| The Breeds of Horses |
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Horses come in many sizes and shapes and are classified by breed as well as type. First some definitions. What is a breed? According to the Oklahoma State University, Department of science the classic definition is: Animals that through selection and breeding, have come to resemble one another and to pass those traits uniformly to their offspring. This is easy enough to understand when one envisions a herd of wild horses living for centuries in an area, isolated from the rest of the world, and developing into a population of horses with about the same coloring, size and temperament. But what about that breed of horses established in the 1880's by some prince somewhere because he happened to like the color of a particular horse and instructed his stable master to pair it off with a taller, heavier horse in an effort to obtain taller, heavier horses of a particular color (that the prince likes) to pull his carriage? When, if ever, do the offspring and future offspring of this pairing result in a new breed? Perhaps this definition offered by Jay L. Lush in his book "The Genetics of Populations" will help to clear up that question. A breed is a group of domestic animals, termed such by common consent of the breeders, ... a term which arose among breeders of livestock, created one might say, for their own use, and no one is warranted in assigning to this word a scientific definition and in calling the breeders wrong when they deviate from the formulated definition. It is their word and the breeders common usage is what we must accept as the correct definition. UUUH, or maybe not. Let's just say that a breed of a horse or a dog or a pig or a whathaveyou is whatever the breeders tell us it is and if we don't like it we can start our own breed. After all, who is going to tell us we can't. What is a type? The term "type" generally refers to the European warmblood and is used to distinguish between the various breeding districts throughout Europe in the past 2 centuries. These various districts produced such types as the Hanovarian, the Dutch Warmblood, the Swedish Warmblood and many others. Now that we have cleared that up , let's move on to a quick definition of the most popular breeds. They can pretty much be divided in 3 sub-categories. The light sporting horse usually used for riding, (commonly referred to as the hot-blooded horse) weighing up to 1500 pounds. The draft horse usually used for work or as a war horses (commonly called the cold-blooded horse) weighing over 1500 pounds, and the warm-blooded sport horse which is generally a cross between the other two. The light sporting horse or Hot- blooded horse is generally smaller in stature and more nervous of temperament. Their bodies are more narrow around the girth making for a more comfortable mount. They include: The draft type horse or cold-blooded horse is generally a larger, heavier horse with a wide girth area that many people might consider uncomfortable to try to ride. These horses were developed to pull plows or carriages or cannon onto the battlefields. They weigh over 1500 pounds and generally have more passive temperaments. The Warmblood is generally a type of horse, developed in Europe over the last 200 years, that seeks to combine the best traits of the hot-bloods and the cold-bloods in an effort to develop the perfect sporting horse (or at least one person's opinion of what the perfect horse should be). They include: Some horses are registered by color breed. In other words they are classified as a breed type based on their coloring. These include: Okay then, is it all becoming clearer now?
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