How about Cleveland Bays as weight carriers?

cblover

cblover

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Hi there, following on from a recent thread about weight carrying ability, what do you all think about the weight carrying ability of the Cleveland Bay?

I'm no size zero and have recently bought a 50% CB filly to mature to approx 15.3hh (I think it may be bigger!) She is 2 yrs old now and has 9" of bone. Her sires breeding is Irish Draught x TB. She's got plenty of maturing to do yet and I'll be in no rush to back her, I'll be concentrating on in-hand showing for this year.
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Everyone always mentions ID, Shires, Clydes, draughts etc as weight carrying mounts but I'm hoping the wonderful Cleveland Bay would also be classed as that too! What do you think about pure breds and part breds?
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Depends on the type of CB. I used to work with 6 cleveland bays our lightest only had 8 1/2" of bone at 16.2hh but had bad confo so couldn't carry any real weight. Our heaviest had 10" of bone at 16.1hh. The others were between 9 and 91/2", between 16.1 and 17.2hh.
Providing the confo is good and the rider rides light there should be no reason why a CB or part bred can't carry weight.
 
i am an owner of 2 part bred clevelands, and am an avid member of the cleveland bay horse society. do you know what CB's feature in her breeding. if you could give me some more info on this, i could give you more of an idea about what she is likely to make....x
 
I only know ne CB, of which I am lucky enough to ride.

I am around 12 stone, TBH, I really would not want to be any heavier, although I have seen bigger people ride her, she does not seem to be happy doing it.

I think it depends on the horse, a 14.2 I know carrys weight much more comfotably than she does
 
I'd class the pure breds as weight carriers. The good ones are really nice looking sturdy horses. Same goes for the pure IDs. Still athletic enough to be a riding horse but stocky enough to carry a big bloke.
 
My 16.3 clevleand bay x carried my 14 st OK until spavin caused a few problems, then he was quite strong enough to launch me into the turf at speed!
when I get another horse I will be looking straight to this breed as they are truely the most beautiful.
I think they were originally bred to be carriage horses, and I have read on here before that draft type horse like this are no always as good at weight carrying as they are bred to pull not ride. Sounds logical but not sure if it's true.
 
I would have thought that they would be similar to an ID or a hunter type depending upon build. Heavy weight IDs tend to be heavier than CBs, but modern IDs are lighter than the traditional draught type. Both horses now are bred more for riding than draught.

Shire's and Clydesdales aren't particularly good for weight carrying.

If I was looking for a real weight carrier I'd be looking for a heavyweight maxi cob.

Cobs and native ponies are bred for weight carrying where as draught horses are bred for pulling. So a cob crossed with a hunter type or a highland/dales/fell crossed with something like a hunter would be a good bet.

I understand that Percherons are good weight carriers though, they are bred for riding and draught use and are used by the military. They have nice paces for riding due to the high levels of arab blood and are also good jumpers.
 
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