Efficiency of motor-manual felling and horse logging in small-scale firewood production.

Abstract

The use of chainsaw tree felling in association with horse logging is quite common in harvesting operations, especially in the case of dense stands where thinning operations are applied. Many technical procedures can be applied in tree felling operations, depending mostly by the tree diameter. Also, timber logging may be done in one step by the means of horses when terrain’s slope is small. Based on a time study, this paper assesses the production rates for tree felling (using a single-cut procedure) and horse logging in a mixed broadleaved stand. Also, supplementary work elements were required as they were induced mostly by the terrain slope. The results showed that the delay-free time consumption for tree felling was affected by the diameter at the breast height and the distance between the trees to be felled. The time consumed for horse logging was affected by the logging distance, logging trail slope and number of logs per load. The net and gross production rates for tree felling were 8.42 m3h-1 and 5.68 m3h-1. For horse logging, the net and gross production rates were of 2.63 m3h-1 and 1.44 m3h-1 respectively. The results may be useful for assessing time consumption and productivity for similar work conditions. Key words: Chainsaw, horse logging, thinning, single-cut, time study, production rates, time estimation models, efficiency.