How to Make Driving Harnesses for a Goat
There are many ways you can go about attaining a goat harness.You can opt to buy a goat harness, or if you are feeling industrious, you can try making your own. Cost for materials for a goat harness should be no more than $50, which would save quite a bit of money. Then comes the tricky part of training your goat to drive.
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Things You'll Need
- Sewing machine
- Thread
- Foam Padding
- 3 Straps with buckles
- Tubular Nylon Webbing
- Leather/ sheepskin
- Materials for sewing leather
Instructions
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Making the harness
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1
Measure the dimensions of your goat. You will need the goat's measurements around their chest laterally as well as their hind. You will also need measurements from their neck to their chest, from the neck to under their armpits, and from the top of their hind to their hip.
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2
Lay out your leather, which will house the foam padding for the pulling part of the driving harness. The leather casing should be long enough to wrap around the goat laterally from the middle of the chest to 4-5 inches past their armpits on either side. Insert the foam into the leather, you will want at least 3 inches of foam to put in the leather. Sew up the leather and attach D-rings on either end of the leather casing. Make a similar leather housing with foam for the hind section of the goat, wrapping laterally around the hips until it is 4-5 inches past the hip where the leg connects with the torso. Put D-rings on the end of this section as well.
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3
Feed your straps through the D-rings so that the buckles are in the middle of the chest strap and the hind strap on either side. You will need two straps to make the harness a complete circle around the goat. Check to see that you can indeed tighten the harness so that it fits your goat and that you can tighten and loosen the harness some using the buckles on the straps.
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4
Measure out your tubular webbing and cut it at lengths equaling the measurements taken from the base of the neck all the around the arm pits. Also measure out webbing for the similar measurement at the hind section of the goat. Connect the neck-to-armpit webbing to the leather chest strap as it will be wrapped all the way around the goat. Leave some breathing room. Connect the hind section in a similar fashion. As it wraps around it will pass both sides of the chest and hind harnesses, connecting to both of them and back to the dorsal section of the goat.
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5
Measure out one more strap with buckle so that it connects the webbing loops. Connect the strap with buckle to the webbing loops so that the strap is running along the ridgeline of the back. You should be able to adjust this section of the harness now as well.
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1
Tips & Warnings
Follow the old carpenter's adage, measure twice, cut once.
