The Ardennes type draught horse is the basic root of all the heavy breeds that exist today. They have been around, relatively unchanged, since the last ice age, the original cold blooded horse. As the Arab is to the light horse so the Ardennes is to the heavy. They have been recorded as being used by Julius Caesar for heavy cavalry work; Geoffery of Bouillon rode off to the crusades, in 1096, from his castle in the Ardennes on his Ardennes stallion. Napoleon used them as pack horses on his march to Moscow. They are part of history. Many of the existing breeds today still look much like them, the Comtois, Breton, Trait du Nord, Brabant, Dutch draught and many of the old German, Polish and USSR breeds to name but a few.

The natural conditions are tough in the Ardennes, the soil is poor, the grass is sparse and the winters cold. In its own land the horses are small, sturdy, tough, very strong yet tractable beasts. Moved to a better land with a better climate, they have become bigger and more massive with time. Hence the Brabant in the North of Belgium and the huge Trait du Nord in the East of France.  

The Ardennes is a small horse from 14.2 to 16 hh rarely over, massively muscled, loads of bone, yet a refined head with flared nostrils, a kind eye and an almost pony like outline with a wonderful temperament and a tough constitution. They get fat on a diet that would see most horses starve and rarely need shoeing, having good round, neat, hard black feet. Most Ardennes have a very good clean action. A long sloping shoulder and clean joints enable their short legs to cover the ground at a surprising speed, and they consistently outpace horses 2 or 3 hands taller than them. All over Europe, they are still used in commercial forestry, on farms, and they are regularly used for competitive private driving. They are surprisingly fast, very nimble with tremendous stamina and always good-tempered. A number of Ardennes are used by the Riding for the Disabled Associations and are being used as general, sturdy riding horses in the UK.

They come in all colours, except dapple grey, strawberry roan is the most common colour in UK but bay, chestnut and chestnut roan are also found. Dark legs with little feather are the norm. They generally have 10 to 12 inches of bone below the knee, profuse manes and tails add to the pony like appearance, similar to a giant Exmoor pony.

Courtesy of Mike Stamp stampm@aol.com

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