The Horse in Husbandry - Hardcover

It is 35 to 40 years since the demise of horse power on the farm. The passing of the farm horse seemed to many to be the end of something that had lasted since time immemorial, for horses had been used in British farming for a thousand years or thereabouts. In another sense the age of horse-powered farming was short-lived, for it reached its peak with the agricultural revolution and mechanization of arable farming of the late-18th and 19th centuries. By the 1920s the finely developed management of horse power on the land was already beginning to break down under the pressures of economy in labour and then of the introduction of tractors. It is the horse-powered farming of the final era, from the late-18th century onwards, that is the subject of this book. Over 100 contemporary illustrations are included in this book. The text and illustrations together attempt to show what went into the development of the final age of horse power on the land, and something of how that system of farming worked. Predominantly it is the arable and mixed-husbandry systems, such as sheep and corn, that are the main concern, as these were the types on which horse power was most concentrated.

Pastoral farming had less need for horses, so geographically, western regions are less well represented. Otherwise the coverage is the whole of England, Wales and Scotland. As a result, it is necessary to deal mainly in the general, although there were at least as many common strands as there were local differences in the management of horse-powered farming.