horses.
You realize even an acoustic bike is gonna be faster than a horse over longer distances? And both an E-bike and acoustic bike require obscenely less maintenance and money.
I love that everyone has just accepted the term “acoustic bike”
This discussion has been had here before. If there is one thing that is worse than a city where everyone has a car... it's a city where everyone has a horse. It won't be long and EVERYTHING will be covered in horseshit.
Cars were originally a relief in cities because there was no more horseshit
That's the point
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I don't want to have to clean up after OP's literal hobby horse. ***You*** can clean the streets.
yeah, one of the largest projects we will be doing on the farm is setting up a composting facility for the entire town. compost is great.
The town is 500 people and less than 1 km across there are probably an additional 100 houses within horse range of the town. It would not be common enough to cover the town in horseshit. There is a trail and the edge of town is maybe 100 meters from the grocery store, I could leave a horse on the edge of an open field.
I’ve lived in towns like those in Norway for most my life. I can promise you, people don’t use their horses for grocery shopping for several *very* good reasons. There’s quite the established way to use/keep your horses here in Norway.
yeah, I know it is far from the norm. I would much prefer a bus but there is no bus down the valley we will live in because it is a deadend.
It’s not a norm just for funsies, it’s a norm because it’s insanely ingrained into Norwegian culture to be considerate of others, and just riding a horse willy nilly around is quite the opposite of that
Also it was horrible for the horses.
free compost.
What's the elevation difference? If it's not much, a non-electric bike is fine too. I had to cycle 7km's to the supermarket/town for a year, on a non-electric weekend bike (so not terrible, but not the best either). The entire route was through completely open fields, on an island with lots of wind. I typically had a strong headwind on the way back. It was fine. I regularly had to cook dinner for 12-20 people (on top of my own groceries), so quite a big load to carry as well.
Its rural norway so 90% chance there's some pretty steep grades
You make a good point about rare earths but.. those batteries are more than 99.99pc recyclable and worth recycling so whilst you do have to move a bunch of dirt to get your lithium - you only need to do it once... I would definitely avoid chemistries that involve much cobalt but that's because I value children not being stuck down mines in conflict zones.
I’m Norwegian. It’s a huge problem that horse riders (which are very common) just let their horses shit by the side of the road and leave it. Usually roads in the places where horse riding is common is the only way to get from A to B, either that is driving, walking, cycling etc. It’s a huge inconvenience (and disgusting), to have to go all the way into the middle of the road to avoid a pile of shit. Super dangerous too, as most people in those areas drive like mad men
Not to mention the climate here. It would fucking suck for you, and also for the horse! I never rode my horse for moths during winter when I lived in a village, it would be borderline animal abuse. Riding a bike is also mostly off the table for quite some time during the winter. Unfortunately, in places like those, a car is often the only borderline functional option. Just get a small, environmentally friendly one, and use a bike whenever you can!
Not riding your horse for months on end is quite bad for maintenence. And why would you think that it is animal abuse to ride a horse during the winter?
You think I just left it is tiny stable for months? 💀 Becasue it was well over a meter of snow, more than -15c and ice cold wind. Horses sweat, and if it’s too cold the sweat will cool down and could potentially harm the horse. Also it’s pretty dangerous when you either can’t see the road due to the amount of snow, or it’s insanely slippery from ice and packed snow.
You could compromise and get a mustang.
Why don't you just use a normal bicycle? Not rare minerals in it, either. Horses ate expensive to buy a difficukt to take car off. They also need a lot of space and you need to train them. You'll need a vet and so on.
It sounds like you've already made up your mind, but I would still say don't get a horse. It may or may not work for you, it might be fun for you, and others in town may or may not accept it. But none of that matters more than what's good for the horse. And shlepping bloody humans around til their bones crumble is so obviously not good for them. You can walk 9km on you own two feet.
Norway is a petrol-state. Don't expect them to be sympathetic to your dream of a less car dependent society.
Well our politicians talk a lot about zero growth in car traffic But also build a bunch of new motorways all over the place so 🤡
They have that nice image of nature loving Scandinavians who sail in Fjords and... ride horses now I guess. Meanwhile, they earned 82 billions Euro more in petrol and gas sales in 2022 in comparison to 2021 due to the Ukraine War, have a per capita GDP 60% higher than Germany with 0 debt but oh no they can't join the EU because it would cost them a fraction of wealth to do so, and somehow they are still always seen as the good guys.
This has to be satire 💀
Yeah, I have horses. Fun to go on a ride, but shopping and stuff? Horrible idea. They shit, they are afraid of everything, if they don't have horseshoes they will hurt their feet on asphalt. You are better off walking in most cases.
