3 ms·
Well, no amount of weight can make the horse slide backwards and there's no cost to taking more time. So under a simple model, you just want to add so much food
by jlawson 4y ago
Well, no amount of weight can make the horse slide backwards and there's no cost to taking more time. So under a simple model, you just want to add so much food that the horse can barely move.
If the horse eats 20lbs per day (as noted in the article), say it can barely pull 2000lbs on a good quality cart. So 100 days of food. Then just figure out how far it can go in 100 days.
In one day horses can go 80-160km, but they need rest after a few days of this. So say it can do 50km per day sustained and unweighted, 25km at high weight (early in the journey).
Split roughly in half into weight/unweighted days, we get a total distance of about 3,750km for a self-powered horse.
That's almost Lisbon to Moscow, or almost New York to Seattle.
- Retric 4y agoHorses can pull significantly more than 2,000lbs on good roads, though it’s dependent on how steep the hills are. Horse pulls use sleds rather than carts and break 5,000 lb per horse. Pulling a cart on level ground should allow for almost arbitrary weigh as shown by people pulling trains with their teeth etc. The most extreme version of this historically is horses pulling boats through canals, which could hit 50+ tons of cargo per horse across very long distances.
- jlawson 4y agoGood info! So I guess the answer depends entirely on the precise journey you want the horse to take - specifically the terrain, elevation, surface, and cart wheels/bearings.