That’s just what Dave Skinner has been doing, with eight-year-old Harry, to carry out work not done this way in Britain for decades.
Dave and the French Comtois draught, who is more usually seen working in woodlands, have been chain-harrowing the bed of the river Coln, on the Fairford Estate in Gloucestershire.
River keeper Mark Cameron, who works for the landowner, the Ernest Cook Trust, came up with the idea of asking for Harry to help.
“The action lifts the silt that clogs the gravels, allowing clean, well-oxygenated water to flow through them, improving the riverbed for spawning trout and grayling,” a spokesperson for the trust said.
(Image credit: Jake Newman/The Ernest Cook Trust)
“It is a process more usually carried out by machine, but using a draught horse reduces the damage to the riverbank and the risk of fuel spills.”
The spokesperson said a horse can harrow 50m of the river bed in 10 minutes, whereas it would take a river keeper using traditional rakes and jets most of a day.
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He will return roughly fortnightly to work on stretches of the Coln until the start of the fish spawning season in November.
Mark said: “Harry was in and off up the river like he had been doing it for ever. The rush of excitement was incredible, to be walking through the river ahead of three quarters of a ton of working horse was amazing. Not a single day on the river is taken for granted but this really did feel like a particularly special moment.”
The Ernest Cook Trust, which owns 10 estates from Dorset to Cumbria, is a charity that uses the income generated by its land to support education of children and young people in the countryside.
Eleanor is an experienced journalist who spent over eight years working for local and national newspapers before joining H&H as news editor in March 2016. Passionate about equine welfare and exposing the truth, Eleanor has reported on all aspects of the industry, from Brexit to anti-bullying campaigns, and from dressage rules to mules. Her sport of choice is showjumping, in which she competes her own horses, and she also enjoys reporting at local jumping shows through to international championships.
