# Saddle rigging



## fivemoremiles (Jan 19, 2010)

I tried to post on Pack goat central but I couldn't remember how.
I have a lot of horse packing experience. I have questions on some goat pack saddles and there rigging.
with my horses we would use center fire rigging. what i was taught was the horse carries 2/3 of its weight on the front feet and you want your packs weight to be distributed accordingly.

the goat pack saddles that i see for sale are rigged any where from front rigging to center fire rigging. I understand that goats are not horses but it seems to me that a front rigged saddle would place the weight to far back on the goat and the cinch would tent to rub the front legs of the goat.
I set my packs up with a center rigging. with the idea it would place the weight 2/3 over the front feet and the cinch would be in the proper place.
am i wrong? if not why are the cinches set so far forward?

for those that have no idea what i am talking about

http://www.cowboyway.com/What/SaddleRiggings.htm

Most riding saddles are ether 3/4 or 7/8 rigged


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## Damfino (Dec 29, 2013)

You must put the cinch squarely on the sternum, which on goats is very short. If you cinch behind the sternum you end up on the belly where the cinch can never be tightened enough. Of course, you don't want to have the cinch smack up against the front legs, but you can't go more than about 3 inches behind the elbow. Also, a goat is considerably narrower in the chest than the belly, so if you cinch in the wider area further back, you end up with the saddle creeping toward the path of least resistance, which means the cinch will end up on the chest while the saddle gets pulled onto the withers. I have both front and centerfire rigged saddles and I have a hard time keeping the centerfire in place. If I put it far enough forward for the cinch to rest on the sternum, the saddle is riding on the goat's shoulders where it will cause all kinds of problems. 

I have never heard about matching saddle weight distribution to the animal's natural weight distribution. In fact, my dressage training in college taught rather the opposite--that a horse's natural distribution is 60/40 so you want to sit further back and actively encourage the horse to lift his shoulders and shift his weight toward his hindquarters to help him move more athletically. If you distribute more weight onto the front legs, you actually throw their balance too far forward and they can't be athletic. The shoulders are poor weight carriers compared to the hips. The front legs are not attached to the rest of the skeleton but are free-floating entities supported by slings of muscle, whereas the hind legs actually attach to the rest of the skeleton at the hips, so there is actually more skeletal support at the back. 

Distributing the weight evenly across the entire saddle tree is important. It should not be heavier at the front or back. The load should always rest squarely on the back (which on a goat is about 10"-12" long) and not on the shoulders or croup. I like to feel for the tops of the shoulder blades and place my saddle directly behind them. Ideally, the cinch should naturally fall right down to the girth groove, which is on the sternum a couple of inches behind the elbow. I never place a saddle based on where the cinch falls. I place the saddle and then cinch up, at which point it generally becomes clear which saddles are rigged correctly and which aren't.


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## fivemoremiles (Jan 19, 2010)

"Damfino" I am sorry i have pocket pads on my saddle and i forgot how the rigging was set up. I thought about the rigging and i felt you are right a center rig would set the saddle on the weathers of the goat. so i took my saddle out of the pocket pads and found that it was a 3/4 set up. the same as my riding saddle. the breast collar on my saddle is useless. I want to get the yoke collar instead. the Britchen might as well not be there i need to make a real one.


Damfino said:


> You must put the cinch squarely on the sternum


I totally agree


Damfino said:


> Distributing the weight evenly across the entire saddle tree is important.


 you are spot on the packs must be balanced front to back and the panniers must be equal weight.
as for the weight distribution 60/40 verses 66/33 is almost funny. i think we were both right.



Damfino said:


> the hind legs actually attach to the rest of the skeleton at the hips, so there is actually more skeletal support at the back.


I do not agree. the SI joint that attaches the back bone to the hips is not static it floats but it is only held together by tendons. and doesn't have the mussel mas to support it.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...arch?q=horse+si+joints+attachment&FORM=HDRSC3

I suspect that the goats SI joint is similar.
the good news is on a horse to achieve the 60/40 weight distribution we only move the saddle forward 2 to 3 inches in cameraperson to a riding saddle. on a goat it is centimeters so we dont need to worry. but why is one saddle maker setting his cinch so far forward if he would set it up with a 3/4 or 7/8 rig he would reduce the risk of scalding the front legs of the goat. and reduce the saddles tenancy to rock forward.

the research i have done has been realy good for me.
I cant wait for summer and I get to take my new goats out for there first trip.
.


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## Damfino (Dec 29, 2013)

fivemoremiles said:


> the good news is on a horse to achieve the 60/40 weight distribution we only move the saddle forward 2 to 3 inches in cameraperson to a riding saddle. on a goat it is centimeters so we dont need to worry. but why is one saddle maker setting his cinch so far forward if he would set it up with a 3/4 or 7/8 rig he would reduce the risk of scalding the front legs of the goat. and reduce the saddles tenancy to rock forward.


I have never tried to achieve a 60/40 weight distribution on a horse, but tend to put the saddle further back. The saddle should not be up toward the shoulders even 2-3 inches, whether it's a riding saddle or a packsaddle. I've often noticed that pack mules and horses nearly always have white hairs at the withers whereas riding horses/mules only sometimes have those white hairs. I've always attributed it to poorly fitting packsaddles, but perhaps it's because outfitters habitually place their saddles too far forward.

As for why saddle makers design goat saddles the way they do, there is sometimes very little rhyme or reason to it. Most goat saddle makers have only a little knowledge about saddles, and they are making them for animals with no history of standard design so a lot of them are kind of flying in the dark. Too many saddle makers want to place the saddle on the shoulders as if that is where the load should go, when in reality it absolutely is NOT where the load should go!

I also tend to think goat saddle makers are behind the times. The original wooden sawbucks were designed for narrow, straight-backed, sharp-withered Swiss type goats (the ideal back for fitting packsaddles in my opinion!). But modern packgoats are often dairy/meat breed crosses, and breeders have been selecting for larger, more muscular dairy lines even in the purebreds. This has led to a lot of goats with wide, fleshy backs with round withers that have a pronounced dip behind them. The old wooden saddles don't come close to fitting the types of backs we often see on packgoats nowadays. I would like to see more wooden saddles made to fit a wider ribcage, and made with more rocker. The old style of packgoat could pretty much fit a saddle made from two straight boards slapped onto a crossbuck, but that kind of saddle bridges badly on a lot of modern packgoats.


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