American Cream

Interest turned serious when Old Granny's great-great-grandson Silver Lace arrived in 1932, a stallion standing 16 hands and weighing 2,200 pounds. Cream drafts became a fixture in the counties around Melbourne, Iowa.

One man did most of the work of turning a color into a breed. Clarence Rierson bought every mare by Silver Lace he could find, traced each horse's ancestry and wrote the pedigrees down. He helped charter the American Cream Draft Horse Association in 1944 with 20 members and 75 foundation horses, and he gave the breed its name. They got their own class at the Webster City fair that same year, in the county where they began. Iowa's Department of Agriculture recognized the breed in 1950.

By Rierson's death in 1957 there were about 200 registered horses across seven states. Then the tractor took the market, and the association went inactive for fourteen years before three families reorganized it in 1982. Genetic work at the University of Kentucky confirmed what the pedigrees claimed: the American Cream is a distinct population within the draft breeds, not a color type. The registry took its current name in 1994.

A light to medium draft horse of 15 to 16.3 hands. Mares run 1,600 to 1,800 pounds, stallions and geldings 1,800 to 2,000.

The color is the breed: a rich cream body over pink skin, with a white mane and tail and amber eyes. The pink skin is essential, because it is what produces the right shade. Foals are born with nearly white eyes that darken to amber as they mature.

The genetics are settled. The cream comes from the champagne gene, a dominant mutation mapped in 2008, acting on a chestnut base coat. The breed does not carry the cream gene, whatever the name says.

Docile is the Conservancy's word, and calm and willing to work are its notes. This is a horse bred by farm families for farm work, and the disposition reflects it.

The Conservancy rates the breed suitable for novice to intermediate handlers. It is still a very large animal, and the usual draft-horse respect applies.

Light draft and driving. They plowed and hauled on Iowa farms, and the work they get now is the same work in lighter form: wagon and carriage driving, small-farm field work, and promotion.

Colonial Williamsburg has kept and bred American Creams since 1989 for its wagon and carriage rides, which is the breed's most visible job today.

Shelter they can reach. The Conservancy calls the American Cream a hardy breed that is not bothered by cold weather, as long as the horses have housing that lets them get out of the heat or the cold when they need to.

Past that, the same source describes a breed that is easily managed on small farms, because of its disposition and its willingness to work.

The American Cream has been rare its whole existence, and it still is. The Livestock Conservancy lists it as Critical: fewer than 500 horses globally, with under 200 registered in the US each year.

The count is moving the right way. Registrations climbed from 222 horses in 2000 to about 350 by 2004, and the Conservancy notes the population is increasing as the breed finds a place on small farms.

Registration runs through the American Cream Draft Horse Association, the registry chartered in 1944. Nearly every registered Cream traces to Old Granny, so the papers are the breed; a cream-colored draft without them is a grade horse of the right color.

Ask for the JEB test. Junctional epidermolysis bullosa is a recessive lethal disorder carried in the breed; a DNA test has existed since 2002 and the registry has tested proactively since the disorder was found. Two carriers bred together can produce a foal that cannot survive, so on breeding stock the result matters.

Check the skin and eyes against the standard: pink skin under a cream coat, amber eyes in a mature horse. Dark skin changes the shade, and the registry's standard is specific about it.

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