Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: How tall are draft horses?
Draft horses are recognizable by their tall stature and extremely muscular build. In general, they tend to have a more upright shoulder, producing more upright movement and conformation that is well-suited for pulling. They tend to have broad, short backs with powerful hindquarters, again best suited for the purpose of pulling. Additionally, the draft breeds usually have heavy bone, and a good deal of feathering on their lower legs. Many have a straight profile or "Roman nose" (a convex profile). Draft breeds range from approximately high and from .
The Halden is similar to the American Foxhound in appearance although it is smaller. Haldens stand between 17 and 21.5 inches at the shoulder, and weigh approximately 40-55 lbs. They have smooth, very dense coats, hanging ears, and are white with black patches as well as brown shading on the head and legs. They are strong dogs with rectangular bodies and straight, solid backs. The tail is fairly thick, carried low, and hangs down toward the hocks. The skull is slightly domed with a pronounced stop and a straight nosebridge. The cheeks are flat. The ears are pendulous and curled, and the eyes are dark brown and kind. The nose is black. Breeders of Haldens aim for a particular foot shape, with high, tight, long toes and dense fur, for greater stability and warmth as the terrain they hunt through is often snowy and difficult to navigate.
Depending on breed, management and environment, the modern domestic horse has a life expectancy of 25 to 30 years. Uncommonly, a few animals live into their 40s and, occasionally, beyond. The oldest verifiable record was "Old Billy", a 19th-century horse that lived to the age of 62. In modern times, Sugar Puff, who had been listed in "Guinness World Records" as the world's oldest living pony, died in 2007 at age 56.
A guide horse is an alternative mobility option for blind people who do not wish to or cannot use a guide dog. They are provided by The Guide Horse Foundation, founded in 1999 to provide miniature horses as assistance animals to blind users living in rural environments. There are several perceived advantages to using a horse rather than a dog. Miniature horses, with an average lifespan of thirty years, live much longer than dogs, and for those allergic to or frightened of dogs, a horse could make a good alternative. However, while a dog can adapt to many different home situations, a horse must live outdoors, requiring a shelter and room to move about when not on duty.
During the winter and early spring, horses lose about 30% of their body weight. They must regain this weight during summer and fall so as to survive another year. During particularly hard winters ("zuds"), horses may starve to death en masse or die of exposure. Herdsmen can do little to save their herds in such conditions. In the bitter winter of 2009 - 2010, 188,270 Mongol horses perished. Despite their life in semi-feral conditions, most horses live to be 20 – 40 years old.
Since 1896, the Devon Horse Show is the oldest and largest outdoor multi-breed horse competition in the United States. The Annual Horse show and Country Fair promotes horsemanship and horse breeding for conformation, performance and speed. The original ideas and activities of the show have changed dramatically over the decades. The show attracts people from all over the world, as both competitors and spectators.
The horse shows at the annual National Western Stock Show are among the largest in the world with more than 18,000 entries at the 2006 event, including Quarter Horses, Paint Horses, Hunters & Jumpers, FUSE Open Horse Shows, Mules Shows and the Draft Horse Show & Pull.
Besides the horse, there are six other species of genus "Equus" in the Equidae family. These are the ass or donkey, "Equus asinus"; the mountain zebra, "Equus zebra"; plains zebra, "Equus quagga"; Grévy's zebra, "Equus grevyi"; the kiang, "Equus kiang"; and the onager, "Equus hemionus".
The smallest white horse in Wiltshire, Pewsey White Horse is 35 feet tall and 67 feet tall. Pewsey White Horse is cut on private land roughly a mile south of Pewsey Village, on a steep NNW facing slope of Pewsey Hill about 500’ above sea level. Access to the horse is available to visitors. The horse can be seen from along the A345 near Pewsey Village and along the south of the village itself, but the horse is viewed most clearly from the Pewsey to Everleigh road below Pewsey Hill. The figure can be visited from the top of Pewsey Hill where there are footpaths leading to the horse and places where a car may be parked (although not designated parking places).
Dan Patch was a mahogany bay Standardbred stallion who was bred by Daniel (Dan) Messner, Jr., a prosperous dry goods merchant from Oxford, Indiana. In late 1894, Messner purchased a three-year-old filly named Zelica for $255, planning to use her as a buggy horse. Zelica had gone lame in her only start and was later estimated to be worth under $100 at the time. In 1895, Messner paid a $150 stud fee to breed her to Joe Patchen, a top quality racehorse but an untried stallion. The resulting colt was foaled on April 29, 1896 at the livery stable in Oxford. His legs were so crooked that he could not at first stand on his own, leading many of the locals to call him "Messner's Folly". Some even suggested he be put down. Instead, Messner and his friends held the colt so he could ingest the colostrum (first milk) from Zelica. The foal's legs gradually grew straighter, although he still had crooked hocks, especially on his left hind leg. The colt developed an alert, cheerful personality and was noted for his intelligence.
