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["WF Smith" <mogrits AT gmail.com>]

>From the newspaper this morning. An 800lb horse might eat less than a draft
horse.
Warren


Carolina breeders try to save gentle, tough marsh tacky horses
By BRUCE SMITH Associated Press Writer Published: Tuesday, April 15, 2008

During centuries of isolation on the Carolina sea islands, the short-legged,
sway-backed marsh tacky horses became perfectly suited for toiling long
hours in the swamps and oppressive humidity.

But their wild looks and workhorse reputation - their name comes from the
old English word meaning "common" - didn't exactly make them prized among
horse lovers. Today, only about 150 of them remain.

Now, breeders are coming together to save the tacky, whose ancestors were
left by colonial Spanish explorers.

"You have to acquire a taste for these horses," said David Grant, who has
almost two dozen tackies on his Darlington County farm. "They are not as
attractive as an Arabian, a quarterhorse or a thoroughbred, but now that I
breed them and use them, beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

Those who know the tackies say there's plenty to love about them.

They can take hunters into woods and marshes that can't be reached by foot
or four-wheelers. They don't flinch when a rider fires a gun from the
saddle. Their deep, narrow chests give them more stamina than quarterhorses
over long distances, and their hind ends slope downward, allowing tight
turns in cane breaks and woods where other horses might have to back out.

"The South, and this entire country, they helped make it," said Ed Ravenel,
who raises tackies on his Yonges Island farm outside Charleston.

"You can work'em, you can ride'em. When you put them in swamps and mud like
we have around here in the Deep South ... instead of panicking and
floundering around, they can just plow right on through it."

Intelligent and superbly adapted to the Southern humidity and coastal
marshes, tackies can be broken quickly and prove docile for even the
youngest riders. They can survive on marsh grass and forage other horses
won't eat - farmers and owners simply kept them tied up in their yards over
the years.

"We haven't found anything they are not good at," said Jeanette Beranger, a
program manager with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. "They jump
like rabbits, have a lot of endurance and can thrive on nothing."

The conservancy, a nonprofit group working to preserve 150 threatened breeds
of livestock and poultry, has helped put together a breeders association to
preserve the tackies.

Beranger estimates the population will have to increase to about 1,000 to
ensure permanent survival. The more immediate goal is to get people in the
Carolinas and elsewhere interested in owning and riding them.

"I don't think they are ever going to overtake the quarterhorse in
popularity," she said. But they are ideal "if somebody is looking for an
easy keeper that is safe with children."

The tackies' colonial Spanish strain comes from the same ancestors as
cracker horses in Florida and bankers from the Outer Banks of North
Carolina. But DNA testing has found that the tackies are a separate breed,
with unique characteristics thanks to their relative isolation.

D.P. Lowther, a 76-year-old farmer in Ridgeland, rode tackies herding cattle
as a boy and began breeding them decades ago because he worried about their
survival.

He deserves much of the credit for preserving the breed, and now has about
100 tackies on his pastures in Ridgeland, about 30 miles from Hilton Head
Island. He got a number of his horses from the island as it was transformed
over the years into a resort destination.

"I've got some I wouldn't be afraid to put a saddle on and ride all the way
to Charleston," 75 miles away, Lowther said. "An 800-pound Marsh Tacky will
ride a 1,200-pound quarterhorse into the ground."

Ravenel said today's tackies are a bit bigger than their ancestors because
they are better cared for. He said breaking one of the horses is usually as
simple as putting a saddle on it.

"If a man told me he would like a horse he can depend on to ride, to work,
to put into several different disciplines, to haul and not worry about the
horse breaking down or faltering or running off, the closest I could come to
a guarantee would be one of these tacky horses."

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On the Net:

American Livestock Breeds Conservancy:
http://www.albc-usa.org";>http://www.albc-usa.org