Irish Draught

The Irish Draught first appears in the record in the late 1700s. Its ancestry probably runs back through the extinct Irish Hobbie ponies, themselves from small horses the Celts brought to Ireland around 500 BCE, crossed later with Norman horses and then with Connemaras, Spanish stock, Thoroughbreds and possibly Clydesdales.

Ireland recognized it formally in 1901, and government registration of stallions and mares began between 1907 and 1911. The Ministry of Agriculture opened a stud book in 1917 with 375 foundation mares and 44 stallions, then lost the records in the Four Courts fire of 1922. The breed's popularity climbed sharply during the First World War.

Mechanization gutted the numbers after the wars. The Irish Draught Horse Society formed in 1976, and since 2008 the Irish register has been held by Horse Sport Ireland.

There is a specific reason it is built the way it is. The heavy draft breeds of the day did badly in Ireland, where wet, rough ground full of burrs and stickers caught in their heavy leg feather. What was needed was a lighter horse with the same strength, and that is what the Irish Draught became.

The result stands 15.2 to 16.3 hands and weighs 1,150 to 1,600 pounds: a powerful, well-muscled horse that is still clean-legged, with about nine inches of bone below the knee, a sloping shoulder and a deep girth.

Docile, intelligent and willing, and rated novice to intermediate.

The temperament is a breeding goal, not an accident: the same horse had to plow on Monday and hunt on Saturday, and quiet sense was the job requirement.

Under their own name they event, show, hunt and do police work.

The bigger economic job is the cross. Irish Draught onto Thoroughbred or warmblood mares produces the Irish Sport Horse, the eventing and show jumping product Ireland is known for.

It is lighter than the name implies. The Irish Draught Horse Society of North America describes a horse that is neither as massive nor as heavily feathered as its name suggests, with an exceptionally strong and sound constitution, clean, hard legs and sound feet. The Conservancy notes that in the First World War it made a solid, easy-keeping cavalry horse.

The Livestock Conservancy lists the breed as threatened, and the UN's food and agriculture body classes it as endangered but maintained.

The paradox is the cross. Breeding purebred mares to Thoroughbreds produces valuable sport horses and no purebred foals, so the society and the Royal Dublin Society run breeding plans aimed at keeping genetic diversity in the purebred book.

Read the papers closely. An Irish Sport Horse is a cross, not an Irish Draught, and the two sell under similar language. The purebred book is held by Horse Sport Ireland; in North America the breed society is the Irish Draught Horse Society of North America.

If you are buying a mare, know that she is exactly what the cross-breeding market also wants. A purebred-to-purebred breeding plan is a conservation decision as much as a commercial one.

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