In 1879, the harness racing community established "The Standard", which stated that a Standardbred was a horse who either: (a) could trot a mile in 2:30, or (b) was the offspring of such a horse. Both Dan Patch's parents were Standardbreds but further back in his pedigree are a significant number of Morgan horses. Even further back can be found Thoroughbreds (most notably Messenger, the great-grandfather of Hambletonian) and a wide variety of harness horse breeds including the Narragansett Pacer, Canadian Pacer, Norfolk Trotter and Hackney.
In 2006, the Guinness Book of World Records certified Katlinel and Les Hartness of California as having the largest hand-carved wooden rocking horse on record. This rocking horse was built in 2000 and is 7 feet 8 inches tall and weighs 1,200 pounds. It can be seen at renaissance faires, faerie festivals, and at private parties and events where up to 3 adults or 4-5 children can ride it together at one time. According to Les and Katlinel, the youngest rider has been six weeks old and the oldest, 94 years.
Horses require both shelter from natural elements like wind and precipitation, as well as room to exercise. Worldwide, horses and other equids usually live outside with access to shelter for protection from the elements. In some cases, animals are kept in a barn or stable for ease of access by managers, or for protection from the weather for various reasons. For horse owners who do not own their own land, fields and barns can be rented from a private land owner or space for an individual horse may be rented from a boarding farm. Horses that are not on full-time turnout in a field or pasture normally require some form of regular exercise, whether it is being ridden, longed or turned out for free time. However, if a horse is ill or injured it may need to be confined to a stable, usually in a box stall.
A giant dog breed has no universal height or weight classification, although some groups define "giant breeds" as those heavier than . Giant breeds grow rapidly, but take longer to mature into their full adult sizes than smaller dogs.
Equus is a genus of mammals in the family Equidae, which includes horses, donkeys, and zebras. Within Equidae, "Equus" is the only recognized extant genus, comprising seven living species. The term equine refers to any member of this genus, including horses. Like Equidae more broadly, "Equus" has numerous extinct species known only from fossils. The genus most likely originated in North America and spread quickly to the Old World. Equines are odd-toed ungulates with slender legs, long heads, relatively long necks, manes (erect in most subspecies), and long tails. All species are herbivorous, and mostly grazers, with simpler digestive systems than ruminants, but able to subsist on lower-quality vegetation.
The horse adapted to survive in areas of wide-open terrain with sparse vegetation, surviving in an ecosystem where other large grazing animals, especially ruminants, could not. Horses and other equids are odd-toed ungulates of the order Perissodactyla, a group of mammals that was dominant during the Tertiary period. In the past, this order contained 14 families, but only three—Equidae (the horse and related species), Tapiridae (the tapir), and Rhinocerotidae (the rhinoceroses)—have survived to the present day.
Due to scarcity of water, the Namib Desert Horse sometimes goes without water for as long as thirty hours in summer and has been known to go close to 72 hours without water during the winter, significantly longer than most horses, even other feral herds. A 1991 study suggested that in 75 years of genetic isolation and water scarcity the population had developed physiological mechanisms which improved their ability to conserve water. In 1993, a second study showed that the physiological water-conservation ability did not differ between Namib Desert Horses and other populations when dehydrated for periods of up to 60 hours, but suggested that the Namib Desert Horse would show improved conservation ability when dehydration periods were extended to upwards of 72 hours, a common occurrence in their feral state.
The cavalry, obsessed with the charge with cold steel, had "ceased to be in any useful sense mobile". They used heavy chargers as mounts rather than lighter horses. The heavy mounts required acclimatisation and recovery after long sea voyages, and needed plenty of forage when grazing was sparse. They were also overloaded with unnecessary or over-decorated equipment and saddlery. The average life expectancy of a British horse from the time of its arrival in South Africa was around six weeks.
