Cavalry Horses

[noggy]

Well I know we have some horse people (no, not centaurs) (that would have been cool, though) here, and I sat here wondering about mounts captured by the Indians.



I have personally had very little experience with horses, apart from once meeting one who hadn't read the memo and tried eating me when I was a kid. But as for the US Cavalry horses of the 1800s, if I`m not mistaken, they primarily ate oats and hay? Correct? That as opposed to the Indians' ponies who would just eat the gras on the ground. So how does the anatomy/feeding habits of horses work? How adaptable are they? Would captured cavalry horses start eating grass straight away? Could/can they eat grass like a pony? Or would it be like me adopting some vegan kid, who eventually would just starve to death? The Plains Indians would have little use of a..eh...bulimic horse, but after decades of interacting with whites were familiar with this and they valued them. They wouldn't have bothered with capturing them if not. But would it be a lengthy process to «get them going» after being captured?



All the best,

Noggy

[Yan Taylor]

Mar 7, 2021 11:18:46 GMT -6 noggy said:

Well I know we have some horse people (no, not centaurs) (that would have been cool, though)

priceless Geir, love it!

[herosrest]

^Ducemus

Veterinary Service on Custer's Last Campaign by John S. Gray
Kansas Historical Quarterly, Autumn 1977 (Vol. 43, No. 3), pages 249 to 263. Transcribed by Tod Roberts; digitized with permission of the Kansas Historical Society.

The cavalry horses which were captured did not fair or fare well on grass and slowly withered over a few seasons. Forage for the mounts was a supply headache and a significant amount, maybe 70 tons off the top of my head, was dumped at the Powder River supply depot in early June as the Dakota Column moved through and detached Reno on a scout with the six right wing companies.

Care of the animals was obviously important and simply a matter of routine and guard and a quite smelly task. Plop. Plop. Indians discovered the forage and... stole the sacks.There was a fight when Terry sent a steamer up to recover the stuff. Scout Brockmeyer who went with Curley from Far West to Reno at the battlefield, was killed and has a marker on the site of the depot.

Anecdote. There is a small well to do town in Redbridge, south of London. Claygate is affluent and stuck between Epsom and Esher, blessed with race meetings and stables. Surrounding fields are full of swishy tailed mares which seem to be fashionable. So, I was staying there briefly visiting a nursing home and popped into the High St. one lunchtime listening to clipiddi clop horse shoes on tarmac. A very attractive young lady was walking along towards the station on a quite stunning looking chestnut horsie. The full monty - jodhpurs, cap, jacket and bouncy in the saddle. Simply to be admired. The horse was magnificent. Lithe, powerful and chestnut red allover including mane and.... hooves.

There is a 'T' junction with popular delicatessen coffee shop on the corner and this fine afternoon quite a gathering of bored upper crust mum's were swilling plonk with lunch. Quite a refined getting slightly silly, upper class silliness. So horsey stopped. Bam - not going anywhere. Up went the tail right in front of the streetside lunch tables and a firehose of golden rain..... Highly amusing.... and then..... the tail stayed up.

Be well.

Horsemanship at Little Bighorn

[susannah]

A couple of horse points. No,they can't be bulemic.

Horses can't vomit and are particularly vulnerable to poisoning as a result.

Any horse will happily eat grass, especially nice June grass. Hay is nothing but dried grass anyway. They all love grain, but they can certainly survive on summer grass. I suspect the cavalry horses mostly grazed, because enough hay and grain to feed 700 horses exclusively for a month or more would have been almost impossible to transport.

I think the biggest problem captured cavalry horses would have had would involved their feet and shoeing. They would have been shod and if the shoes weren't pulled by the captors within a month or so the hooves would have overgrown and made them lame. If they were pulled, the hooves would have been unused to going barefoot and they would have been made

lame too.

[noggy]

Mar 8, 2021 6:14:02 GMT -6 herosrest said:

^Ducemus

Veterinary Service on Custer's Last Campaign by John S. Gray
Kansas Historical Quarterly, Autumn 1977 (Vol. 43, No. 3), pages 249 to 263. Transcribed by Tod Roberts; digitized with permission of the Kansas Historical Society.

Cheers, HR. Will look through this and the link to the Horsemanship thread. Hope all is well in the UK, I know it's been rough over there.

Noggy

[noggy]

Mar 9, 2021 18:40:28 GMT -6 susannah said:

A couple of horse points. No,they can't be bulemic.

Horses can't vomit and are particularly vulnerable to poisoning as a result.

Any horse will happily eat grass, especially nice June grass. Hay is nothing but dried grass anyway. They all love grain, but they can certainly survive on summer grass. I suspect the cavalry horses mostly grazed, because enough hay and grain to feed 700 horses exclusively for a month or more would have been almost impossible to transport.

I think the biggest problem captured cavalry horses would have had would involved their feet and shoeing. They would have been shod and if the shoes weren't pulled by the captors within a month or so the hooves would have overgrown and made them lame. If they were pulled, the hooves would have been unused to going barefoot and they would have been made

lame too.

