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In this classic book, historian Grant MacEwan celebrates teh contributions of teh magnificent Clydesdales, Percherons, Belgians, Shires, Suffolks, and Canadiens as well as the dedicated people who cherished these special animals and made them famous. Heavy Horses
Copyright 1986 Western Producer Prairie Books
165 pages,
ISBN 1-894004-74-4.

As the small tractors of many makes grew in popularity, horse breeding slumped, but the actual number of horses on farms did not fall sharply because horses have long lives and many retired and idle horses, unsalable, remained on pastures and ranges to be counted as usual at census time. But, clearly, more and more of the surviving and unmarketable horses were unemployed. By 1944, farmers and ranchers were losing patience with the idle animals eating valuable grass and showing no return.

At a meeting held at Val Marie, Saskatchewan, in March, 1944, for the express purpose of considering surplus horses, the Western Horse Marketing Co-operative was organized; the double purpose was to realize some return from the surplus animals and make more grass available for the readily salable cattle and sheep. Seven months later, the organized horsemen had one slaughtering plant at Swift Current and were acquiring another at Edmonton. They were in the meat business in a totally new way, with eyes fixed upon the inevitable markets for canned meat in postwar Europe.

In 1952, the co-operative could report the removal of a quarter of a million otherwise unmarketable horses and meat sales amounting to roughly $I 9 million. Most of the sales were of canned meat shipped or about to be shipped to Europe where the need was great and horse meat was a generally acceptable item of diet. It was then announced that the two meat processing plants at Swift Current and Edmonton that had operated on behalf of 36,400 shareholders in Saskatchewan and Alberta were for sale. They had served their purpose.

A few horse meat stores opened in Canada during those war years but most Canadians wanted no part in making horses a permanent item of the nation's diet. Of twenty-three shops licensed to sell horse meat in Winnipeg and west of there in 1951, only three were operating in 1953. For the majority of Canadians, eating horse meat was too much like eating their friends and they were not going to do it.

From that time on, the horse population continued to fall, largely from natural causes because the country's horses were growing old and the death rate was climbing. There was practically no replacement of the lost heavy breed horses. By 1971-fifty years after the Canadian horse count stood at 3,610,500 and Saskatchewan had a million head-the Canadian numbers had fallen to about 325,000 and Saskatchewan's to 65,000.

Following the liquidation of the thirties and forties, some observers predicted-not very wisely-that the horse heavies would completely disappear, like the dinosaurs, and some stuffed specimens should be recovered for museum needs in future years. The drafters did, indeed, fall to shockingly low levels of popularity and interest. Breeding of their kind came to a standstill. A tourist driving from Winnipeg to Calgary in June, 1952, reported that he did not see a single foal following a heavy mare.

But the draft breeds did not disappear. Although they experienced more extremes and reverses in fortune than any other domestic animal, purebred draft horses leaped from a point close to extinction to appear with a nucleus of good breeding animals and then command all-time record prices and widespread public admiration.

Now, it's a completely new order for Canadian draft breeds. The good purebred mares of Percheron, Belgian, and Clydesdale breeds that might have sold for $500 each prior to 1921, would have brought one cent a pound in the thirties, but their counterparts could have commanded several thousand dollars in the seventies and eighties. A certain six-horse team of geldings that won extensively in the 1980s was said to represent a $100,000 investment with their show harness.

It raises questions, of course, about the place of high class show and breeding horses of the draft types in the years ahead. Will those recent showpieces that were partly a reflection of depleted numbers, retain their popularity? Nobody is qualified to answer the question but it must be extremely doubtful if good representatives of the heavy breeds will ever again sink to the pathetic depths experienced in the years of the Second World War.

It seems reasonable to conclude that almost every Canadian farm could employ to advantage at least one two-horse team of heavy horses for routine and special tasks when mud and snow forbid the use of trucks and tractors. There are progressive Canadian farmers who are determined that they can perform daily barnyard chores more economically with two heavy horses than with a tractor. The rather common sight of an expensive tractor doing a two-horse job makes little sense. And more than a few business leaders with products to sell in nearby urban communities are admitting that a team of good and proud horses hitched to a show wagon offers the best and most economical advertising they can get. Said one man: "Those heavy horses can capture more human hearts than any other advertising attraction I can offer. And I have my horses' companionship as a bonus."

How much does a team of purebred draft mares have to offer in return for a place on an average mixed farm in either eastern or western Canada? A search for the answers suggests the following:

  1. Either member of the team can pull a row cultivator in garden, orchard, shelterbelt, or wherever there are rowcrops.
  2. Both members of the team can reproduce to provide replacements or cash revenue from sales of purebred stock or geldings.
  3. Singly or together, the horses can furnish power for farm chores with the maximum of efficiency and economy-and with power to spare.
  4. Singly or as a team, the horses can furnish entries for local fairs or exhibitions and fill places of distinction in urban parades and other similar events.
  5. They can keep alive some of the finest traditions of the Canadian mixed or family farm.

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