Comments: - - We have a 7-year-old Shire mare that we bought when she was only 4 months old. She's about 18 hands tall and she weighs 2200 pounds. Despite her size, she a giant "puppy." Very protective of her rider. She loves pulling a sleigh and a carriage as well. Her best friend in a 7-year-old Morgan mare although she's a bit feistier than the Shire mare.
In Normandy and Perche (France), these percherons are disapearing since the eighties. I can saw them regularly in fields of old farmers when I was a child in 1990 but now 2022 it's really rare. Certain people own them like a collection car or for competition, but that's not old "poor" farmers like before. Now they are sometimes used to pull cutted trees in montains, less degradation of the ground than a motorised tractor, less fuel, less
WOW.. brings back a flood of old memories of my uncles ranch.. He had morgens and appaloosa's.. I used to love to go out there as a young man and work on the ranch.. Later when he would be off to shows he would have me come out and care for the horses for him until his return.. I had forgotten how much I love the horse.. at 70 and rather crippled up from an adventurous youth.. I don't get out to see many horses.. But this summer I am going to ride one again..
draft horses" were originally bred as "heavy cavalry" horses ...farmers at only got access to them when the breeds became obsolete as military assets. prior to that farmers universally used oxen if they had draft animals at all as most farmers at the time these horses were bred were peasants who would have been beaten for just looking at a horse for too long let alone asking to use one to plow a field.