This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 9:45 am and is filed under Saddle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
The western saddle for the draft horse is designed differently than a western saddle for a regular sized horse. Light horses use a saddle with a 6.5 to 7 inch gullet on average. many different tree styles are available in these sizes such as wade, western pleasure, roping, etc.
The tree types available for draft size trees is much more limited. The key features designed into Draft Horse Western Saddles are a much wider gullet and flatter angles to the bars. The biggest comcern is gullet width. many draft horses are not only very wide but also very flat through the wither area. Typical gullet widths used on these type of horses is 9 inch and 10 inch gullets. While there are several companies that produce so-called draft saddles with 8 inch gullets the saddles of this size are really nothing more than a wide tree version of typical western saddle. There are 2 or 3 companies that produce western saddles with 9 inch and 10 inch gullets and to truly have a good fit these are the size that is needed.