Knabstrupper
| Knabstrupper | |
|---|---|
Knabstrupper |
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| Important data | |
| Origin: | Denmark |
| Main breeding area: | Germany / Denmark |
| Distribution: | Germany / Denmark |
| Stick measure : | 149-157 cm |
| Colors : | Tiger piebald |
| Main application area: | High school, dressage, riding and driving horse, vaulting |
The Knabstrupper is a baroque horse breed from Denmark . They are mostly conspicuously drawn tiger piebalds .
Background information on horse evaluation and breeding can be found under: Exterior , interior and horse breeding .
Exterior
There are two breeding styles: the baroque and the modern type. The modern type corresponds to the breeding goal of a modern sport horse , i.e. roughly that of the German riding horse. This type is created by crossing any foreign blood. The baroque type is more powerfully built and usually has a slightly ramsnose head as well as a strong neck and muscular hindquarters. Only a Knabstrupper standing in the baroque type, which was bred in the 3rd generation without crossbreeding with foreign blood (pure breeding), is an original Knabstrupper. Animals that have been crossed with PREs , Lusitanos or other selected Spanish breeds are included in the baroque breeding register in special exceptions.
Knabstrupper are mainly characterized by the tiger piebald color, with a distinction between five basic variants. The white of the tiger piebald is based on complex genetic makeup.
This is how the five variants are created:
- 1. the perfect
- Let us assume that the basic color of a Volltiger would be brown, with 4 × black boots. Then brown spots would be distributed over the whole body, while the spots on the legs would be black and there could also be black stripes in the mane and tail.
- 2. the white-born
- In some animals, the genes that inherit the “coat” are so strong that the coat has no holes (= spots). The horse is then completely white and - in contrast to the gray - is also born white. According to the American researcher Schwink, horses are homozygous , i. H. strong sires.
- 3. the Schabracktiger
- If the genetic material is less strong, the coat is not complete and then mostly only lies over the croup , while the front part of the horse is monochrome. The blanket over the croup can be perforated like the full tiger or completely like the white-born.
- 4. the snowflake tiger
- There are horses in which only fragments of the coat are left. These are distributed over the body as white spots on the base color.
- 5. the monochrome
- There can also be animals without any trace of a coat. The tiger piebald genetics can carry these in a recessive manner . All other variations have no direct connection to the inheritance of tiger piebald genetics.
Breeding history
The Knabstrupper are a color variant of the once world famous Danish Frederiksborger , which were further bred according to type and blood on the Danish estate Knabstrup and therefore received their name.
The consistent breeding of tiger piebalds in Denmark began with the royal stud in Frederiksborg, which was founded in 1536 after many church studs had become the property of the king as a result of the Reformation. They used horses that were either imported directly from Spain or came from Spanish bloodlines. These horses best met the requirements of a war horse at that time, as they were best ridiculous through training up to high school in hand-to-hand combat after the war horses of knights had been ousted by the invention of guns. Riding academies were established all over Europe at this time, at which the princes and nobles trained their horses to the highest degree. Correspondingly, the stud farms for breeding such horses also blossomed. Frederiksborg was soon one of the leading breeders in Europe and co-founded other well-known breeds, such as B. Lipizza, Cordoba, Oldenburg and Hanover.
The tiger piebald experienced their peak in the Baroque era , as they were ideally suited to represent the joie de vivre and joy of color of the baroque princes. Even then it was something special to own a tiger piebald! Despite all breeding efforts throughout Europe, the tiger piebalds remained a precious rarity, as the breeders at that time often mistook white for white and thus created genetic chaos, which caused most breeding attempts to fail. In Denmark, however, it was possible to create a tiger piebald strain that was soon born white through pure breeding (see color explanation). Horses from this tribe were among the most sought-after in Europe. They were not only harnessed to the golden carriages, but were also often the favorite riding horses of kings and emperors and carried them to their coronations.
The baroque horse breeds and thus also the Frederiksborger received the fatal blow from Napoleon, who recruited ordinary citizens and farmers as soldiers. The little riding skills of these soldiers required masses of straight, monochrome horses. There was no longer a man-to-man fight, and the art of riding in the high school became a leisure activity for princes and gentlemen.
In addition to the large royal stud in Frederiksborg, there were also private breeders who bought animals from the royal stud. In 1798 some mares from Frederiksborg came into the possession of Major Villars Lunn in Knabstrup. His son W. Lunn wrote in 1855 about this man who became the founder of the Knabstrupperzucht: My father was not an innovator, but a keeper of the old type and always tried to buy mares that fit into his line.
With this in mind, Villars Lunn also bought a tabby mare from a horse dealer and butcher named Flaebe, which went down in history as a flaeb mare. The mare had caught his eye because of her exceptional performance. In 1813 the mare got a foal from the Lövenborg stallion Baeveren, the Flaebehengst, through which large numbers of tiger pucks were born in Denmark. The Flaebehengst was purely Spanish, his mother had come to Denmark with Napoleon's Spanish troops and his father was of Spanish descent too.
One summer evening in 1891, lightning struck Gut Knabstrup during a storm and 22 breeding animals died in the flames. So the tiger peck breeding at Gut Knabstrup went out. The breeding history of the estate, which was almost 100 years old at the time, had left such traces that, in 1952, the district court attorney Ledager was able to re-establish a Knabstrupper stud with a few offspring. But it wasn't until 1972 that a nationwide association for the Knabstrup breed was founded in Denmark. The breed therefore only consists of a few hundred breeding animals today, in which the genetic remains of the tabby horses from Denmark have been preserved. In Denmark today attempts are being made to breed a riding horse on this basis, which should meet the requirements of a modern sport horse.
Most of the old bloodlines were dissolved or sold, mainly to Germany. The Knabstrupper Germany interest group has therefore developed a breeding program that gives both the sport type and the baroque type of Knabstruper a breeding basis. Various Danish hippologists as well as the Danish Association for the Preservation of Old Domestic Breeds have expressed the hope that the German breeders may succeed in preserving this old Danish cultural asset.
