American Cream Draft
A rare draft breed with a cream coat and calm temperament.
This rare draft horse breed, developed in early twentieth-century Iowa, is known for its cream or gold champagne coat. Its population dropped as farming mechanized, leading to a critical conservation status from both The Livestock Conservancy and the Equus Survival Trust.
Quick Facts
- Features
- Cream color, medium-heavy build
- Country
- United States
Facts from the source article.
Characteristics
The American Cream Draft is a draft horse breed with a refined head and a flat facial profile. Its chest is wide, its shoulders slope, and its back is short and strong. The ribs are well-sprung, the body is short-coupled, and the hindquarters are well-muscled. The legs are strong, well-proportioned, and set wide apart. The hooves are strong, making the horse sure-footed, and its movement is free and easy. The breed is known for a calm, willing temperament, which is especially suitable for novice draft horse owners. Mares weigh between 1500 and 1600 pounds, while stallions and geldings weigh 1800 pounds or more. The ideal coat is a medium cream with pink skin, amber eyes, and a white mane and tail. This cream color comes from the champagne gene acting on a chestnut base coat. Recognized colors are light, medium, and dark cream, with amber or hazel eyes. A cream mare with dark skin and a light mane and tail may be accepted as foundation stock, but stallions must have pink skin and a white mane and tail for registration. Foals too dark for the main registry can be placed in an appendix registry, which also accepts half-bred Cream Drafts crossed with other draft bloodlines if they meet requirements. An upgrade system uses appendix horses to strengthen genes and increase breed numbers. Adult skin is pink with abundant dark freckles or mottling, and eyes are hazel or amber. Champagne foals have bright pink skin and blue eyes at birth that darken with age; the registry describes these foal eyes as almost white.
Breed history
The American Cream Draft descends from a foundation mare named Old Granny, probably foaled between 1900 and 1905. She was first noticed at an auction in Story County, Iowa, in 1911 and purchased by Harry Lakin, a stock dealer, before being sold to Nelson Brothers Farm in Jewell, Iowa. Her breeding is unknown, but she was cream-colored, and many of her foals were also cream; they sold for above-average prices due to their color. Her cream coat, pink skin, and amber eyes became defining standards for the breed, and the color is now known as gold champagne. By 1946, 98 percent of registered horses traced back to Old Granny. In 1920, a colt of Old Granny's named Nelson's Buck No. 2 impressed veterinarian Eric Christian, who asked the Nelsons not to geld him; he remained a stallion and sired several cream foals, though only one was registered: Yancy No. 3, out of a black Percheron mare. Yancy sired Knox 1st, born in 1926 to an unregistered bay mare of mixed Shire ancestry. From this line, Silver Lace No. 9 was born in 1931, a great-great-grandson of Nelson's Buck. Silver Lace became an influential stallion; his dam was a Belgian mare with light chestnut coloring, credited for his size of 2230 lbs. He was popular in Iowa, but because stallions standing for public stud service required registration with the Iowa Department of Agriculture, which only recognized established breeds, his owners formed the Silver Lace Horse Company, allowing shareholders to breed mares to him. His main breeding career coincided with the Great Depression, and he was once hidden in a neighbor's barn to prevent auction. Another significant foundation stallion was Ead's Captain, whose bloodlines appear in about one-third of all American Cream Drafts.
More in Conservation Priority Breeds of the Livestock Conservancy
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