The Percheron horse

by Charles Du Hays

A Percheron stallion called Jean-le-Blanc, native of Mauves, and sold about the year 1825 to a M. Viard of Villers, in Ouche, near Sap, (department of the Orne,) has been the sole improving agent of the equine race in Ouche, which, up to that time, was reduced to miserable small horses without any stamp or value. Although heavy, powerful, and, indeed, a shaft-horse, his gait and an indescribable something pervading his whole body, recalled so thoroughly the idea of the oriental family that one was disposed to take him for an enlarged Arabian. This fact, often related to us, excited our curiosity. We did not rest until pressing inquiry upon inquiry, one after another, we ascertained that his family had been crossed with a stallion from the Pin stables, standing at the Chateau of Côèsmes, near Bellesme. And, what was this stallion? The Arab Gallipoli!

What can be inferred from these facts, if it be not that the crossings which have best succeeded in Perche have been those of the Arab, and that the English crosses have only succeeded when tempered by contact with the Arab?

But if the absolute want of stallions for improving the breed be felt among the pure Percherons; if it be impossible to procure either good Arabs or heavy English, freshly tempered with Arab blood; if important and powerful considerations compel a recourse to the English cross, the latter should only be accepted intelligently and under good and wise conditions. Therefore we ask leave to refer the reader particularly to what we have already advanced in the preceding chapter upon the choice of an English stallion.

In Brittany, in the department of Finisterre, we have often heard it declared by quite a large number of breeders, that for having wished to proceed too fast in that way, they had, from the commencement, experienced numberless disappointments, the second generation from the English cross being always inferior to the first. From stout sires and dams, who, from their general appearance might be classed in the category of heavy-draft, there daily came ungainly stock, thin, lanky, leggy, and without weight in the hind-quarter, unattractive, of a difficult sale when young, and proving a veritable misfortune to the small farmer counting upon the sale of the colt to pay his rent and having neither the place nor means to raise him. This stock was, moreover, the object of another disappointment quite as serious as the first; rarely was a good worker to be found among this burdensome race.

Is not this tall, lank, weak,—in a word this abortive progeny,—issue of strong and hardy parents, a strange and discouraging result? “Oh! why is this?” exclaimed the Brittany cultivators. There was a simple reason for it, of which they had not learned the value. They proceeded with race-horse speed in the way of crossing, and gave no oats. They were ignorant of the requirements of the distingué horse; they did not know that in the sire and dam, or at least in one of them, there was circulating more or less English blood, which produces strange results in proportion as it leaves its native place and reaches a poor country or one of hard work, and in which it no longer receives the prodigal care of its native land.

We have said that the Arab preserves indefinitely his warm blood and constantly gives what he has not even himself,—although this truth resembles a paradox,—that is: a powerful appearance and a strong frame. It is not the same with the English horse and his derivatives; they become thin and always degenerate. If their progeny be not fed with oats without stint,—they require this, and are heavy eaters, like everything which comes from the north,—their blood grows poorer rapidly. In successive generations of these families, born in a dull and damp atmosphere scarcely ever visited by the sun, the legs become lean and lanky. It is necessary to recur incessantly to new drafts of English upon English, always expensive and requiring additional care, without taking into account that the result of too great an infusion of this peevish and often irascible blood would be to destroy the heavy-draft race—a race that I would like to see preserved intact alongside of the two others, though he be not quite suited to a country as hilly as Perche. He might, doubtless, plow successfully the vast and smooth plains of Beauce; but this is not the lot of all. I look for him in that busy country called Perche, where he must, without rest or pity, with a shoulder free from all tenderness, drag heavy vehicles to the tops of hills, and it will please me to see the play of his haunches and limbs in descending with these loads bravely and without flinching to the bottom of the valleys.

Do you expect, also, from a horse derived from English blood that cool, restrained, and ever fresh energy, that courageous patience of which the Percheron, every day, gives an example in the omnibuses of the streets of Paris? Dragging at a trot heavy loads, the weight of which frightens the imagination; stopping short, both in ascending or descending; starting off freely and always without balking; never sulking at his work or food, and fearing neither heat nor cold: this is a specimen of Percheron qualities.

Do you expect from an unjudicious cross with English blood a good, heavy draft-horse, a good shaft-horse, or a true wagon-horse? No one has now any illusion on this score.

In London, a traction of only about 2,000 lbs. is required of a draft-horse. In Paris, the horses harnessed to the heavy stone carts are required to drag as much as 5,000 lbs. each, and often even more.

What will dealers in heavy draft-horses do? The trade is already taxed to supply the demand. For long experience has taught, and unjudicious crosses have proved the English horse and his derivatives to be unfit for this purpose, for they are too nervous and not sufficiently staunch. Thus, the trade avoids them by instinct, and by instinct avoids every thing resembling them. And, on the other hand, it seizes hold of and clings eagerly to every indication that can serve it as a sign or mark—every thing that can guide it in the search for what it likes, and every thing that can guard against its opposite.