OK HHO people .... define

Mrs B

Mrs B

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... a cob.

We have various threads about the pros, cons and general fitness/abilities of said beasts, but (apart from Welsh D's, Fells, Dales etc) how do you define a cob?

I myself currently have a 15.1 skewbald. He was born in 2004, he has no papers, no breed details, nothing. I've heard him described as a cob (and despite my jibes on Shils' thread) I actually have no bias one way or another ... if they do the job, they're grand in my book.

I also have no experience or knowledge of showing classifications.

But as an experiment, where would he fit on your personal 'Cob Scale' of 1 (well-placed leg at each corner, hair like a Yettie, butt the size of Brazil) to 10 (would have a fair crack at the 3.20 at Epsom, coat like a bit of old silk, poor doer in winter)?

And more to the point, where would you put yours on a similar scale?

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He appears to be wearing brushing boots which are a good fit. That means he can't be a cob.

Does he also wear a cob size bridle because that would also mean he's not a cob.

Does he need his legs shaved on a weekly basis with a chainsaw to keep them smooth, if not, he's no cob.

He is lovely tho.

My cob who is 14.2, weighs over 500kgs in fit condition, wears a 6ft3 rug and a f/s bridle, grows leg hair like a mammoth and never wears boots because who can be bothered with that sort of faff when they never do fit correctly anyway!

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Would say based on your scale a 4 or a 5.

I think cobs range in size and can be the small thin type or the big bulky type. Can be tall or short too.

Think they are a versatile type and can do dressage or jumping or endurance etc. They are usually pretty good movers and are just good all round horses and everyone can find one to suit them.
 
Sorry, as per usual on HHO not a reply to your actual question, but what a cracking horse! He is gorgeous :)

This is mine, who is also a cob.....

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I love yours, FW - saw this pics earlier today and what a jump!

But to answer: the boots fit but the hinds slip a tad.

He's in a small horse size in Micklem.

He does grow an alarming (LOL - spellcheck changed it to 'alluring!') amount of hair on his limbs in winter, pointing mostly towards the back end, but looking like he has 4 very fluffy (grubby) pipe-cleaners attached to his body ...
 
To me cobs are not too hairy do not have loads of feather and are more like a small Irish draught horse, nowadays they have been bred to the really heavy draught type, Shire and Clydesdale blood to get height and hair and the two types are confused as they are all called cobs, with various prefixes added to define them, gypsy, traditional, vanner, show , sporty etc.

Yours looks to be a proper riding cob, rather than the draught type, up to weight, built for any job and smart enough to show if you wanted to, there will be some ID blood probably in him but also some native pony and tb, the type more breeders should be breeding as the market for them will always be strong.
 
i think there should be a new classification - a sports cob - not chunky enough to be a show cob, not hairy enough to be a traditional, but a cracking allrounder who will give most things a go, with a pretty willing attitude.

OP and Levrier, I think yours would fall into this new classification =D
 
Mrs B said:
I love yours, FW - saw this pics earlier today and what a jump!

But to answer: the boots fit but the hinds slip a tad.

He's in a small horse size in Micklem.

He does grow an alarming (LOL - spellcheck changed it to 'alluring!') amount of hair on his limbs in winter, pointing mostly towards the back end, but looking like he has 4 very fluffy (grubby) pipe-cleaners attached to his body ...
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Thank you she is in a class of her own: super cob ;)

Well his "alluring" hair gives him a few points but he's much more of a sports horse in my opinion. A very nice one too.
 
Manual of horsemanship 1981 says
" a cob is a mare or gelding between 12.2 and 15.1hh with a head and neck resembling a pony and with the body and limbs of a horse"

I would say yours fits that description 100% but it seems an old fashioned definition now.
 
Mine is definitely a cob but a mix of pony and cob sized parts for his bridle......and no such chain saw goes near him lol!
 
Thanks for the replies all - interesting. And thanks for the nice comments about my lad, too ... but it is interesting to try to pin down what defines the different sorts of cobs nowadays.

I mean, everyone knows what a Vanner looks like. And a Welsh D.

But when I was a kid (late 60's, early 70's onwards) most people I knew had ponies and horses which were much more cart-plus-bit-of-class-equines around to do many jobs ... they needed to be able to take you to visit a friend alone, hack out in company, do a bit of hunting and go to the local gymkhana with disgracing themselves or you ... and very few had either transport or a school.

So, maybe what I'm trying to say is: are many cobs now what most people in the past would have just called a horse or a pony?
 
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Lévrier;13294311 said:
Sorry, as per usual on HHO not a reply to your actual question, but what a cracking horse! He is gorgeous :)

This is mine, who is also a cob.....

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Smart! :)

And always love the pics of yours, Sparkles! What a jump!
 
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Mrs B said:
Thanks for the replies all - interesting. And thanks for the nice comments about my lad, too ... but it is interesting to try to pin down what defines the different sorts of cobs nowadays.

I mean, everyone knows what a Vanner looks like. And a Welsh D.

But when I was a kid (late 60's, early 70's onwards) most people I knew had ponies and horses which were much more cart-plus-bit-of-class-equines around to do many jobs ... they needed to be able to take you to visit a friend alone, hack out in company, do a bit of hunting and go to the local gymkhana with disgracing themselves or you ... and very few had either transport or a school.

So, maybe what I'm trying to say is: are many cobs now what most people in the past would have just called a horse or a pony?
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I think in the past they would have been called a cart horse as that was most likely to be their job in life, although they were few and far between for many years, back in the day no one would have really ridden the very heavy hairy types that they are riding today. Riding the so called traditional cobs is a new idea, there is no reason why they cannot be ridden but in the past they were not bred to ride as their first job.
 
