Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Second part - VI. Agriculture and Cattle-Breeding - 2. Cattle-Rearing. By Captain V. Nauckhoff, Stockholm - Horses
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HORSES.
553
were received as gifts, and were purchased by our Kings and the representatives
of our higher nobility. During the 17th century, the Swedish horse does not
seem to have been distinguished for size and strength, and the measurement of a
full-sized remoant was but 138 centimeters, and therefore it is not strange that Gustavus
Adolphus had his squadrons strengthened with sharp-shooters, and that Charles XI
remounted a great part of his cavalry in the Baltic provinces.
Horse of the North Swedish race.
From time to time also, special regulations were issued intended to
improve horse-breeding, but the Swedish horse seems to have been, even at the
beginning of the 19th century, of no very superior quality. Then a certain
interest seems to have awakened for the import of good breeding animals, and it was
natural that such animals of noble race were procured, in the first place, in order
to obtain better riding and carriage horses, as agriculture did not yet demand
horses of a heavier description. In 1805 two thorough-bred stallions were
purchased in London by a private person, which were the first horses of this kind
known to have landed in Sweden. After this, there were imported, year after
year, breeders more or less adapted for the purpose intended, and it may be
mentioned that from 1818 to 1859 there were imported 120 thorough-bred
stallions and mares, and 6 stallions and 30 mares of Oriental race.
In the middle of that century, a very great improvement in Swedish
agriculture began, and it consequently became necessary to take measures for the
improvement of the ordinary farm-horse, which, especially in the central and
southern parts of the country, showed itself to be too small and weak for
the new agricultural machines and the deeper cultivation of the soil. In order
to give the Swedish farm-horse more bulk and strength, breeders of foreign
cold-blooded races have been imported and crossed with the farm-horse type,
which crossing is still being continued.
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