Favorite draft breeds?

[Anonymous]

Here’s my favorite draft breed. My 3/4 Belgian, 1/4 mystery horse – you guys guess….

[Morgan]

I have been raising Morgans since 1976 and use them for just about anything. Lately, I have been crossing my Morgan Stud with Some Percheron mares and the resulting cross is awesome. My Morgan senior stallion is 16 hands and the Percheron mares I am using are the old type, short coupled and not 19 hands! BTW, I am new to this forum, sure interesting. BarNoneMorgans

[J-L]

At one time we had some a horse or two out of the Hancock bloodlines of quarter horse. They were big boned and stout. Their grandpa was a horse called Blue Valentine. These horses wore a size 1 and 2 shoes but could really run. My brothers and I used them heading steers and the buckskin was used in tie down steer roping. Both would weigh around 1300 give or take. I think they’d have made a good team.
I’ve worked some quarter horses and paints. They do make nice teams for lighter chores. My Dad said they used a lot of them on mowers and for feeding cows, raking hay etc. I’m sure if you’re plowing and some other heavy jobs you’d want more horse though.
Those Morgan/Perch crosses sound ideal for what I use teams for. Of course a QH/Perch would work about as well. There are some really good points on the Morgans I do like. They tend to have a lot of bottom and most of them I’ve ever shod had very good feet.

[Plowboy]

A good friend of ours used to have a herd of Belgian mares and used to borrow a Stallion every summer. His daughters were in 4-H and had saddle horse mares and he got a little 14 hand mare probably Quarter horse to ride and rope stock off. As the daughters got older the saddle horses ran with the Belgians and they all had crossbred colts. He liked the ones out of his mare and kept them all. They were red sorrel with light manes and tails about 15.2 and 1350-1400. I spent a lot of time as a teenager bunching logs with a pair of them and they would put some big horses to shame. They had heart and endurance and sucked some pretty big logs out of tight spots so they could be forwarded by the guys with log carts. Truthfully most of the old horsedrawn equipment was designed for 1200# horses. I think my Dad said my great grandfathers first team during the Depression weighed 2570# with their harness on at the local feedstore. He milked 23 cows by hand and plowed 26 acres walking behind a sulky plow the first fall he started dairy farming.

[Robert MoonShadow]

Does anyone here now have (or have had experience with) American Creams? I really like their looks – build and coloring (well, from what little I know about horses, they look strong & sturdy, yet alert). I’ve only ever seen one up close – its about 30 miles south of here & used in a USFS pack string. I know they’re pretty rare, just wondering how they are as workers.

[Gulo]

@Plowboy 4384 wrote:

Gulo, An old timer said to me once, ” You know what the difference between a Shire and a Clydesdale is don’t you?” . “No what is it?” …………” Nothin”. As he chuckled and walked away. Any Privately owned Clydes and Shires I have seen around here I don’t even stop to look at poor feet, bad pasterns etc. The budweiser Clydesdales were here last fall and I would have to say they were pretty nice. Good feet and legs deep bodied and well kept. They were probably the nicest Clydes I had seen until you posted your pictures on the photo page. You my friend have some nice looking horses.

Shires vs Clydes… Plowboy, i was reflecting more on Shires and Clydes today, especially in light of the fact that when i started out i had boiled it down to choosing between these too. What i began to see (in my eyes, anyway) is that today’s Shires, while often touted as being the true heavyweight of the two, are in my mind not as nicely put together as the Clyde. Take a look at enough Shires and Clydes side by side (i’ve driven a Shire/Clyde team in fact, which is truly “side by side” and examined many other examples of both breeds) and what you come up with is the impression that the Clyde is noticably the more proportionate of the two. The Clyde will have better bone in the leg, noticably larger feet to balance, and a more proportionate head. The Shire by comparison, even if it is a bigger horse, will have proportionately spindlier (thinner) if not longer legs, smaller feet, and narrower, smaller head. Which to me makes it look like you took a heavy-horse torso and pasted on extremities that don’t quite match. But again, that’s only after looking at a lot of Clydesdales in direct comparison. The show crowd has certainly done their best in some cases to do away with a lot of the best looking Clydesdales, too – many are too tall, not generous enough in the feather department, too long in the head, and too uniform in colour. Which is why the nicest ones are often roans – the ones the show breeders mostly avoid and which therefore still include the best genes.

[Author]

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