Shire horse
Encyclopedia : S : SH : SHI : Shire horse
The Shire horse is a breed of draught horse. It is the tallest of the modern draught breeds, and a stallion may stand 18 or more hands (about 180 cm) high and weigh a ton. The Shire horse has a dense rounded body, a broad back, strong loins, powerful hind-quarters, and long legs with dense bones. It can be black, brown, bay, or grey and has distinctive long silky hair (often white) on the lower parts of its legs. The hair down the back of the legs is called the "feather", while the hair over the foot is known as the "spats".
The Shire horse descends from the medieval Great Horse brought to England in 1066 by William the Conqueror. From this medieval horse came a draught horse called the Black Horse in the seventeenth century, which was dull-colored and sluggish. The Black Horse was greatly improved by the followers of Robert Bakewell, resulting in a horse commonly known as the Bakewell Black. When the Pedigree Society was founded in 1878, the name was changed to English Cart Horse, since black was a misnomer. Six years later, the name was again changed to Shire. The breed was improved during the following years as ruthless veterinary examinations virtually eliminated the old unsoundness of wind and limb. With the increased use of mechanized farm and transport equipment, the numbers of Shire horses began to decline. By the middle of the twentieth century their numbers had dwindled to a small fraction of what they had been in their heyday. Numbers of Shires are on the rise again, however. They are now widely used in breeding heavier hunter types by crosses with thoroughbred mares.
World Record
The Shire horse holds the record for the world's biggest horse; Sampson, foaled in 1846 in Toddington Mills, Bedfordshire, England, stood 21.2½ hands high (i.e. 7ft 2½in or approx 2.2m at his withers) by the time he was a four year old, when he was re-named Mammoth. His peak weight was estimated at over 3,300lb (approx 1.5 tonnes).
The most recent Shire to hold the record was Goliath, a dray horse for the Young & Co. brewery who held the Guinness World Record for the tallest living horse at 19.2hh (approx 1.95m) until he passed away in July 2001.
See also
External links
- http://www.equiworld.net/uk/horsecare/Breeds/shire/
- http://www.shire-horse.org.uk/index.html
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.