Horse Breeds - From their formation to current day, plus standards, strengths & weakness of each.

Horse breeds can be ancient, extinct, endangered, or very rare; horse breeds can be those ofcurrent day, popular or be new and developing breeds. They can be heavy or light breeds, orponies. Some of course are called a breed yet scientifically are not. And some are calledhorses or ponies yet scientifically are not!

Established breeds, or genetic 'types' are often cross-bred with other breeds or types tocreate a useful animal bearing traits of both parents.

The Three Basic Categories of Horse Breeds:

Horse Breeds in the Equine World

A horse breed is truly a group of horses that were bred to obtain certain features, such as height,action and of course conformation, and sometimes color too. All of the features of a breed areclearly defined, and recorded by a breed society, which keeps a special list or Stud Book and a registry of the individual horses belonging to that breed.

Other than horse breeds, there are also "types" of horses that do not belong to a breed witha stud book or pedigree. A type is produced these days by crossing unregistered horses, orby crossing other breeds to get a horse or pony suited to a particular purpose. All horsebreeds were created from a certain type of horse or pony, then selective breeding andculling.

THE DAWN HORSE : Before horse breeds were called breeds.

The first evidence of prehistoric horse goes back about 38 million years before the firstevidence of prehistoric man. Roughly 45 million years ago the Dawn Horse roamed theRocky Mountains of our West. Dawn Horse was no Thoroughbred though. He was roughlythe size of our house cats, with no hooves but rather 4 toes on each foreleg and 3 toeson each hind leg. His teeth were really small and not very good. His only weapon forsurvival was SPEED! For eons they ran away from their enemies, which the modernThoroughbred knows very well, to this day.By running (using speed for protection) Dawn Horse's body became stronger, and thedescendants of Dawn Horse, which came to be called Eohippus, grew longer legs, andwere taller. All this running also required development of larger lungs and other bodychanges. Dawn Horse also ran on the tips of his toes and the toe nail of the longest toe began over time to harden, to protect that speed that saved his life so often. It onlytook about 40 million years for the soft-toed fellow to develop hard hooves. The other toesdisappeared since they weren't being used.

The Horse Age - The age of one horse breed.

While Dawn Horse or Eohippus was speeding around our western plains, a similar ' horse breed' (descended from this same common ancestor) was gradually overrunning Europe.But perhaps it was the changing climate or natural enemies, but the little prehistoric horse ceased to exist and for 15 million or so years there were no horses in Europe or Asia.

Meanwhile Eohippus and descendants liked to graze new pastures, and one descendant(the middle horse or Mesohippus) who would have looked much more like a horse to us,although roughly only about at tall as a sheep, wandered through Alaska and into Asia and Europe around 20 million years ago. One again our early single horse breed existed in both Europe and America.

Then came the ice age and the numbers of this horse breed in American, now the Hyponippus, were forced to migrate when no vegetation was left to eat. The last ice age was about one million years ago, and the single breed , now in Europe where all the food was, became the size of a pony at last. We call this descendant Equus! Equus , true tohis essential nature wandered all over Europe and Asia and it is from him that all of the varied 'type's of horses descended, and gradually, helped by man, into the horse breeds we know today.

Equus finally appeared back in North America via the conquests and exploration of the Spaniards, and as we know many breeds of horses were formed, along with many breed associations and registries , here, and all over the world!