Toffee44 said:
Manual of horsemanship 1981 says
" a cob is a mare or gelding between 12.2 and 15.1hh with a head and neck resembling a pony and with the body and limbs of a horse"

I would say yours fits that description 100% but it seems an old fashioned definition now.
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Actually, you're spot on, Toffee44 - he's in a 17 inch saddle, 6 ft to 6ft 3 rugs but I also need pony reins on the front end ...
 
I would say lovely lad but not a cob OP. At 15.1 I would expect a cob to have a head as big as a breeze block and to need minimum a full sized bridle but probably extra full size. Brushing boots do not fit because on the whole if they do up then they are far too long and if they are a vaguely suitable length they will barely fasten and will pop open the minute the cob starts walking! I agree there are two types of cob, the chunky built-like-a-shed-even-when-slim kind who have tons of mane tail feather unless kept clipped and the ones who look like chunkier slightly hairier versions of horses with some pony blood but not chunky or hairy in the way that a cob is. A lightweight cob if you will. Maybe yours is one of these? I find it hard to tell from a cantering photo. Otherwise if not a lightweight cob I would put your horse at a five on your scale. As a child we used to call ones like yours cob-types to define them from cobs, ponies and proper horses. I still think of them in that way. There would sometimes be a class at the local shows for cobs and if you entered a cob-type by mistake thinking it was the same thing it would not stand a chance. If you had a small one you would tell people you had a cob-type pony and a larger one a cob-type horse. They were sort of a non-classification like telling someone you had a Heinz 57 pony or a TBx horse. It did not tell people much except to give them some vague idea what it looked like. Not like if you said you had a hunter or a cob or a native pony or an arab, which brings a very specific image to mind in each case. Or lots of images in the case of a native pony since there are many breeds.
 
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The perfect cob = google Robert Oliver's Super Ted.

People get very confused and class anything hairy or heavy as a cob, when these types are actually Vanners. My not so super Ted is a Vanner. Ted has soft silky feather having taken at good 80% of his looks and type from his Shire dam. Ted is tall and I could turn him into a hunter type if I had enough spare time to clip him.

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This one is a preened, plucked and shaved Vanner. The feather on this grows at an alarming rate, I need to clip every 10 days, it is coarse and horrible, yet her mane and tail are soft unlike Ted whose tail is a bog brush. This mare is a good example of a cart horse in disguise.

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Another vanner this time only 14.2 and probably the perfect Vanner, she has pulled bow tops in Ireland and lived the life of a working Vanner, including being on a tether.

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I tried to bred a show cob out of her and the result was this -

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I watched the cobs go round on Sunday at Malvern, a Hoys ticket class. There were plenty of preened vanners in it but as the class progressed the best horses of cob type came to the top and quality was obvious. A cob is a type and not a breed unless Welsh, it must be deep and strong with good limbs and short cannon bones, it must move from the shoulder not the knee, it must be uphill and be able to open out and gallop. It must have quality bone and plenty of it.

This thread has some nice pictures and good explanations of the type but a true cob has yet to appear.
 
He's gorgeous, OP! He reminds me of my little late man who I lost in April, although mine was a deeper colour and an inch shorter.

Like you, all I had on him what that he was a skewbald horse/pony, a gelding and was born in 1998. It didn't matter one bit! He was a blast to ride and yours looks just the same! 😃
 
Cob....a compact horse with a depth of girth that is larger in relation to length of leg, body, and head. Has a good sense of self preservation and is very hardy and tough. Up to weight, with a good amount of bone.

Show cob.....where someone has tried to cross a native cob with something else in order to reduce the amount of hair, because they find hair offensive to their sense of 'quality'. Might work, might not.
 
There seems to be a tendency at the moment of, "If it's small, coloured, and undetermined breeding, it's a cob," even if the horse in question is built more like a TB.

For me, it comes down to bone, although I've also seen them described as a pony brain in a horse's body!
 
I think that 'cob' has now become a term that describes a horse that people aren't quite sure what category to put it in.

It used to be that you could spot a proper cob on a show ground from a mile off - now if you watch a cob class it seems to be a mix of fat hunters, clipped out cart horses and anything coloured on the grounds that if it is coloured it must be a cob!
 
Pippity said:
There seems to be a tendency at the moment of, "If it's small, coloured, and undetermined breeding, it's a cob," even if the horse in question is built more like a TB.

For me, it comes down to bone, although I've also seen them described as a pony brain in a horse's body!
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Yup! People keep calling share horse's fieldmate a cob - he might be coloured, unknown breeding and only pushing 15hh but he is NOT a cob. Look at his legs!

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I always thought of cobs as the "van" horses, ones that do everything needed on the farm all week, hunted on the Saturday and pulled the trap to church on Sunday.
 
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I've never really thought of my boy as a cob. He's ID x something (maybe connie, maybe cob?) and 16.3 so I've always called him an ISH, but seeing some of your photos and descriptions I'd probably score him a good 5 on the scale. He's definitely got the hair, the bone and the backside and his bridle is an extra full with cob sized cheek pieces! Maybe I'll hog him, call him a maxi cob and sell him for a fortune :D

ETA - this is him. Thoughts? I know he's not great quality, just overall type?

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I describe my horse as a 'sports cob', purely because he is chunky and of unknown breeding! I know he is not a cob - he doesn't have enough bone (8.5 inches, but he's 15.3hh) and his cannons are too long, although he has a big head and feet. He's quite hairy in that his mane, tail and leg hair is thick but not very coarse and doesn't grow very long. He is hogged and legs clipped out, looks much smarter.

I suppose he really falls under ISH, as he is a horse of mixed/unknown breeding from Ireland, but I like to call him my sports cob :) He is much heavier to look at than the ISHs I know but not proper cobby.

As a side note - we wears a full size/large or XL everything, but I need pony reins!
 
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