About Curly Horses

How the Curly Horse came to the United States is still a mystery! Their have been many theories, but no factual proof has been found. Evidence indicates that Curly Horses have been in North America since the early 1800s. Indian pictographs illustrating the "Winter Counts" have shown that in the winter of 1801-02 the Sioux stole some Curly Horses from the Crow. A significant number of Curlies today have been traced to Indian reservations in North & South Dakota. Many Curly Horses have been bred from wild horses roaming the land. Many of these horses have been domesticated and raised by ranchers throughout the United States and Canada.

Curly Horses are highly unusual, and everyone wants to know what traits set them apart as a distinct breed. We hope to answer some of the most commonly asked questions. Most Curlies are of medium size, but they can also be found in pony and draft sizes. They resemble the early-day Morgan Horse in conformation.

A number of traits link this unique breed with the primitive horse. Since Curlies have been crossed with other breeds due to their own scarcity, they come in all colors, even with Appaloosa or Pinto markings.Their curly coat's are what distinguishes them most from other horse breeds. Curly Horses have coats in varying degrees of curliness, many coat patterns have been observed from a crushed velvet to a perfect Marcel wave to extremely tight curls over the entire body.

It is the winter coat of long curls that most represents a Curly Horse, their body coats shed out in the summer and become wavy or fairly straight on their bodies.

The American Bashkir Curly dates to 1898 when Peter Damele and his father were riding horseback in the Peter Hanson mountain range in the remote high country of central Nevada, near Austin. There they discovered three horses with tight, curly ringlets covering their entire bodies. Since then, curly horses have been found on the Damele range and many Curlies in the United States can be traced to that herd.

The Bashkir Curly gets it name from the ancient Russian breed, the Bashkir, from which the modern Curly Horse was believed to have descended. However, the American horses may have been incorrectly named. Research done by Shan Thomas for the CS Fund and resulting in the report, Myth and Mystery: The Curly Horse in America, indicates that the Russian breed most often found with the curly coat is the Lokai breed, found in the Taijikistan region. Thomas suggests that the name Bashkir was the result of a "Strange As It Seems" cartoon published in the 1930s or 40s which identifies a "horse with a permanent wave" as a Bashkir. The Damele Family found and kept the cartoon, passing along the information to others.

The name isn't the only mystery surrounding this breed. Various theories have been proposed to explain the presence of the Curly horse in North America. Some have suggested that they came across the Bering Strait land bridge during the last ice age, but no fossil evidence has been found to support that. Others suggest that curly coated horses were imported while the Russians occupied parts of the West Coast of North America. However, Thomas's research shows their was no mention of the importation of horses into North America by Russian settlers in their ship logs. Horses were used on a limited basis during the Russian experimentation with farming during the late 1700s and early 1800s in present day Alaska. Stock breeding was not very successful since most settlements were only able to keep a small number of cattle, sheep, pigs and perhaps chickens. In 1817 their were only sixteen horses in Russian America and they were more than likely the hardy Yakut and not the Bashkir or Lokai breeds. It is very unlikely that even this breed of horse could have made the treacherous journey from Alaska to Nevada.

Another theory is that a man by the name of Tom Dixon imported curly horses from northern India to Nevada around 1880. Although this theory cannot be fully proved or disproved the Curly horse was already present in America by that time. Evidence shows that Sioux Indians had Curly horses as early as 1801-02 and in his 1848 autobiography circus master, P. T. Barnum, writes of obtaining and exhibiting a curly horse.

As early as the late 1700's, sightings of curly horses were reported in South America. It seems possible, but cannot be concluded, that the Spanish conquistadors may have brought curly horses, or the curly gene, to South America, as there are several European breeds with curly hair. Another suggestion is that Norse or Celtic explorers brought curly horses to North America prior to 1492 but this theory has yet to be fully investigated. With all of these possibilities as to the origin of this unique breed no definitive answers have yet to be agreed upon.

In separate research, the CS Fund has done blood typing of 200 curly horse in the Serology Lab at UC-Davis. Although one can not definitively identify a horse's breed by it's blood type characteristics their are characteristics common to an individual breed. This testing was seen as a method to determine if the Bashkir Curly did in fact display the blood characteristics of a distinct breed. The findings, however, were that the modern curly horse is not a genetically distinct breed, but has been crossed with many other breeds, particularly Quarter Horses and Morgans. The rare and unusual variants that did emerge from this testing are found only in feral horses or those breed based on feral herds. No single blood marker was found to be common in all curly horse.

Today, the American Bashkir Curly has excelled in many events, including barrel racing, pole bending, Western riding, gymkhana, hunter, jumper, roping, cutting, English equitation, English pleasure, Western equitation, Western pleasure, gaited pleasure and competitive and endurance trail riding.

American Bashkir Curly horses appear in all common horse colors including Appaloosa and Pinto. A typical Curly is of medium size, resembling the early-day Morgan in conformation. Many individuals have been found without ergots. Some have small, soft chestnuts. The wide set eyes (characteristic of Oriental horses) are said to give the breed a wider range of vision to the rear. They are alert, have a proud carriage and most move at a running walk or foxtrot. The hooves are black and hard, almost perfectly round in shape. Curly horses have an exceptionally high concentration of red blood cells, stout, round cannon bones and straight legs. The knees are flat. They have strong hocks short, strong backs; the rump is round without a crease; shoulders are powerful and rounded; and the chest is wide and deep. Foals arrive with thick, curly coats, curls inside their ears and curly eyelashes.

One odd feature of Curlies is that they often completely shed out the mane hair and sometimes the tail in the summer, growing it back in the winter. The hair of the mane and tail is fine and silky but often quite kinky. The summer coat is often wavy or rather straight with the curls returning in the winter coat. The American Bashkir Curly transmits the curly characteristics to offspring approximately half of the time even when mated to horses without the curly coat.
The American Bashkir Curly has a gentle nature and is easy to train. They are hardy and able to survive extreme winter conditions.