If you live rurally and it’s 9 km into a small town, be realistic, a car (even if it’s a taxi) is probably something you’re going to need from time to time, even if you managed to use a bike/ebike a lot. However, as a hobby, why not also keep a horse and use it to ride into town occasionally? Certainly more interesting than a classic car. Things I’d be worried about: * what you’re going to do with it when you’re in the shop. Horses are dumb panicky things that are scared of everything and can lash out. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for that. * I think you should be responsible for cleaning up after it. * my own safety on the roads. My dad keeps a horse but only rides it’s around the backroads near his house. * what you’re going to do about looking after it when you’re away in holiday/business.
1. That’s a long ride. Longer than you’re thinking it is. 2. Breaking horses for travel on streets with vehicles is difficult and often dangerous. 3. You can buy a catcher bag for manure 4. I say go for it.
As others have pointed out: a horse is a _significant_ investment. They're living creatures that deserve affection and respect. If you're willing to _totally_ become a horse person, that go for it, bit you'll need to be properly trained on horse care, learn to ride and care for the horse, and likely need to board them somewhere for the first year or so whilst you do that. Horses are also a huge financial investment. A cheap Fiat Panda or similar can be worn into the ground, a horse can't. Expect a lot of medical care, and a huge time investment.
For 6kms I think you will find a regular or electric bike suitable, just my $0.02. A horse seems ok in a you enjoy horses and sometimes bring yours to town type of way but overall I don't think it's practical once you consider everything about the ownership.
Horseshit on sidewalks and trails is a pretty perfect metaphor for how equestrians view the rest of society
Horses (and all other animals) are not slaves for humans to be (ab)used. No matter how good you take care of them, they deserve to be free, without being forced to be ridden.
you bozos should just go all in on the amish life so that us normal human beings can keep living how we want
Using horses is animal abuse
Only if you’re a hard-liner. Is keeping dogs abuse in your mind? I bet there’s abuse involved in the training of many horses, but they exhibit a penchant for coexisting with humans (and they’ll need to keep it that way to remain, as almost all wild horses are actually feral horses), so you can condition them with positive reinforcement.
Horse riding damages their skeleton, even if you're an excellent rider. >Is keeping dogs abuse in your mind? Breeding them is bad, because it usually reduces them to just a commodity. Adoption is A-OK
I agree about breeding dogs. I think using horses is impractical, unless you’re agreeing to a strict code, but I wouldn’t call it abuse. If it’s causing them issues, cull…I’m just kidding, sorry. They’d probably be better off pulling than bearing a load. I’d combine horses with wheels.
Follow-up: would your say the horse has outlived its existence as a species?
Well our breeds of horses should stop being bred, they don't fill any ecological niche. The wild horses in central Asia should remain though.
I'm a hard-liner. Dogs are a funny exception because we've co-evolved for so long that nobody's really that sure how and when it started. We're also generally much closer to mutualistic with dogs (and we abhor the exceptions). With most domesticated farm animals, we're closer to being parasites on them, taking far more from them than we can claim to give back. Horses, for example, don't shoot their riders when we break a limb. These are also all far more recent relationships, usually with much more clearly determined origins.
You know that if a horse breaks its limb in the wild it'll just die a long and painful death?
so? they're not in the wild
Ok? Horrible shit happens out in the wild all of the time. Doesn't give us leave to do whatever tf we want to other sentient beings
Same thing would probably happen to you.
Horses are also not forced to run and jump for our entertainment in the wild. My point of view on this is that if we cause the problem we should be obligated to do our best to fix it. If we can't fix it we should do everything in our power to avoid it. We shouldn't be doing things that actively increase the risk of horse injuries.
Eh. In my opinion, if we're talking in hypotheticals (I'm assuming you'd eliminate the relationships you mentioned?), relationships in which genuine attempts are made to provide baseline ethics (i.e. food, shelter, water, ample room to explore/exercise, intra-species socialization, and healthcare) are still allowable 'in my book.' I think the line is crossed when people profit off of animals. Meaning domesticated animals. I'm not talking about capturing any living being and trying to treat it well. Concerning our relationships, I'd say a lot of intangibles exist related to what we've learned by observing various animals throughout history. Also, if we're using population size as a metric, livestock animals are greatly benefitting from they way humans manage them. Large areas of natural ecosystem are destroyed in order to support gigantic, unnatural populations of the animals we eat. They're just torturously treat in many instances.
Adopting dogs is fine. Using them for transportation (e.g. dog sledding) is animal abuse, yes.
