New Horses and Good Rope Halters

Before I write about rope halters, I wanted to just note briefly that along with my 4 year old who had a delayed start, I am also re-starting an older horse that I picked up from a ranch in Southern New Mexico. The ranch manager and head wrangler is a young woman who asked to shadow me starting and re-starting horses at my ranch, so of course I said yes, by all means. Anything I can do to help, directly or indirectly, someone who is serious about a life with horses is a no brainer. For the past three weeks, working one day a week with her, I have not had the time to write about that, nor takes very many pictures and virtually no video yet. That will be coming in the near future. So,....about those rope halters.

A good rope halter is a necessity for me. While I have had many different halters from various makers, the 'go to' halter has always been from Double Diamond Halter Company. They still make and offer great halters and lead ropes for that matter, but you have to buy them from a distributor such as saddle shops and tack stores that offer quality gear. Other sources of good halters,...Craig Cameron comes to mind, offer very good rope halters as well. However, if you purchase a rope halter and lead rope for $15, you are very likely not getting a real good quality item there.

Lead ropes usually last longer than rope halters, so sometimes you can buy the halter without a lead rope and just use your old lead rope, especially if it's good quality. I use tied on lead ropes, so I never have the potential problems of a metal snap, such as dirt impinging the spring loaded mechanism, or the snap breaking. I like a 14 foot lead rope, however about half of my halters have 12 foot leads. Some people don't like that much rope to handle but I'd rather want more length than I need in the moment, than not enough. And just the other day, I used a 18 foot lead on a very reactive horse that I was asked to work with.

About a year ago I discovered 310 Ranch Life Halters and Leads. They offer 12 foot lead ropes, which are great quality, albeit without a leather poppers on the running end. But the halters have a long tail (that goes over the bridle path also called a poll latch) to tie through the loop on the end of the throat latch. These tails are longer than all of the other rope halters I have which make them easier to feed through the tie loop, fits horses with bigger heads, and allows a overhand knot at the very end of the poll latch so you can slip it over a horse's head one handed if you are putting a halter on another horse while you are horseback.

310 Ranch Life also offers other products as well as instructional videos on roping and such. And as usually, I do not get paid not otherwise compensated for advertising anything, just passing along gear, equipment and information that I think is good quality and useful.