The chromosome count for a mule includes all 62 from its donkey sire, plus one more from its dam, a horse with 64 chromosomes. The result? Partners like this team, shown here making short work of an uphill skid during a harvest of high-value hardwoods in Henderson County.
Primordial eons ago E. asinus, the domestic donkey, and E. caballus, the domestic horse, went their separate genetic ways. Not long after H. sapien entered the evolutionary scene, humanity’s fascination with merging these equid species forever took hold. Today researchers are working to better understand both possible offspring from such a union: the mule and the hinny. In the U.S. the mule dominates this cross-bred world, while its reciprocal, the horse-sired hinny, is more common in South America and Europe. Recent findings comparing blood chemistry, for example, reveal how parental influence on hybrids can vary with respect to heart rate, respiration rate and body temperature. Armed with this emerging insight, better care is more possible for these skilled farm and forest workers. (Source: Pilot Study, Amy McClean PhD, University of California, Davis)
Research from 2011 provides an important framework for figuring out how an investment in horse power will influence a farm’s overall contribution of greenhouse gas emissions.
In considering an investment in on-farm horsepower, displacing fossil fuels to meet the energy needs of the operation is often a high priority. A fair analysis, however, should acknowledge that horse-keeping requires resources that cause emissions of greenhouse gases. Investigators from Germany examined this topic in the European Journal of Forest Research to better understand the value of using draft horses for logging. With life-cycle assumptions for 11 variables, the researchers established a basis for emission benchmarks in four categories of horse care. In the above case annual emissions came to 1,770 kilograms of “carbon dioxide equivalents.” This means the imaginary horse evaluated in the study must offset roughly one-half gallon of No. 2 diesel fuel each day to earn its way to net-zero status. Worth noting is that between feed and pasture maintenance, this number-crunching effort clearly ties most emissions to basic horse nourishment. One conclusion? The “easy keepers” of the equine world could be especially competitive when it comes to cutting ag emissions.