Group D
There are eight major recognized blood groups in horses. Seven of them, A, C, D, K, P, Q, and U, are internationally recognized, with an eighth, T, which is primarily used in research. Each blood group has at least two allelic factors (for example, the A blood group has a, b, c, d, e, f, and g), which can be combined in all combinations (Aa, Afg, Abedg, etc.), to make many different alleles. This means that horses can have around 400,000 allelic combinations, allowing blood testing to be used as an accurate method of identifying a horse or determining parentage. Unlike humans, horses do not naturally produce antibodies against red blood cell antigens that they do not possess; this only occurs if they are somehow exposed to a different blood type, such as through blood transfusion of transplacental hemorrhage during parturition.
Though bloody, this method would take the shortest amount of time to kill the animal out of all the hypotheses. Because of the differences of anatomy between species possibly hunted by machairodonts, the geometry needed to kill a horse, for instance, might not work for a bison. This would require the genus, or even the specific species, to be highly specialized for one type of prey animal. This might offer an explanation for their extinction, for the movement or extinction of that prey species would lead to the death of its specialist predator.
The origin of the Broad Town White Horse is uncertain, although there are multiple stories concerning its origin. The most common story, originating from Reverend Plenderleath, writing in 1885, is that the horse was cut in 1864 by William Simmonds, who at the time owned the land and Littletown Farm, whose land the horse was a part of. According to this story, the horse originally measured 86 feet long and 61 feet tall, but this size were not intended to be the horse's final proportions, as Simmonds had intended "to enlarge it by the degrees" each time he scoured the horse, so that each time he scoured and maintained the horse, the horse's size would grow until it "assumed a really impressive aspect." He intended to do this by increasing the size of the horse's outline, and according to writer Esther Smith, author of "White Horses of Wiltshire & Uffington", "this would not have been a very effective way of enlarging the horse; the neck for example could not be made longer without moving the head." However, Simmonds ultimately did not keep the farm land long enough for him to see the horse's size grow to a particularly different size. "We have been spared the sight of a very distorted figure with a short neck and thick legs," Smith wrote.
Humans domesticated horses and needed them to perform a variety of duties. One type of horse-powered work was the hauling of heavy loads, plowing fields, and other tasks that required pulling ability. A heavy, calm, patient, well-muscled animal was desired for this work. Conversely, a light, more energetic horse was needed for riding and rapid transport. Thus, to the extent possible, a certain amount of selective breeding was used to develop different types of horse for different types of work.
It is a common misunderstanding that the Destrier that carried the armoured knight of the Middle Ages had the size and conformation of a modern draft horse, and some of these Medieval war horses may have provided some bloodlines for some of the modern draft breeds. The reality was that the high-spirited, quick-moving Destrier was closer to the size, build, and temperament of a modern Andalusian or Friesian. There also were working farm horses of more phlegmatic temperaments used for pulling military wagons or performing ordinary farm work which provided bloodlines of the modern draft horse. Records indicate that even medieval drafts were not as large as those today. Of the modern draft breeds, the Percheron probably has the closest ties to the medieval war horse.
By the 19th century, horses weighing more than that also moved at a quick pace were in demand. Tall stature, muscular backs, and powerful hindquarters made the draft horse a source of “horsepower” for farming, hauling freight and moving passengers. The railroads increased demand for working horses, as a growing economy still needed transport over the 'last mile' between the goods yard or station and the final customer. Even in the 20th century, draft horses were used for practical work, including over half a million used during World War I to support the military effort, until motor vehicles became an affordable and reliable substitute.
Equines have significant differences in size, though all are characterized by long heads and necks. Their slender legs support their weight on one digit (which evolved from the middle digits). Grévy's zebra is the largest wild species, standing up to and weighing up to . Domesticated horses have a wider range of sizes. Heavy or draft horses are usually at least high and can be as tall as and weigh from about . Some miniature horses are no taller than in adulthood. Sexual dimorphism is limited in equines. The penis of the male is vascular and lacks a bone (baculum). Equines are adapted for running and traveling over long distances. Their dentition is adapted for grazing; they have large incisors that clip grass blades and highly crowned, ridged molars well suited for grinding. Males have spade-shaped canines ("tushes"), which can be used as weapons in fighting. Equines have fairly good senses, particularly their eyesight. Their moderately long, erect ears are movable and can locate the source of a sound.
A massive black draft horse gelding. Thought to be a Clydesdale. Over 17 hands tall. He was described by Jake as being "big enough to shade an elephant" and "not having a mean bone in his body." Smart and good-natured. He was a mustang in the far past. Rescued by Sam at an auction from being made into dog food. While being tested by Ryan Slocum he was discovered to be an experienced jumping horse. Sam sold him to Sterling Stables as Wyatt would not allow her to keep him. Is on the cover of "Gift Horse."