American Bashkir Curly Horse
How the Curly Horse came to the United States is still a mystery of the horse world! Their have been many theories, but no factual proof has been found.
Another theory is that, dates to 1898 when Peter Damele and his father were riding horseback in the Peter Hanson mountain range in the remote high country of central Nevada, near Austin. There they discovered three horses with tight, curly ringlets covering their entire bodies. Since then, curly horses have been found on the Damele range and many Curlies in the United States can be traced to that hered.
Some have suggested that they came across the Bering Strait land bridge during the last ice age, but no fossil evidence has been found to support that.
The Curly horses come in all sizes. All colors and markings are found, example: chestnut, bay, black, palomino, buckskin, gray, appaloosa patterns and pinto.
One odd feature of Curlies is that they often completely shed out the mane hair and sometimes the tail in the summer, growing it back in the winter. The hair of the mane and tail is fine and silky but often quite kinky. The summer coat is often wavy or rather straight with the curls returning in the winter coat. They are hardy and able to survive extreme winter conditions.
Dominant Curly horses can also occasionally throw straight haired foals. It is believed the gene for the curly coat is a simple dominant, with perhaps a variety of genes that affect the expression of the curly traits. A homozygous curly, one that carries curly genes on both alleles of the coat gene, will always throw a curly, whether the other parent is curly or straight haired. Heterozygous curlies (those with a curly gene and a straight haired gene on their coat gene alleles) can sometimes throw straight foals.
American Bashkir Curlies are the only hypo-allergenic horse breed; most people allergic to horses can handle curly horses without suffering any allergic reaction. Why? Curlies lack a protein in the shaft of their fur that is apparently responsible for allergic reactions. Their hair shaft also has a different structure under the microscope- responsible for the curling of the hair. Curlies smell different and sweat different than typical horses.
The American Bashkir Curly has a gentle nature, easy to handle and easily to trained. Curlies have won awards in all major events, including western riding, hunter, jumper, roping, english equitation, dressage, gaited pleasure and driving. They also have won in competitive endurance trail riding and are excellent mounts in the mountains, for ranch work and are wonderful pleasure horses. American Bashkir Curlies are known as "gaited horses" because of their natural running walk or foxtrot.
Finland first curly horse come years 1997 name Spring Time and first curly foal born 2002 name Pallas First Runner.
For more information:
The American Bashkir Curly Registry, web site: http://www.abcregistry.org/about.asp
International Curly Horse Organization, Web site: www.curlyhorses.org
