I am saddened to see this news. The Shire horse is a beautiful breed.
Terry
British shire horse faces extinction thanks to invasion by its French cousinLast updated at 22:27pm on 13th March 2008
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...in_article_id=533137&in_page_id=1770They have given centuries of service to man in both war and work.
But the shire horse is in danger of becoming yet another slice of our heritage to pass into history, in part because of the increasing popularity of its French cousin.
A dwindling number of breeding mares have seen the number of shire horses in the UK plummet from around 6,000 ten years ago to just over half that today.
Pulling power: A team of shire horses at work, though most of the gentle giants now perform only at shows and ploughing matches
Across the Channel, however, the French government funds breeding programmes at a network of 22 studs to support its draught horse breeds such as the Percheron.
"The extinction of British shire horses is a distinct possibility within the next ten years," warned Dr Ken Young, of the UK Shire Horse Society.
He said that numbers had reached "dangerous levels" because the amount of breeding mares had dropped by more than a third over the last ten years.
Of those left in the UK, many are bred for the show ring, not to work - prompting owners in need of working stock to look abroad.
Dr Young said: "We have to do something about it now. In France, horse populations are healthy because many are bred to work on small-scale farms."
In the UK such farms are few and far between. He added: "The UK is producing 200 breeding-age female shire horses per year when 300 are required to replace those too old to breed.
"We have 1,800 breeding-age female shire horses in the country - down from 3,000 ten years ago - out of a total of 3,500 shire horses."
Dr Young, an academic at Warwick University who breeds shire horses as a hobby, said the possibility of setting up a frozen sperm bank had even been floated as a means of keeping the breed going.
The ancestors of shire horses, which can weigh up to a ton, were brought to Britain in 1066 by William the Conqueror and certain breeds were used in war to carry knights in armour.
In their heyday in the 18th and 19th centuries there were more than one million in the UK, when they were the main source of power in agriculture.
During the First World War, they were used to pull heavy artillery and thousands were killed. Their decline hastened following the introduction of tractors on the land and lorries on the roads, until by the 1950s there were only a few thousand left.
