Harness

There are many styles, sizes and options to consider when ordering harness. Ask yourself these questions:

  • What type of driving do you plan to do? Farming Harness will require different parts than Carriage Harness; heavier harness will be needed if your are working the fields than if you are pulling only a cart or carriage. Pleasure harness will be different from competition.
  • What size is your horse? Most harnesses can adjust to a few different sizes up and down, but a draft horse harness won’t fit a pony! You need to start with your horse’s size and body type. Height, age and weight is good to know.
  • What type of vehicle or implement will you be using? The way the harness attaches to the vehicle will affect the traces, collar style, saddle, etc.
  • How many horses will you be driving? A harness for driving single is not the same as that for a pair/team. But you can get harness that will accommodate both single or a pair.
  • What material do you want? Leather, nylon, synthetic, or bio 
  • What hardware do you want? Nickle, brass, stainless steel.
Carriage Harness

Whether for pleasure or competition, we recommend the quality and value of Ideal Harness. Made in The Netherlands, Ideal Harness is used by serious drivers all over the world for singles, pairs, and 4-in-hand. Fraser School of Driving is one of very few dealers in the United States, and orders can often be shipped to you within a few days. 

We are also dealers for Yonies Harness Shop, a quality harness maker in the USA. And we sell harness or harness parts from a few other quality harness makers. The cost will be the same if you order from the manufacturers or us, but we help to take away the mystery and confusion from trying to decide what you want or need. 

 

Farm Style Harness

There are many harness makers who build  farm-style harness with neck collars and hames. We place orders depending on our clients’ needs and whether they want leather or synthetic. Draft horse harness can be made for parades, farm work, logging, training and just pleasure driving. The advantage of having us order for you is there are specific parts we prefer and other parts you won’t need. We can often save you money and get you exactly what you do need. 

 Show Harness

There are several top quality makers building show harness. This photo shows a rosewood leather with brass hardware. Alex Fraser designed and helped to make this harness for our hitch of Belgian geldings. Most show harness is made with black leather and either brass, chrome or stainless steel hardware.

Here is a chart to help measure your horse for harness.

We custom order harness to be sure you get what you need for your type of horse, the work you want to do and the vehicle you will use.

  • A – Pole from mouth corner over head to mouth corner
  • B – nose band
  • C – brow from one side to the other
  • D – length of horse from center of chest to point of the buttocks
  • E – height from ground to the point of the withers 
  • F – girth all the way around where the saddle would fit
  • G – length of back from wither to croup  
  • H – single breast collar point of shoulder to point of shoulder
  • I – britching or breeching from point of hip to point of hip. 
  • J – neck strap or for collar and hames