# Horses in the Old West



## jamesqf (Oct 5, 2009)

1) Don't believe what you see in the movies.

a) Even if you do believe some of it, realize that even if the movie is being shot on a location that's really in the 'Old West', much of the land has been drastically changed by a century and more of human activity.

2) Wild horses survive quite well on natural forage.


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## david in md (Jun 13, 2013)

Just curious how it was done. At most the movies show horses penned in a corral. Machines didn't exist to process and haul large amounts of forage to them and guessing it wasn't practical to turn them loose at night to graze 100s of square miles of range. Guessing they didn't carry the body condition mine do.
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## boots (Jan 16, 2012)

There has always been machinery to put up hay. Not every place grows grass hay though. Other forages were harvested and stored. Horse were rotated off the large pastures every few days. Those in for work were kept in small pastures or corrals. Horses' "body condition" changed with the availability and quality of feed, just like the cowboys' did.
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## Allison Finch (Oct 21, 2009)

Even in the "old days" they were able to cut and bale hay, as well as doing loose stacks.



















A horse powered baler



















Loose stacking is efficient and still used in areas with little mechanization.










Also, working horses were not the fat happy horses we see today, They were small narrow, often scrawny beasts.


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## jaydee (May 10, 2012)

Horses were largely work animals so even if they did have more grass available they worked it off. The work horses in the UK were mostly kept stabled in the day and if they were in a rural area turned out in small paddocks at night - there wasn't the time to go walking any distances to catch them
The feral horses were probably like those in the UK - they pile weight on in the summer and drop it all off in the winter
Hay making c. 1900 It was very labour intensive


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## bsms (Dec 31, 2010)

A friend has a farm in Utah. Before they could farm the land there (and they have since his great grandfather), canals had to be dug to carry water from the mountains. IIRC, he benefits from 30 miles of irrigation canal dug using hands and horses. He says he cannot grow a weed on his land without watering it first!

Also, cowboys of the late 1800s were around 135 lbs in weight, and the cow ponies WERE ponies - around 13 -14 hands. A cowboy would have more than one horse (typically 5-6 from what I've read) so he could rotate use, and the horses lived hard and rather short lives by modern standards.

These are pictures from the early 1900s. If the cowboys are 5'7", then their horses are under 14 hands (I'm just over 5'7", and the bottom of my chin is 15 hands):



















If you want to see working ranches from around 1900-1910, I strongly recommend this website:

Erwin E. Smith Collection Guide | Collection Guide


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## QtrBel (May 31, 2012)

We have a mixed forage area that we hand cut with scythes, hand turn with forks, load and stack and then feed later. On my uncle's family ranch though horses in the string were rotated, kept close and grazed during their off time. Those that were off for longer periods were turned loose in larger pastures. Those that were corralled were thrown hay even in the way back when and those stabled were grained with what was grown for that purpose. The movies don't capture the reality. Depending on where you are at you figure acreage per animal. Some parts of the country you have to have really large areas, others parts of the country they can be smaller. The larger the area the smaller the string and the more you intensively grow something that can be fed or hauled in. And yep their horses were smaller, rock hard and scrappy. They were little power houses. Key word little.


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## squirrelfood (Mar 29, 2014)

jamesqf said:


> 1) Don't believe what you see in the movies.
> 
> a) Even if you do believe some of it, realize that even if the movie is being shot on a location that's really in the 'Old West', much of the land has been drastically changed by a century and more of human activity.
> 
> 2) Wild horses survive quite well on natural forage.


I wouldn't say "quite well." They quite often DO get pretty thin by spring.


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## boots (Jan 16, 2012)

Some ranchers/cowboys caught horses off the range and started riding them in the spring and turned them back to the range in the fall when they were out of a job. Then just caught more the next year.

And some of those horses were moved around with the cow herd. Where cattle can live, horses can live. Being herd animals, some outfits ran a bell mare with the remuda, knowing that she would help in getting the rest in when the wrangler went out in the morning. Wrangler kept a couple in, either high lined or hobbled, so there would be something to bring in the day horses with. 

And the worst "bunch quitters," if they were worth anything, were kept hobbled until the hands could tell they'd buddy'd up with the rest.


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

it's not usually part of the history lessons, but the availabiliyt of food for the horses has always been a real factor in any military campaign involving cavalry.

can you imagine the logistics for really large military movements , such as the American Civil war or any of the 18th or 19th century wars of Europe where thousands of horses were needed.?

If you didn't have food for the hroses, you didn't have an army.

that was one reason that Chief Joseph's band of Nez Perce indians were able to outrun the US army for such a great distance during the summer; their horses were used to living off the land and there was plenty of forage. the Army animals were used to being corn fed, and when they moved quickly, they outran their food suppliers and they struggled to maintain energy on local forage, whereas the Indian ponies flourished. but, when winter came, the indian ponies were on such lean times (they were usually not ridden much inthe winter) while the big Army mounts had corn wagons to keep them in calories.
this isn't the only reason Chief Joseph was forced to surrender, but it played a factor.


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## smrobs (Jul 30, 2008)

Subbing to reply later


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## smrobs (Jul 30, 2008)

Okay, now that I'm on an actual computer that won't die every 2 minutes...

Even back in the "olden" days, they had the machines to cultivate, harvest, and transport hay. Not in nearly as much bulk as we can do now, but it was done. Of course, in some areas it was more complicated because the terrain wasn't good enough to provide ample grass to bale hay. There were a great many horses in those days that lived off of scrub brush and yucca plants and whatever oats or corn or barley their owner could buy at the local mercantile store. 

All these pictures were taken in the area surrounding my home town (where I still live).






And, as Allison and Bsms pointed out, the horses in those days weren't the fat slick shiny things we're used to seeing now. The old horses were much more rangey. Not as much muscle mass, big bones and feet, not real tall, but a heart the size of Texas and guts 20 miles long LOL.

What the average range mustang looks like is more similar in appearance to the cow horses back in those days.


















Sure, there were some nicer looking horses, but many of them were scrubby looking little things.


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## ALegUp (Sep 26, 2013)

Just wanted to thank everyone who answered and posted super cool pictures. It's too easy for some of us to forget our not too distant past. I appreciate the history lesson.
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## COWCHICK77 (Jun 21, 2010)

Cool thread!

I happen to have photocopies of photos that were taken on the ranch we work on, some of them showing haying. Here in northern NV and Utah Mormon hay derricks were commonly used. Here on this ranch I believe they still used teams to hay well into the 1970's along with tractors. And used teams in the winter to pull hay slips for feeding cows in the 1990's.



This is the same hay derrick today that has been left in a stack yard. We still use stack yards to keep hay in the field but cows and horses out. We do not use barns to store hay.


Beaver slides were also used.
(this is a Google image)
I was told that the "hot teams" were used to run the Beaver slides since it was constant, fast and hard work running the rake up the slide to stack the hay. Once they were gentle and broke enough they were moved onto the wagons or other hay equipment.


At one time this ranch had over 500 draft horses for haying and moving the wagon camps for the cowboy and haying crews. The haying crew also stayed out on the wagons in camps. In some places you can still see the old wagon trails and camps that might of had some small corrals or at least hitch rails for harnessing teams to hay the nearby meadows.


All the horses here were turned out to graze and wrangled every morning to catch what was needed for work that day. We still use the same practice for our saddle horses.


In the picture below saddle horses are being brought in, the saddle barn on the right is the same barn we use to this day.


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