A Colonel of the Russian Horse Guard with his Cossack Musical Parade Regiment. The riders are mounted on horses of the Tersk breed. In the 19th century one of the popular saddle all-rounders in Russia were Strelets horses. They were high on Arabian blood, and their conformation was Arabian-like. But they were larger and more robust. Another of their useful traits was that they better fared in Russia’s climate. But after the Civil war most of Strelets horses were lost. The Tersk horse is a result of a breeding program aimed at restoring a Strelets-like horse, having a robust constitution, tough and undemanding, suitable for herd keeping. The Tersk Stud was officially established on February 11, 1921, on the orders of Marshal Semyon Budyonny. The breeding farm was used to restore the Russian horse population, which suffered heavy losses during the Russian Revolution. In the 1880s, Count Sergei Aleksandrovich Stroganov and his brother-in-law Prince Aleksandr Grigorievich Shcherbatov found a spot at the foot of Mount Zmeika (“small snake” in Russian) in the Northern Caucasus they felt was ideal for establishing a horse breeding farm. The two traveled to the Middle East in 1889 and purchased several purebred Arabian horses for use in their new breeding program. Stroganov also purchased horses from Crabbet Arabian Stud in England, including the mares ‘Makbula’ and ‘Sobha’ and the stallion ‘Mesaoud’ who came from Crabbet Stud in England by way of Kleniewski Stud in modern-day Poland. Arabians were re-introduced to the new Tersk Stud in 1925 and the first French Arabian imports arrived in 1930. These included the stallion ‘Kann’ and six mares, most notable of which was ‘Carabine’. The original Arabian stallion’ Koheilan IV’ was imported from Hungary. There have been always good contacts between the Hungarian stud Bábolna and the traditional Georgian horse stud situated along the river Tersk in the former USSR. Today the Tersk Stud, is still operating a horse breeding farm that is owned and supervised by the Russian government. This fairly young and new Russian breed is still being developed at the Tersk stud, hence the name of the breed. Now the bulk of the breed is concentrated at the Stavropol stud.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 00:08:42 +0000
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