Horse Breed Information

Horse breeds were developed in order to predict what foals would look and act like. According to International Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds (Bonnie Hendricks, 1995), a breed is recognized only when mares and stallions can produce foals that look very much like those particular mares and stallions. Breeds are usually, but not always, run by groups or associations that maintain the history of pedigrees, known as stud books.

  1. Names

    • Horse breeds are named after their place of origin (such as the Belgian), after an activity that they do exceptionally well (such as the racking horse) and sometimes after a notable ancestor of the breed (such as the Morgan horse). Any time the words "anglo" or "half-bred" is used it means that thoroughbred blood has been added (such as the French Anglo-Arab.)

    Misconception

    • Thoroughbred is not another word for "purebred." The breed derived its name because it was "thoroughly bred" for speed. According to Storey's Illustrated Guide to 96 Horse Breeds of North America (Judith Dutson, 2005), thoroughbreds were often called "English horses" before the 1800's. Over time, thoroughbreds have been so admired that any exceptional horse was called a thoroughbred.

    Purity

    • Depending on the breed registry rules, a horse can be registered in the breed without having two parents of that breed. Some breeds such as the Gidran Arabian are so rare that the only way to preserve the breed is to cross with other horses that share the exact same physical characteristics as a Gidran Arabian. Some breeds such as the thoroughbred have closed stud books, which means that they will not accept horses from other breeds.

    Number

    • There are more than 400 horse and pony breeds in the world today, with about half of them bordering on extinction. The rarest known horse breed is the Abaco Barb, with only seven horses left. There are an unknown number of extinct breeds which helped to shape modern breeds. These include the Turkmenian, the Neapolitan, the Narragansett Pacer and America's first horse breed, the Conestoga.

    Speculation

    • For many years it was thought that the ancestor of all domestic horse breeds was the Przewalski's horse or Mongolian wild horse. But domestic horses have 64 chromosomes in their DNA while Przewalski's have 66, making them a separate species from the domestic horse.