Does my Mustang have draft in him?

I didn't want to hijack the other thread about someone wondering if their horse is a Belgian cross, so I decided to start my own.

I have always wondered if my BLM Mustang John has a little Belgian in him. He is short, only 14.3, but he is built like a tank, including good sized bones and feet. I sometimes call him my shrunken down Belgian.

So what do you think? Just a stock horse, or stock with a dab of draft? One of the things that make me think "draft" is the angle of his hip. But then again, I have never owned a draft, so maybe I'm mistaken. But he doesn't exactly have a QH hip angle either. The distance across the top of his pelvis looks shorter to me that most QH's. But then if I knew for sure, I wouldn't be asking, lol!

Who knows? Mustangs have so much mixed ancestry it's impossible to tell. There are a lot of variations on mustang conformation, so much so that there isn't really a breed standard. It looks to me like he's just really stocky. Built to last.

Short answer? Yes. He most certainly has some draft blood in him somewhere. As to what breed of draft, that's impossible to say. The biggest giveaway is the squareness of his butt when viewed from the rear, Dobe has the same thing going on. It's flat across the top and so broad and that's typical of a drafty type horse.

Even on those QHs that have the big broad butt, the corners are more rounded and less abrupt. LOL, I'm having a hard time explaining it...

Thanks guys!

Smrobs, that is what I was seeing too. Like viewing him from the side, the angle is flat and not very long and rounded like a QH.

I didn't know the broadness from behind meant anything though. I thought it just meant he was too well fed.

I LOVE his sturdy bones and feet. I wish more QH's had good feet and legs like that. It's a shame that some of them are being bred fine boned and small footed.

I guess it's because I'm a larger rider, but I really look for a horse that's build sturdy.

If I may ask, trailhorse, where in AZ are you? From the looks of those pics, you might be in my area (around Prescott). Lol

As for John, he looks a lot like Winston, the belgian/QH cross at the stable where I board, especially through the hips. He's got a drafty butt! He certainly is a woolly little monster, isn't he?!

I don't know if he is purebred Mustang or a cross. He does look like my friend's horse which is a purebred Mustang, but then when you look at him a certain way you definitely see some draft in there. Mustangs are built to be stocky, sturdy, and have big feet.

I read somewhere that there is plenty of draft horse in mustang breeds because of the migration into the west and draft breeds pulling wagons and such and they got mixed into the pot. I love the look of your horse I also prefer a more stocky type horse. I looked at a mustang that if you changed the color it would have looked like a haflinger it was gorgeous.

I don't know if it's true, but I have heard that particularly horses out of herds from Wyoming/Montana have a fairly high amount of draft blood, that was intentionally introduced to improve hardiness. Again, I just heard that word of mouth, so I have no idea if it's true or not.

I do think his hind end looks drafty.

Yes, he looks like a draft cross, and I'm betting it wasn't accidental.

A lot of the feral herds were managed by ranchers, and they'd shoot the band stallions and put their own stallions out to breed with the mares for whatever type of mix they wanted.

Most of the mustangs today come from all sorts of purpose driven blendings, depending on what the rancher wanted to do with the horses.

There's no such thing as a 'purebred' mustang. Mustangs aren't a breed, they're merely a type of feral horses.

My mustang has the same body type as yours only he's taller, 16.1hh. Mine gets mistaken for a warmblood a lot of the time.

Yours looks like he has some draft going on, he's definitely a stocky guy.