Hi!

Tte bulemic-thing was a poor joke. Either way; this was very informative, I really appreciate the info. I should have thought of the shoeing being a big problem down the line. Thank you.

Noggy

[AZ Ranger]

My horses are in various states of shoeing or barefoot throughout the year. All of my horses have their shoes pulled just before winter. I ride in the cinder cone area where the wildlife moves to in the winter. The ouchiness is due to the trimming, and they have the same effect even if shoes are replaced. Some of my horses have shoes on the front only. If I am patrolling in the rocky country, then they have shoes all away around or boots.

When our Department horse Apache was retired, he went to our Raymond Ranch. He had no shoes, and he went everywhere. His hooves were hard as a rock and smooth. When the shoes are pulled for winter, it doesn't take long for them to adapt.

For cavalry horses, they would start with some body fat, and the grain would help maintain it over an extended period of time. If your horse's energy relies on grazing, then the horse needs to graze most of the day. If you see how cavalry moves, it is based on feeding the horses. Early rise and start the horses feeding. March and stop early to feed horses away from camp and move them closer by nightfall.

When I trapped bears above Fort Grant, we would use gunny sack feeders and grain them before rode out. It has more available energy and helps to maintain weight. Most people don't have to worry as much since they are not taking long repetitive marches. We would work up to 20 days in a row.

Regards

AZ Ranger

[mikerobel]

According to my handy-dandy Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army, Table 1, page 144:



The Army's grain requirements for one day:

Category	Numbers	Ration (lbs/day)	Total Weight (lb)	Row 1 column 5
Personnel	65000	3	195000	Row 2 column 5
Cavalry Horses	6100	10	61000	Row 3 column 5
Baggage Animals	1300	10	13000	Row 4 column 5
Animals carrying provisions	1121	10	11210	Row 5 column 5

Each animal also required 10 lbs of forage per day and 8 gallons of water.

Temper this with Greek/Macedonian horses were smaller, but the load of an armored warrior may have been equal to or greater than a cavalry trooper.

The ability to move cargo in carts was also constrained because the animals did not use the yokes available in the 1800s, but Alexander forbade the use of carts until they were deep into Persia, but he did use camels and mules.  The author calculates that the Army could only carry supplies for 2.5 days  in the desert.  He estimates the horse could carry 250 lbs, less carrying its own water (80 lbs), grain, and forage (20 lbs) or 150 lbs.

Apparently, for the whole mission, the soldiers were issued 20lbs of grain to carry on the horse, but we don't apparently know the amount of provisions carried by the pack train.  At least I have not see it yet.

[herosrest]

^Ducemus

The wagon train accompanying Terry and Dakota column from FAL was substantial and significant work in regards bridgeing. Off the top of my head, Godfrey gave a little on it in his opus and also Maguire in the full report he filed with following year's report of the march. He kneejerked the battle into the 1876 Engineer's report and the full shebang got included to the subsequent annual report. There was a substantial tonnage of forage left behind and the mules taken on. It would be at that stage that shorter rations meant the grazing became a concern. In relation to Maguire's report, he included a good number of sketches of bridge designs used along the way.

One of the battle's central difficulties for those doing pointed intricate timing analysis, is time. This becane as inscrutable as Confuscious's love life because of the timing study one Frederick Whittaker included in his 1876 biograhy of Custer, in the chapters on the battle. It was good timewise and the basis of criticisms which led to the Inquiry in 1879. There in Chicago, it was important for Reno to discredit Whittaker's analysis and time of the place was obfuscated in various ways intentional and coincidental. The only thing which is generally accepted is that clock time was not altered on the Far Wet for 21st June. Whether that was important has never been decided but is irrelevant anyway as is all consideration of specific time in any scientific fashion.

At a place called Davis Creek, some time during May, the wagon used for carrying the engineering officer's equipment was wrecked and it was abandoned. Maguire was then making drawings of bridges willy nilly on his way through the Plains. The incident with the wagon affected the two chronometers used to keep time for astronomical calculations, which were a part of the EO's duty delegated to his staff although he would off course be calculating. They jumped, is the term used and this was not immediately realised and so the up and coming LT had some egg on his face rather than the shoulder where he hoped it would one day sit. That was the reason no one knew 'specic' time. The master clocks were crocked. Not many people know this and very few are interested and particularly those with elaborate time lines. It doesn't change an awful lot but is a neat relevant item which shows whether or not students of the battle read Maguire's full report of the expedition. It's a long boring report full of pictures of bridges. Ssssh...........

Powder River depot

Just 'cos there is so much minor stuff for those that enjoy it, meet Ferdinand Widmayer coutesy of Camp, courtesy Hammer.

7th Cavalry's horses were doing fine in the field and would continue so, until the cold weather which is when they suffer if they don't like the cold. I think it was about 70 tons of forage left at Powder River and more was brought in on the river while boats could steam along it.