Florida Cracker Horse

The Florida Cracker Horse is also known by a variety of other names and descriptions, including "Chickasaw pony", "Seminole pony", "Prairie pony", "Florida horse", "Florida cow pony", and "grass-gut". Florida Crackers have straight or slightly concave profiles, strong backs and sloping croups. They are known for their speed and agility and excel at trail and endurance riding, and are also used extensively as stock horses. They are sometimes seen in Western riding sports such as working cow horse, team roping, and team penning. The Florida Cracker is a gaited horse, with the breed association recognizing two gaits, the running walk and amble, in addition to the regular walk, trot, canter and gallop. The single-footed ambling gait is known as the "coon rack" by some breed enthusiasts. The foundation genetics of the horse breed are the same as many others developed from Spanish stock in North and South America, including the Paso Fino, the Peruvian Paso, and the Criollo. The Florida Cracker Horse is very similar in type and genetics to the Carolina Marsh Tacky of South Carolina and the Banker horse of North Carolina, both Spanish-style breeds, but DNA testing has proven that these are separate breeds. ==History==

of the Floridian cattle herder Bone Mizell, 1895 Horses first arrived on the southeast North American mainland in 1521, brought by Ponce de León on his second trip to the region, where they were used by officers, scouts, and livestock herders. Later expeditions brought more horses and cattle to Spanish Florida. By the late 16th century horses were used extensively in the local cattle business, and by the late 17th century the industry was flourishing, especially in what is now northern Florida and southern Georgia. The horses included Barbs, Garranos, Spanish Jennets, Sorraias, Andalusians, and other Iberian breeds. Overall, they were relatively small and had physical traits distinctive of Spanish breeds, including short backs, sloping shoulders, low set tails, and wide foreheads. During this time, there was also a continual introduction of new Spanish blood from Cuba, as horses were traded between the two areas. During the Dust Bowl (1930–1940), large western cattle were moved into Florida, bringing with them the parasitic screwworm. Cattle with this parasite needed to be treated frequently, being roped and held while the rider was on horseback. The cowboys found that the Florida Cracker Horses, bred for working smaller cattle, were not able to hold the western cattle. They replaced the smaller horses with American Quarter Horses. This resulted in the Florida breed almost becoming extinct. As of 2009 there are three main bloodlines of Cracker stock, as well as a few smaller lines. The state of Florida still maintains two groups of Ayers-line horses in Tallahassee and Withlacoochee for breeding purposes and a display group in the Paynes Prairie Preserve. The state annually sells excess horses from all three herds, and individual breeders also send horses to the sale. The Equus Survival Trust also considers the population to be "critical," meaning that there are between 100 and 300 active breeding mares in existence today. However, breed numbers are slowly on the rise. Some sources still use the Chickasaw name to describe the Florida Crackers of today. == See also ==