Clydesdale Christmas

I heard about a "Clydesdale Experience" fairly close to us.  As I love horses, and have a special spot in my heart for "big guys" I wanted to go. 

There are several different tours available and to get into the Holiday spirit I chose the nighttime tour. It added to the magic of the evening. 

I was in awe of the horses and the family that owns and operates Grandview Clydesdales. 

This is truly a family operation with family doing almost all of the day-to-day work.

The family farm was beautifully decorated. 

Karen and her husband, Shannon, led the tour.

They have compiled several videos to give visitors a better picture of what they do..

Grandview Clydesdales is one of the largest Clydesdale farms in the world.  The original farm was in Arkansas, and an additional farm is now located near Ocala, FL (The horse capital of the world)

Each room we entered had large displays of ribbons and trophies... oh, and they only display first place and championship ribbons!

(In Canada first place ribbons are red!)

Each of the horses also earn their own custom harness. The harnesses are made in Ohio, and take two years to complete.  The fittings are stainless steel, when they need to be strong, or chromed where they need to bring some more bling. It takes two years for a harness to be made, and all of the components of the harness weigh 200 pounds! 

This is one of the shoes. The width of the shoe is somewhat larger than the horse's hoof to help spread the pounds per square inch out a bit...kinda like my Hoka sneakers!

After learning the history of Grandview Clydesdales, now in their 24th generation involved in raising and showing Clydesdales, we went out to one of the barns...the Champion's barn.

We were introduced to each horse and learned of his or her winnings. Shannon said the seven horses in this barn earn their right to be here and that it is akin to the Baseball Hall of Fame. We learned about each horse's personality, and details about their age, weight, height and more.

One of the youngest horses in the barn, 5 years old, is 19 hands tall (6' 4"), weighs 2300 lbs, and is expected to grow another 1 or 2 inches in height and put on about 300 lbs!

One of the fun things we learned is that it takes 16 bottles of Clairol black hair dye to color one of their horses, who happens to be the bay color, like the Budweiser Clydesdales*. They dye this horse for horse shows so they have a stunning team of 6 or 8 black horses. 

* We were told the Grandview has a strong relationship with the Budweiser group. Quite a few horses born and raised at Grandview have gone on to 'work' for Budweiser, and Grandview has purchased some Clydesdales from them. 

Grandview has an average of 40 clydesdales on their property, with 8-18 foals born each year. 

Karen is demonstrating how she braids the manes of horses for a show. She shows single horse classes and  is the 'groom' when Shannon drives the big hitches.  

This is "May",  a championship mare, all dressed for a show. 

(She's the one that gets her hair dyed - although it's hard to tell with the backlighting that she is a bay - brown coat with a black mane & tail. 

...and here is our Christmas card...we were told!