Standing in their bright-red stalls in order of their size, the majestic Budweiser Clydesdales munched on feed in hay nets in between grooming and exercise early Thursday morning.
The East Coast Clydesdale team of 10 horses and one Dalmatian arrived in town earlier this week for events in Bowling Green, Glasgow and Cave City. The team stayed at Western Kentucky University’s L.D. Brown Ag Expo Center where the horses had room to rest and roam.
Thursday morning as the horses were groomed, Barley, the East Coast team’s 2-year-old Dalmatian, darted around the arena outside the stalls of Lucky, Phoenix, Rico, LaRussa, Merlin, Ransom, Royal, Jack, Ivan and Bandit.
This team – based out of Merrimac, N.H. – is one of three Budweiser Clydesdale teams. Clydesdales have been associated with Budweiser since April 7, 1933, when August Busch Jr. and Adolphus Busch gave their father two six-horse hitches to celebrate the repeal of prohibition, according to the Budweiser Clydesdale online history page.
The sons, drivers and father cried during the gift presentation, and the phrase “crying in your beer” began soon after.
The team is now an eight-horse hitch that pulls a red 1903 Studebaker wagon. The wheel horses are the largest and strongest of the team and positioned closest to the wheels. They will pull most of the weight of the 7,000-pound wagon.
Each horse eats about 50 pounds of hay every day, 10 pounds of grain, drinks about 30 gallons of water and is capable of pulling two to two and a half times its weight.
The famous horses have been featured in commercials and have participated in parades and events all over the world but behind all the celebrity of the majestic geldings lies years of work that starts at Warm Springs Ranch, the Anheuser-Busch breeding farm in Booneville, Mo.
“We do only use males on the team, geldings only” Clydesdale ambassador Nick Green said as he watched Barley run around near the horses. “They’ll need to have four white stockings, bay in color, black manes, black tails and a blaze white down the face.
“As they mature over the next three years, we’re going to be looking for temperament and size. We average 18 hands tall, which would be six feet measured from the ground to the peak of the shoulders which are known as the withers,” he said.
The horses’ average weight is 2,000 pounds, and they will typically receive four and a half years of training before they start to travel with one of the company’s three teams. During training, horse handlers will try to simulate nearly every type of situation the horses could encounter during a show to prepare the animals for the unexpected.
“We usually have upwards of 150 horses spread out to all three farms,” Green said referring to the company’s farms in Booneville Mo., St. Louis and Marrimac.
On a hitch-up day, the human members of the team are up fairly early depending on what time an event begins. Team members clean the stalls, make sure the horses have food and water and are taken out for morning exercise. Once that is finished, the horses will be washed and prepped for the show.
While all this is happening, two of the handlers will spend four hours each polishing all of the brass on the harnesses. Each show requires five hours of prep work. Once the team arrives at a location, handlers will work for 45 minutes to harness the horses.
Seven people travel with the East Coast team. The horses have the company of their humans for eight to 15 hours a day, seven days a week.
“As a team we’re going to be on the road 10 to 11 months out of the year total,” Green said.
The horses travel in semi trucks that have individual stalls in the trailer. They will travel no more than 500 miles before stopping for the night to unload.
“No one spends the night on a truck,” Green said. “People don’t and horses don’t.”
Horses are rotated throughout the week so that each day two horses get a day off. They are also rotated off of the team every three to four months for an extended vacation.
“This insures our horses have more vacation than any handler,” Green said.
Burt Westbrook has been traveling with the horses for 36 years.
Westbrook has watched as grandparents have brought their grandchildren to see the size and majesty of the horses, he said.
Westbrook described the horses as “quiet,” meaning they are generally well behaved and don’t spook easily.
“We go back to some of the same places. But we go to a lot of new places. We’re seeing new geography, meeting new people and introducing the horses to people who haven’t seen them,” he said.
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