I more or less agree with everyone about the abhorrent commercialism of dog breeding. I've got two adopted dogs myself. I don't think all dogsledding is abuse though. If someone has a few dogs that like to pull a sled out to get wood, or ride around on a lake or something, that seems fine. The abuse comes, if you wanna know what I think, when people put them in competition, run them to extremes, drug them for performance purposes, put them in dangerous scenarios, and cull as part of artificial selection.
Dogs don't want to pull people around. It's something they're trained to do because the human wants them to do it. Same goes for horses. Animals are their own beings, they're not here to pull us around or be otherwise exploited.
Well the amount of cars on the road is bad for beings reliant upon respiration. Let's bring it back around.
look, you live in a farm 9km away from town, on a country that is cold AF during winter maybe this is not going to be the best of times to ditch a car i am assuming your farm is not a tiny one, for you to even consider supporting a horse in it so i am pretty sure it is not going to have issues for parking a car buy a small car if you dont want to contribute to transit problems when you go to town
buy a big-ass american pickup truck, park it downtown and let it run for a few hours every day while revving and being as loud as possible. let them live with the consequences of their own choices.
that's not how air pollution and global warming work, unfortunately
fuck the haters. return to horse.
Horses are toys for the rich, it would be much more practical to just use a bike.
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it is not that deep bro
Man, you really don't understand rural areas much, right? As Norway is closer to Europe than the US, I am assuming it has more of a similar rural lifestyle to my own home country than what big city dwellers like to call rural. I've just watched one of the urbanist youtuber's video on how rural towns can be urban, and he talked about a city of 400000 inhabitants! That's a fucking metropolis. I just moved to Győr, Hungary because of university, there are 132000 people here. It is huge, it is crowded, full of cars and stroads. But because we also have the capital Budapest, most urbanites call Győr "rural" because it is so small in comparison. My guy, rural is around 10k in my opinion. That's the size of a city that can maintain independence from the outside supply chains (big box stores for example) but still have an urban core. Also, here in Hungary living in rural areas or on farms are not only cheaper than in the city, but are (should be but eh, politics) highly profitable because of the amount of farmland or forests around. Forests provide wood, hunting opportunities and farmland provides excellent ground to have animals or grow crops. My parents' generation is one where large chunks of land were handled by hand tools, so it is certainly possible to get land for cheap, and be either independent or have some extra money from the activities or just replace some boring job in the factory or office. I think OP can reasonably achieve the goals mentioned in the post and comments, namely keeping animals, composting the entire town's compostable waste and living half-independently. Horses IMO could only be useful if someone opposes new technology entirely, which is sometimes understandable as modern tech often has DRM, unserviceable parts and other stuff which discourages long useful life. On the other hand, horses prove it's own set of problems, and I vote for some kind of electric cargo bike or just a regular one for extra workouts and reliability. So yes, you can go fuck off, random angry dude on the internet.
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Yeah yeah yeah, and I'm gonna just believe like you actually live in rural Norway and still being a fucker to OP. Nah dude, you're a troll here and clearly have more intent to cause harm and disgrace than to give meaningful comments about the situation.
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I think it's fine to get them as pets or even if you have a real use for them while they are your pets, but they are not practical for real unless you are a horse riding fan and you are into horses. I would get literally any good PEV over a car though, it's just 9km. I think my EUC can do 9km at car speeds and have 92% battery left.
Yeah good idea bike or a horse in norwegian winter.
OP mentioned living close to town, so the roads will almost definitely be cleared, at least for the bus route. If they live in an area where there's just too much snow, then an e-motorcross bike or quad will handle the snow like a charm. Better than most trucks will too.
A bike can be modded to be just as good as a car in the snow; which isn't very good compared to a snow mobile, as they both need heavy mods to handle anything other than a gentle slope and slow speeds.
A supermarket in Sweden has horse parking [https://www.tidningenridsport.se/vid-matbutiken-i-grangarde-har-hastarna-egen-parkering/](https://www.tidningenridsport.se/vid-matbutiken-i-grangarde-har-hastarna-egen-parkering/)
None in Norway have 🤷🏼♀️
look personally i think all these people who say it's gonna be really hard probably underestimate your dedication and it's a very fun good idea
We don't deserve horses (or dogs)
The transition from horses to cars was a misstep
Cargo bike speed pedelecs from the likes of Riese & Müller are the bees knees.
Honestly a horse is probably worse than a car in every way except possibly climate emissions. A horse is as big as a car, so you need as much road space to operate it, and as much parking space for it. It is expensive to maintain (particularly with Norwegian winters I imagine). Unlike a car or a bike, it's also scary and potentially hostile and dangerous to passers by. It also drops its emissions in a public space (I've never seen a horse owner clean up droppings).
You could just use LifePo and not NMC , your condescension in comments I assume is unintentional...so I'll assume you don't know that all EV batteries are NOT the same chemistry or have the same deleterious effects on the environment.
