Recognition and development of the Irish Draught horse

Abstract

The number of horses in Ireland had shown remarkable consistency from 1861 until just before 1951. Between the end of the Second World War and 1951 there was a rapid decrease in the number of working horses, and the rate of the decrease accelerated during the decade of the 1950s and the early 1960s. Throughout the 1960s popular emphasis was placed on mechanisation, as if there were no role for the horse as a working animal. Even the production of pleasure horses seems to have been initially regarded as of little value. The 1970s were a sad period for both light and heavy draught horses in County Cork, as in the rest of Ireland. With increased mechanisation, the market for heavy draught animals which had previously dominated transport in the city of Cork, came to an end. There was a great danger that the Irish Draught would soon become extinct, so the formation of the Irish Draught Horse Society in 1976 was of great importance for the development of the Irish Draught as a breed. In 1982 this society published the "Breed Standard and Guideline", the first time that an official standard had been published for an Irish Draught. Despite various schemes during the 1980s and 1990s designed to increase the number and improve the quality of the Irish Draught horse population, it is, at the beginning of the 21st Century, one of the world's endangered breeds.