Horse Breed Overview

This section of horse breed information is important for many reasons:

• Our survey responses indicate that a cross-section of horse-lovers rated horse breed overview information as an important topic, essential to a horse site or equine community.
• It is consistent with our mission to serve the needs of our horse audience.
• The information will enhance the education and knowledge of a broad spectrum of horse-lovers everywhere.
• Horse breed information is an interesting, fun topic.

Our Approach: Distinguishing the Paint Horse, Quarter Horse, Arabian Horse and Appaloosa Horse

We wanted to make it easy to learn and/or write a report about any horse breed in our database, including Paint horse, Quarter horse, Arabian horse and Appaloosa horse breed data. After researching several horse breeds, we discovered there was no standardized information common across horse breeds. Some horse registries/breeds include information on color. Others do not. Some offer general information on conformation, while other horse sources either don't or make the information difficult to understand.

We decided to include information about fundamentals and standardize it across all breeds in our horse breed database. This will aid your understanding of the differences in various breeds, although sometimes they are minute. Some knowledgeable horse people claim there aren't many differences between one horse breed and another.

The following information is included for every horse breed added to the database:

• Introduction and Points of interest
• History: “ Where did these horses originate?
• Foundation: “ What horses were bred to create the breed?
• Type:“ Is this horse a standard type whose conformation is very close to others?
• Color:  What colors are acceptable to this horses' breed registry and are common to the breed?

We began the process by including the five most popular horse breeds in the world:

• The American Quarter Horse
• The American Paint Horse
• The Arabian Horse
• The Thoroughbred Horse
• The Appaloosa Horse

Eventually we plan to build the database to be the largest single source of breeds on the Internet.

Preface: BREED (a definition) A group of horses that possess inherited characteristics or traits that are passed from parent to offspring in a fixed genetic makeup. These horses can be and usually are "registered".

Information relating to the most popular breeds today can be found on our List of Breeds page.