WHAT’S THE BIGGEST HORSE YOU HAVE EVER WORKED WITH?
Love this question. Why? Because BIG is what Clydesdales and draft horses in general are known for. And visitors to JFP Equine are always intrigued by WHO is the biggest.
Our biggest currently is ACE. He stands approx. 18 hands 3 inches tall and is somewhere between 2,250 - 2,300 lbs of pure awesomeness. ACE is our showman … the one we typically feature at our on-site and off-site public events. Partially because he has the personality for it and partially, you guessed it, because of his massive size!
But who is the BIGGEST that JP (Jim Poole) has ever worked with or owned throughout the years?
"It’s tough to recall exactly. There have been a lot of horses over the years and a lot of big ones. But there’s three that immediately stand out …”
BIG JAKE: CLYDESDALE GELDING
"Jake was a Clydesdale gelding we had at Anhesuer-Busch and he was definitely the tallest I’ve worked with, standing at 20 hands high. A huge favorite of the many visitors we had. We kept him at the home stable as an attraction and for pictures mainly. He ended up being too big for one of our traveling hitches at the time!”
BUCK: BELGIAN GELDING
“Buck was a Belgian gelding I owned back in the late 1980’s as part of our Regency Farm Belgians in Forest, Ontario, Canada. Buck was an amazing horse … 19 hands high and over 2400 lbs. Thick and strong! In 1989 he was officially weighed as part of the heaviest horse competition at the North American Belgian Show in Toronto Ontario, coming in at - if I recall correctly - 2,424 lbs!”
CUB: BELGIAN GELDING
"If you asked me to rank my favorite gelding of all time, it may in fact be Cub, a massive Belgian. His combination of personality and size made him second to none. He stood at 19 hands tall, weighed roughly 2,375 lbs, and was part of our championship Alberta Game Farm show hitch that traveled coast to coast in competition. Maybe even more impressive than just Cub was seeing him teamed with his hitch partner Charlie, who was impressive in his own right at 19 hands, 2,325 lbs. What a massive pair they were … and they did a lot of winning!"
Cub is pictured here (with JP) after being unloaded in 1978 from an over 2,000 mile transport to the Alberta Game Farm from Toronto, where he was a huge part of the winning six horse hitch at the Royal Winter Fair. Sidenote, it was 40 degrees below zero that day … and it looks like someone forgot his gloves!