Maggie's Farm

Crazy question....do you still want the metal parts? I only ask because the turned up nose is a challenge to make or find these days.....and I'm looking for a stone boat. For horses, two Shire drafts actually. Over in NW Connecticut.
Horses and oxen were the preferences for draft power in New England, mules were much more common and better down south. They can take the heat, where the horses can't. My Shires start overheating at about 75. I could probably get that up to 80 if they were fit in the way they ought to be! Other draft breeds are slightly more heat tolerant, but the mule is always more so.
On the other hand, the horse can reproduce itself, the mule can't. So that made horses more valuable.

Lots of people can't handle mules. I'd argue that lots of people should definitely not handle horses either, including many people with horses and some of those with mules. People think they can handle horses, more often they ruin them.
But, the hard truth of the matter is that you can work a horse to death, and until the 20th century that was one of those practices that was seen as both horrible but necessary. It was a slow death, in the sense that a horse was 'old' at ten, dead at 15, when modern life expectancy for a horse is closing in on 30+. But it was death all the same. Better the horse than the man was the view. You can also work mules to death but it takes a level of ugly that people don't tend to sink to. So, more horses than mules. Nothing really against either horses or mules in that....a great deal against man.