"Now I say that with cruelty and oppression it is everybody's business to interfere when they see it."

~Anna Sewell

Friday, May 29, 2009

Are Irish Draughts the new favorite of BYB's?

I think we need a lesson on what an Irish Draught Horse is (or draft, however you want to spell it). Because nobody seems to know anymore. Breeding your Thoroughbredraftrakehner mare to an ID stallion does not make the baby an ID, or even necessarily an Irish sporthorse. It's definitely a mutt. Whether or not it ends up being a sporthorse prospect is anybody's guess until it's actually born.

This critter's from the same breeder/website as that bay colt (which was also a mutt that was advertised as an Irish SH).
This one is supposed to be a Thoroughbred/ Irish SH mix. I still have no clue what breeds consist of an ISH, so if anyone can shed some light on that, it would be much appreciated. They claim his registration is pending, but how can they register him when he's a mixed breed? Anyway, they have him listed as an Irish Draught, even though he's clearly not even close to purebred. Get a load of those pasturns and the nonexistent heel. Ew.
I know dinky little Arabians that have more of an ass than he does. He looks wormy, too.

I'm kind of confused because on the website, those horses are pretty decent, to say the least. Most of them are TB's, too, so I'm not sure what the deal is there. Well, until you get to the Irish SH page and there's a big bay fugly. Half their pages don't even work, so I don't know.

Furthermore, why would you combine all those breeds? More often than not, the offspring tend to inherit the bad traits of all the breeds. I can understand crossing two really nice purebred horses, but don't let the offspring reproduce. You don't know which genes could end up where. As seen with this colt. What cracks me up is how much they're asking for him. $15,000! He's a fugly three year old who has next to no saddle time and they're asking a fortune for him.

Aaandd we have another gem from the same people. This one's a filly going for $14,000. She's got better feet and hindquarters than the other two, but has a bad shoulder and a knife neck. Again, listed as an ID, but has mixed breeding. She has no saddle time, since she's only two, but she's still $14,000. This makes no sense. Maybe, in a good economy ten years down the road, if she's dead broke and has actually accomplished something or has some kind of show record, maybe $14,000 would be reasonable.

In the ad, they talk a lot more about her ancestor's accomplishments than about her. As if having accomplished ancestors makes the filly more valuable by default. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. If the filly isn't sporthorse calliber, she's not worth all that much, regardless of who she has in her pedigree. What do you think an offspring of Secretariat is worth if he/she can't run worth shit? Absolutely nothing. At least as far as the racing industry is concerned. It's the same in the sporthorse world. They're proudly rambling on about her bloodlines because they have nothing to say about the actual horse they're selling. Very good marketing technique, right? Awesome.
Well, this mediocre fugly that hasn't done shit can be yours for the low, low price of 14 grand. Whip out that checkbook, eventers.

Slightly OT, but I have a serious question:
A draft cross isn't a warmblood, is it? Like if you breed a Thoroughbred to a Belgian, would the baby be considered a warmblood? I don't think that would be the correct term.
I was always taught that a warmblood is a pure breed. Swedish Warmblood, Danish Warmblood, Hanoverian, Oldenburg, etc. The purebred sporthorses that originated mainly from Europe and have prominent Thoroughbred ancestry. I understand that the term "warmblood" refers to horses with mixed hot-blooded and cold-blooded horses in thier ancestry. They're the result of generations of selective breeding and the warmbloods we have today are the final result of that. Well, I've been seeing a lot of dime-a-dozen draft crosses listed as "warmbloods". Can you just cross a draft with a hot-blooded horse and call it a warmblood? The offspring isn't a new breed or anything, just a half breed. Would "warmblood" still be the correct term for those horses are are those people confused?

2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure either what exactly an Irish Sport Horse is....I mean, on my connemara pony's passport it says she's an irish sport horse. i think it's basically any irish breed of horse/pony that can be used as a sport horse

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  2. Technically yes, the product of a draft crossed with a Thoroughbred or Arabian is considered a "warmblood". But that doesn't mean much. The warmbloods you mentioned (Swedish Warmblood, Oldenburg, etc.), as you said, have been selectively bred to the point where they have developed their own breed registries and standards. So rest assured, you can't begin to compare a "backyard warmblood" to a Holsteiner. A poorly bred horse is still a poorly bred horse, whether it's technically a warmblood or not.

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