Clydesdale

Horses were shown under the breed name from 1826, and the type was standardized by a system of hiring purebred stallions out around the district. The Clydesdale Horse Society formed in 1877, and its registry reaches back to the 1830s. Between 1884 and 1945 more than 20,000 Clydesdales received export certificates, which is how the breed seeded North America, Australia and beyond; the American association formed in 1879.

They arrived in North America in the 1840s. Size and looks made them promotional animals almost immediately, and in the 1930s Anheuser-Busch put together a hitch to mark the end of Prohibition. The Budweiser Clydesdales delivered the first post-Prohibition beer to the White House and became one of the most durable advertising images ever made. The less visible part is that Anheuser-Busch has run a Clydesdale breeding program since 1953, and the Conservancy credits it with helping carry the breed through the mid-1900s.

16.2 to 18 hands and 1,600 to 2,000 pounds, with the biggest individuals over 2,200. Bay is the common color, with black, brown, chestnut and roan also occurring, usually under a white blaze and white legs.

The gait is part of the standard: a distinctive high-stepping action with each foot lifted cleanly off the ground. So are the feather and, unusually, the cow hocks, which the breed counts as characteristic rather than as a fault.

Docile, laid-back, intelligent and easy to train, by the Conservancy's account. The experience rating is intermediate all the same: the horse is easy, the scale is not.

Handling one is a size problem before it is a horse problem. Gear, stabling, transport and farrier work all have to be rated for it.

Draft work and promotion. The hitches are the public face, Budweiser's most famously, and show driving is the competitive one.

Beyond the hitches they do the general farm and haulage work that built the breed, at hobby and small-farm scale now.

The feather needs keeping. The breed is vulnerable to chronic progressive lymphedema, a progressive swelling disease of the lower legs, and to the skin condition called Clyde's itch; both live under the feather, so leg care is routine, not cosmetic.

The rest is draft-horse arithmetic: feed, shoeing and housing scaled to a two-thousand-pound animal.

Worth understanding as a buyer: a breed everyone can name is not the same as a breed with numbers behind it. The Livestock Conservancy lists the Clydesdale as Threatened, and the global population is estimated below 5,000.

The North American population fell sharply after 2010 in the economic downturn. Fame kept the image alive; it did not keep the mares in foal.

Registration in the US runs through Clydesdale Breeders of the USA. Ask to see the legs handled and cleaned: chronic progressive lymphedema is progressive and incurable, so the state of the lower legs is the first thing to inspect, and a seller who knows the breed will expect the question.

Then budget honestly: feed, farrier, transport and stabling for one of the tallest breeds there is.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.