The State Stud of Mezöhegyes

Global Horse Culture

The State Stud of Mezohegyes, formerly Moldovia, was founded in 1784 and has been an important center of quality horse breeding for centuries, originally for cavalry use. The stud has struggled at times, losing horses to war and political changes, but has now been privatized and is making a concerted effort to preserve the Nonius horse, as well as marketing a newer Mezöhegyes Sport Horse, which has Nonius, Warmblood and Thoroughbred bloodlines.

Nonius stallions at the State Stud in 1889

I have always been fascinated by the Cavalry and war horse history, in particular those in Europe where some of the most incredible State Stud's were in existence for centuries. Hungary historically had one of the greatest Cavalry's in the world, but information about them is hard to come by. I lucked out last week when I discovered the State Stud of Mezohegyes, State Stud of Mezőhegyes Link which has been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site(which I think is one of the greatest ideas modern man has come up with) world heritage site Link

I also discovered a breed of horse that I was not familiar with that has quite an extensive and interesting history, the Nonius horse, descended from one individual named Nonius Senior. The below excerpt from wikipedia again illustrates why the Arabian horse is the most valuable and important breed of horse ever bred, followed by the Thoroughbred which is descended from Arabian blood. Almost all breeds of horse's in existence today are descended from Arabian horse's which are one of the oldest human-developed horse breeds in the world

The Prince of Lobkowitz, who in 1854 became the head of Mezohegyes, stressed the importance of fixing the type - that is, making the characteristics of a breed of animal genetically homogenous - of the horses. This goal was achieved by linebreeding, though the one season that Nonius Senior served his own daughters was notably unsuccessful: of the 33 foals, 11 died while only 2 were broodmare-quality and 1 was stallion-quality. However with more experimentation, the Nonius breed emerged as a uniformly heavy but elegant military driving and carting horse. In 1865, Arabian and Thoroughbred stallions were introduced for Nonius Senior's female descendants in the hopes of correcting a lack of balance and elegance among the Nonius horses. Fifteen of Nonius's sons stood stud, and 122 were broodmares.

Nonius horse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia