- Australian Stock Horse - |
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Stock Horses are excellent horses, versatile, with good temperaments and possessed of good stamina. They are also willing, quick, and lively. The Stock Horse is a quality animal quite similar to the Thoroughbred, but with more bone and substance. They have fine, attractive heads with broad foreheads and large eyes. Their necks are in proportion to their bodies, and well-set onto good, sloping shoulders. They have deep, though not excessively wide, chests, and a strong back and rounded ribcage. Their quarters are muscular and very powerful, and the legs strong and tough with well-formed, hard hooves. These horses can be any solid color, although their dominant color is bay. Australian Stock Horses stand between 14.2 and 16.2 hands high.
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Australia
got its first horses in 1788 when Governor Arthur Phillip imported
them from the South African Cape. From then on and increasing number
of horses, mainly Thoroughbreds and Arabians, were imported. They
were selectively bred in the New South Wales area for working on
the huge sheep stations, with tough ranching work. The horse that
came from these breedings was tough and enduring and called a Waler,
after the region, but was never registered as a breed. The early
Walers were highly regarded both as working ranch horses and as
cavalry mounts. They were used extensively by the Indian cavalry
and later, during the first World War, the Allied forces used them
in huge numbers. 
In
fact, because of their use during the war, their numbers were severely
depleted and by the Second World War they had all but disappeared.
The Australian Stock Horse was developed from the Waler and was
based largely on an Anglo-Arab type, having come about through crosses
between Arabians and Thoroughbreds. Large infusions of Quarter Horse
blood was introduced to the breed in 1954, and four Quarter Horse
stallions- Vaquero, Jackaroo, Risbon, And Gold Standard- had an
important effect of the breed. Their substance may also be accounted
for by the presence of a little Percheron blood in their veins.
In 1971, the Australian Stock Horse Society was formed and today
keeps on promoting and regulating the breed.