In our quest to figure out what we want for a front sidebacker lazy strap, we discovered a use for a heavy duty strap.
We have been using what ever straps are around and long enough to keep front traces from dragging, and lone enough to let the better fitted harness do its thing regarding taking weight off the collar. One set of straps is a pair of cow neck straps that I had for my steers when they were smaller. They are at least 1.5″ wide and triple thick with a roller buckle and a D ring. These came in rather handy today after we packed up a pair with plow, disk and stone boat to plow for a blueberry patch the next town over. We brought everything that we thought that we would need extra evener, bridle, lines, etc. But we forgot the jockey yokes 🙁 We did not want to go back, so we proceeded to use the cattle collars that were on one harness, a couple extra hame straps and a pair of heavy duty double snaps to rig the horse collars to the neck yoke. We put a cattle neck strap thru both lazy strap rings and used a hame strap to keep the big strap from cutting their wind, the double snap attached to D on the cattle neck strap and to the neck yoke.
It was safe and worked well enough to get the job done, steering was compromised compared to a tight properly adjusted D-ring harness set up. I don’t know that we will eventually order heavy duty lazy straps, but forgetting jockey yokes and needing to improvise could be an argument to have them. I think for now we will return the spare set of jockey yokes to their place in the gooseneck of the trailer (everything was cleaned out recently for a beef show).
