Plain communities will need to breed carriage horses
The Cleveland Bay is a breed of horse that originated in England during the 17th century, named after its coloring and the Cleveland district of Yorkshire. It is a well-muscled horse with legs that are strong but short in relation to the body.
David Bontrager will speak at the fourth annual Organic Farming Conference at the Mt. Hope Event Center on Nov. 8-9. The event will be from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Bontrager, who has 22 years of experience in breeding trotting horses, is from LaGrange, Indiana. He will speak on why the plain communities will need to breed carriage horses and linebreeding.
Linebreeding in its simplest form is the mating of related animals with the goal of retaining and stabilizing certain desired traits within an animal group. The secondary goal would be to reveal and eliminate undesired traits within the animal group.
Bontrager's objective is a horse with the power and the endurance of the Cleveland Bay/Yorkshire Coach that, according to old records, could sustainably trot 18 miles within the hour pulling a loaded carriage.
The Cleveland Bay is a British warmblood. It is one of the oldest breeds around, much older than the Standardbred and probably quite a bit older even than the Thoroughbred.
The breed was probably from workhorses brought to England by the Romans. Once established, it remained isolated in Yorkshire, where it developed a pure genetic stability unmatched by most breeds. The result was a horse with extraordinary strength, endurance, weight-pulling ability and a docile temperament.
During England’s heyday of carriage horses late in the 19th century, it was a common thing to cross a Cleveland Bay mare with a strong-boned Thoroughbred. The result was called the Yorkshire Coach Horse.
The Yorkshire Coach was a tall, upstanding animal of tremendous presence. It was in great demand in London and on the continent where the nobility, gentry and courts of Europe vied with each other for the showiest team. During the height of the London season, hundreds of pairs of these animals might be seen in Hyde Park every afternoon.
These teams had presence and style as a result of many centuries of aggressively pursuing strength and stamina in the breeding choices that were made. In other words form followed function and resulted in beauty. Bontrager believes this rule to be basically true for all breeds of livestock. Form should always follow function.
After coal was discovered in England and people learned how to use it and towns and cities came to be, they needed coal. In prerailroad days great loads needed to be hauled from the mines to the cities. They needed to be delivered in the fastest ways possible, which meant horses were needed that could draw heavy loads fast and far. The Cleveland Bay and its offspring, the Yorkshire Coach, fit the bill.
“The Standardbred racing industry kept us well supplied with driving horses all the years since the coming of the automobile," Bontrager said. "There was no pressing need to breed our own drivers. But the harness racing industry is not what it used to be. Young people as a whole are not interested in horse racing. It is an ailing industry, propped up either by direct government subsidies or by government-sanctioned gambling casinos. We will need to breed and raise our own driving horses, which is what we should have been doing all along anyway. In my opinion, even with ethics aside, we never should have quit breeding our own horses. We need better animals than the ones produced by the racing industry."
According to Bontrager, driving horses are fetching high prices these days, and he does not expect this to change anytime soon. "This is a time of opportunity for breeders of driving horses to pursue function over form and expect to receive fair prices for the results," he said. “What is a fair price for a well-trained young driving horse that is sound? If you want to cause an uproar at your next ice cream social, just ask that question.”
For more information call 330-674-1892, email info@organicfarmingconf.com or visit www.organicfarmingconf.com.