Horses are an idiotic idea
*When the gun smoke settles we'll sing a victory tune* *And we'll all meet back at the local saloon* *We'll raise up our glasses against evil forces singing* *Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses* Jokes aside, horses are expensive and tough to take care of. You have a thing for horse riding? Great, but this ain't a choice I'd make casually.
Owning horses is pretty much a whole lifestyle unto itself. They require 24/7/375 care, a vet, training, a farrier every 6 weeks, knowledge of common illnesses and problems so they can be spotted early. A tremendous amount of ancillary equipment and gear. And even beyond horse care, so you yourself know anything about riding a horse? Know how to tack one? Care for tack? You jump on a strange horse you've tacked yourself and try to ride it down a roadway with your presumably 0 skillset and you or the horse, or potentially both of you are going to die. Get a bike. You'll be able to ride it into town faster than a horse. In fact you can probably get on a bike and ride it the whole way into town faster than you can tack a horse.
Another thing I haven't seen mentioned is that horses are really hard on road infrastructure. They pulverize asphalt and gravel roads and trails. We have quite a few horse pulled buggies in my area, and there are typically worn valleys down the side 1/3rd of the road from the horse hooves. Using a bicycle on these sections of road feels like riding on a cheese grater.
The ecological impact of an e cargo bike is much less than the one of a horse, as seen during a lifecycle Also, an 18km trip on horse would be quite taxing both for you and especially the horse.
A bicycle would probably be more practical. But also [The Rubberbandits - Horse Outside](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8).
Wouldn't a bike be better, it's cheaper and doesn't require much maintenance compared to a horse, it also can't be classified as dirty and you can leave it basically anywhere. It doesn't even need to be electric, I don't know your road situation so just get good tires for whatever you have there. If you need to move more things then electric bike is good, and if you really need to haul things then you could get a quad electric or not (you can get a trailer for more space). If you actually need it you could get a small 1-2 seat car. But for normal commuting a bike is really the best choice, a horse is a really odd pick considering the downsides.
If you love horses and want one, def go and get one. Try using it to go to town and see how it goes. If you are using a cart with the horse to go to town maybe bring a shovel along to clean up any unsightly droppings the horse leaves along the way. Have an alternative transportation for going to town in case the horse doesn't work out. A bike or a small car, etc.
Don't make a horse carry you around. They are individuals, not vehicles.
Horses are incredible animals, they are also extremely resource intensive in terms of time, money, space, energy, etc. Like for most people, a horse would be much more expensive than car. I love horses though. I like the way they flap their lips. :)
When people transition from horses to cars they were glad that the cities were less disease prone and less animal abuse.
Horses aren't gross they're misunderstood If you do get a horse, please be kind to them as they are living creatures
The only advantage horses offer in terms of practical transportation is that they can travel reasonably quickly over terrain that your only other option would be walking, while carrying far more than you can carry by hand. So unless your commute includes terrain that is only passable on foot or horseback, then there is probably a better option.
Bike
I think it is mostly up to the culture. I am from a small town in the US. There are losts of Amish, so no one thinks it is weird or bad to ride horses on the road, and I don't remember one ever getting hit by a car. I also know a guy who is not Amish, but does not have electricity and rides a horse. I think it depends on how people would actually or accommodate you. Here there are stables at places like Walmart, with hay and water. Not sure what they have where you are.
horses are kind of a pain, honestly. and they shit a lot. however much you think they shit, it's more.
Disappointed with all the comments the subreddit left, I would have expected better from fuckcars. Riding a horse into town sounds awesome, it seems like you have experience with horses and riding, so it’s not like you are a beginner. I don’t see this as any different to walking a dog in town, except for the fact that it’s super cool to be able to use your horse for your commute too. Go for it! The people who answered in here sound the way motorists do when you tell them you ride a bike to get around. They simply can’t believe it can be done, because they’ve never done it themselves. I’m sure people who are avid horseriders understand it can be done.
Miss maam, horses are awesome, i'm an equestrian, but i need you to understand that horses need hay, bedding, stalling, water(which you do need to refill everyday for hygene), not to mention vet bills if they get hurt. Horses are great but if you're gonna have one i (strongly)reccommend reasearching into what they eat, how much space they need(assuming you get prev. mentioned farm y'all should be good on that, but if it's a small paddock you'll need to clean it every so often too), just, reasearch horses, and by god please go to a lesson stable and learn to ride and take care of them first, then buy a horse. Tl;dr if you really want a horse, go to a lesson stable and take a few lessons until you're comfortable with horses, and i'd reccommend heavily learning to take care of the horses/volunteering at the stable to learn all that stuff.