Pale Rider
Well-Known Member
I'm writing this post having read the recent post 'is it "in the blood".'
My great uncle on my mothers side, was a farmer. He kept what he called 'strong horses'. They were some sort of heavy horse, not really breed specific, and looked something between shire and clydsdale types. They were not as tall as the shire's are today, and as they were plough horses benefited from a lower centre of gravity.
These horses were used for everything on the farm, ploughing, harrowing, rolling, seeding, mowing, pulling a binder, carting, every job you can think of. He kept three teams of two and supplimented the farm income by breeding and training youngstock. Sometimes I wonder how he had time to fit everything in, but days started at about 4am and went on till dark, beyond in the winter.
Some youngsters were sold to other farmers, others went into the road hauliage business and some hauled barges. He lost a lot of horses to the First World War, none came back, and could still recall those horses when he was a very old man.
These horses were kept in a much simpler way than people do today, and as they were actually really working 6 days of the week were required to be very fit, healthy and capable of ploughing all day, sometimes even working hard when heavily pregnant. His horses he said, lasted into their early twenties as a rule.
They were fed on a mixture of ad lib hay, normally last years, which was the remainder not fed to overwintering cattle, and oat straw. Everyone made hay then, and there was a lot more oats about. The 'hard feed' they got was oats, bucket fulls of oats when working, but no hard feed at all when not.
He did things slightly different to others, and seems to me he had a real understanding of what horses needed, to be able to do what was required of them and still remain in good heart. For instance he never stabled horses, his horses had access to a straw littered barn and a paddock at night, they never suffered Monday morning disease, after a day off Sunday.
These horses were never shod, and such things as laminitus and navicular disease were unheard of. I'm not suggesing that there weren't problems then, of course there were, but I don't think that there were as many problems then which arose from the way horses were fed, kept and managed as there are now.
So, was horsemanship in his blood? I don't know, has it skipped a generation and found its's way into mine? Again I don't know, but I'd like to think it has.
My great uncle on my mothers side, was a farmer. He kept what he called 'strong horses'. They were some sort of heavy horse, not really breed specific, and looked something between shire and clydsdale types. They were not as tall as the shire's are today, and as they were plough horses benefited from a lower centre of gravity.
These horses were used for everything on the farm, ploughing, harrowing, rolling, seeding, mowing, pulling a binder, carting, every job you can think of. He kept three teams of two and supplimented the farm income by breeding and training youngstock. Sometimes I wonder how he had time to fit everything in, but days started at about 4am and went on till dark, beyond in the winter.
Some youngsters were sold to other farmers, others went into the road hauliage business and some hauled barges. He lost a lot of horses to the First World War, none came back, and could still recall those horses when he was a very old man.
These horses were kept in a much simpler way than people do today, and as they were actually really working 6 days of the week were required to be very fit, healthy and capable of ploughing all day, sometimes even working hard when heavily pregnant. His horses he said, lasted into their early twenties as a rule.
They were fed on a mixture of ad lib hay, normally last years, which was the remainder not fed to overwintering cattle, and oat straw. Everyone made hay then, and there was a lot more oats about. The 'hard feed' they got was oats, bucket fulls of oats when working, but no hard feed at all when not.
He did things slightly different to others, and seems to me he had a real understanding of what horses needed, to be able to do what was required of them and still remain in good heart. For instance he never stabled horses, his horses had access to a straw littered barn and a paddock at night, they never suffered Monday morning disease, after a day off Sunday.
These horses were never shod, and such things as laminitus and navicular disease were unheard of. I'm not suggesing that there weren't problems then, of course there were, but I don't think that there were as many problems then which arose from the way horses were fed, kept and managed as there are now.
So, was horsemanship in his blood? I don't know, has it skipped a generation and found its's way into mine? Again I don't know, but I'd like to think it has.