Horse Jumps/ Course?

Question

My friend and I have volunteered to be jump crew for this years county round up.

We have to design a course of six jumps at about 3 foot.

We only have 6 legal standards in our roster and a whole bunch of poles and gates.

We decided that we want to build a jump for our club "Galloping Ahead" but don't know how to incorporate the name. or what to build/ supplies

And we need to decide what other jumps to make.

The jumps need to be easy to set up.. about 4 pieces (including 2 standards but not poles) that can be set out quickly. We might not have that much help.

And I would like to know the average distance between to fences for 5 strides also the distance for an in and out.

Thanks so much. I really appreciate it (:

Answer 1

How about building a couple of simple walls, or using barrels or hay bales?

Distances - are usually multiples of 12.  Figure 12 feet per stride, plus 4 - 6 feet in front of and behind each jump for take-off and landing. So a 5 stride line is somewhere between 68 (short) and 72 (long) feet, and a one stride in-and-out will be somewhere between 20 and 24 feet. These are horse strides, not pony.

Answer 2

Sounds like fun!  

For horses, stride length is 12'; for ponies it's 10'.  If the course is for both, try to have spacieng that'll be good for both - like 60' is 5 strides for a horse, 6 for a pony.

An in and out is 2 strides, or 24' (horse), 20' (pony).

Remember to leave plenty of room in the corners; you probably don't want a jump within 5 or 6 strides of the end of the ring.   Make the turns large and flowing, no sudden cut backs.  You also want to have at least one change of direction (lead) in the course.

6 standards is only three to four jumps, unfortunately.  You could set up the course so that some are jumped twice; other than that I guess you'll improvise.

You can use three standards to make two jumps side by side, sharing the center standard, but perpendicular to each other.  These will have to be in the center of the arena, so one can be approached doing a figure eight one way, then loop around and approach the second one.  Check with the rules folks before you do this; they may not like it.

Bales of shavings or hay make good brick walls.

The more solid looking you can make them the better, but at the very least you'll need a ground pole and a few poles.

For your club name (which I would ask if you're allowed to do), the simplest thing is to take a sheet of plywood, paint it with the name and whatever you want, and attach it to one of the gates.