Shire

Flemish stallions went into the native English stock in the 1200s and Dutch Friesians in the 1500s, and Lincolnshire ended up with a very large black horse known as the Lincolnshire Black, or Heavy Black. Those horses hauled long distances over bad country roads and worse city cobbles, and the type spread across England through the 1700s.

The modern Shire was put together around 1790 using Robert Bakewell's breeding methods, the same ones behind the Leicester Longwool sheep and the English Longhorn. The breed society formed in 1878 as the English Cart Horse Society, with a first studbook of 2,381 stallions and records reaching back to 1770; the name Shire was settled in 1884. At the peak, from 1901 to 1914, about 5,000 Shires were registered a year.

The first one reached the US in 1853, though serious importing waited until the late 1800s. The American Shire Horse Association was founded in 1885 and has run its registry ever since. Mechanization nearly finished the breed on both sides of the Atlantic: a population that had passed a million fell to a few thousand, and the US herd nearly disappeared between 1955 and 1961.

The tallest of the draft breeds. The Conservancy gives 16.2 to 19.2 hands, averaging 17.2, and 1,900 to 2,200 pounds. The tallest horse on record, the gelding Sampson, foaled in 1846, was a Shire.

Bay, black, brown or gray, with heavy feather on the lower legs, a broad forehead and a slightly convex profile. The UK society bars chestnut stallions; the US registry allows the color.

Docile, easygoing and exceptionally calm, by the Conservancy's account. Its facts box rates the breed novice to experienced, a second box on the same page says intermediate, and its text calls the Shire a good breed for all levels of owners, even beginners.

The feather is a maintenance item, not a decoration. It needs regular brushing, washing and drying, because wet, dirty feather invites skin infection.

Draft work, still: forestry, farm work, and the hitches several UK breweries keep for deliveries and show.

Jousting and medieval tournament work has given them a new audience; a horse built to carry armor is back to carrying it. Leisure riding is the other growth market, because a calm 17-hand horse has one.

Leg care, every day. The feather care described above matters because of a disease underneath it. Chronic progressive lymphedema, a swelling of the lower legs that builds into skin folds and nodules, has been described in Shires; UC Davis's Center for Equine Health says it starts at an early age, progresses for life and has no cure. Management includes keeping the feathers clipped short, daily exercise, daily hoof cleaning, regular trimming of the feet, ergots and chestnuts, and a dry environment.

Budget for the size. When mechanization after the Second World War cut Shire numbers, the Conservancy says, farmers who still used horses were looking for smaller draft breeds that cost less to keep.

UC Davis's genetics laboratory also lists the Shire among the draft breeds appropriate for PSSM1 testing, an inherited muscle disease managed through diet and exercise.

The Livestock Conservancy lists the Shire as Critical, and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust counts it at risk with fewer than 1,500 in the UK. Recovery has been slow since the low point of the early 1960s, helped by the brewery hitches that kept the breed visible.

The scale of the fall is the point to hold onto: from more than a million working Shires to a few thousand, inside a lifetime. The breed now survives on deliberate breeding, not on any remaining commercial necessity.

Registration in the US runs through the American Shire Horse Association, whose book goes back to 1885. Check the color rules if you have breeding in mind: a chestnut is registrable here and not in Britain.

Budget for the scale. Farrier work, trailers, stalls and feed are all priced up for a horse this size, and the feather adds a daily-care item with a real infection risk when neglected.

Ask what the horse has done: plowed, logged, driven, ridden. A Shire with a work history is a known quantity.

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