Draft horse saddles are built to accommodate the wider, thicker, conformation typical of a draft horse. Below are new and used draft horse saddles for sale.
Below: A saddle made to fit a draft horse. This one’s from HorseSaddleShop.
horsesaddleshop.com
Saddles for draft horses come in a variety of types (English, Western, etc.) and styles (trail horse saddles, dressage saddles, and more). Please scroll down a little lower on this page for a checklist of good things to know before buying a draft horse saddle.
Below: A saddled draft horse.
From eBay and HorseSaddleShop
See more draft horse saddles on HorseSaddleShop
See more draft horse saddles on eBay
About Draft Horse Saddles
Draft horses are a type of horse that is tall, wide, heavily muscled, powerfully built, and bred to pull or carry loads that would be too heavy for other types of horses. Historically, draft horses have been used for a wide variety of labors including farming, logging, pulling carriages and wagons, as well as riding horses, including war horses.
Today, draft horses are still used for labor but are also commonly used for recreational showing, driving, and riding.
Types of saddles built for draft horses vary, but they usually have at least two things in common: wider gullets and wider saddle bars with flatter angles.
Wider gullets: Draft horses have backs that are wider than most other types of horses. Therefore, the saddle gullet in a saddle for a draft horse is usually wider, and sometimes a lot wider, than in saddles built for “regular” riding horses.
A gullet is measured at its widest point, where the saddle fork (aka pommel) joins the saddle bars. The true width of the gullet is always measured on the raw saddle tree. Measuring the gullet width on a finished saddle will always give a different, inaccurate, measurement.
Below: The blue line indicates the width of the saddle gullet. However, the true width of the gullet is always measured on a raw saddle tree, not a completed saddle such as this one.
A flatter angle to the saddle bars: To accommodate their wide backs, saddles made for draft horses will have saddle bars that are wider and flatter than in other saddles.