Talk:Colt (horse)

Categories

Not sure why this is in Category:Types of horses, any one have a clue? Ealdgyth | Talk 19:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The American Heritage Dictionary shows "colt", "foal", and "filly" all with Middle and Old English sources. The statement that up until the 1930s colt was used to refer to any young horse ought to be removed unless someone can come up with several good references. Aefields (talk) 22:35, 21 August 2008 (UTC) aefields

Evolution

"Some scientists even believe that he (the lead stud) may actually realize that his genes must be passed on, not the colts, and that the colts' blood would cause inbreeding."

I believe there has something been mixed up. The lead stud does not need to realize anything about his genes (and most likely does not have the mental capacity to do so) to drive off the colts and inhibit inbreeding. Only a stallion that behaves this way will have many offspring, and thus, the trait "chase away colts" is established in this species. I very much doubt that any scientist truly believes that the horse knows anything about his genes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.176.188.100 (talk) 13:33, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

"Only a stallion that behaves this way will have many offspring, and thus, the trait "chase away colts" is established in this species." -- While it is true that a stallion probably does not know anything about his genes, the writer has offered only one theory of survival and expansion of the "trait". It also is possible the "trait" is simply a natural, innate desire of the stallion to possess his own mares and not share." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 32.176.12.14 (talk) 14:37, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

The rag/rake thing..

Rather than discuss in edit summaries, can we possibly gather MORE information here on the talk page? I looked through a number of my "horse" books, and do not see this word defined or used. Not in Horses & Tack or The Horse by Evans, nor in Horsemanship, English and Western nor in my copy of the British Pony Club handbook, nor in Devereux's Cavalary Handbook nor in the Certifiied Horsemanship Association's Manual, nor in Price's Whole Horse Catalog nor in Ensminger's college level textbook HOrses and Horsemanship. While this isn't exhaustive, it certainly goes to show that it's not in common usage, at least in the US. The Horse and Horses and Horsemanship are college level textbooks, at the least. Nor is it listed in Equine Genetics and Selection Procedures or Breeding Management and Foal Development both by Equine Research. Nor is it in Horsekeeping on a Small Acreage by Cherry Hill. Nor is it in The Horse Breeding Farm by Willis. I'm still hunting for the copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, it's still in a box packed up, but that might be a good thing to look at, it should give usage. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:25, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Just checked my copy (1931 1933) of the OED:

• Rag, sb1, (bit of cloth etc), sub def 4: "An alleged name for a 'company' of colts. (From RAGGED, a, 1). Obs. rare." Examples are given from 1470 and 1486. The 1486 one, from "Bk. St Albans F vj", says "A Ragg of coltis or a Rake."
• Rake sb7: "A herd (of colts), Obs, rare." Gives the same 1486 quote.

Both are marked with the symbol used for "obsolete". The "alleged" suggests that there is some doubt as to whether these terms were ever in real use, and the quotes given appear to be taken from lists of collective nouns, which are of course notorious for their "creativity". All looks very dodgy to me, and I think the most we can say is that these words have been used or suggested as collective nouns for colts, but are now obsolete (not even sure if those quotes are Middle English or modern, so maybe not even the right language). Certainly in general usage they would not be used – personally I'd use "herd" or a general word like "group" or "bunch". Richard New Forest (talk) 16:08, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Richard. That was kinda what I thought, but I still can't find the box with dictionaries in it... Ealdgyth - Talk 16:19, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, the OED did in 5 seconds what took me 20 minutes to figure out :). I agree that there doesn't seem to a lot of evidence that the term was ever widely used, but I still believe it should be included somehow, since its frequent mentions in modern books (like the CRC one) means it's not been completely forgotten. SheepNotGoats (Talk) 16:29, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I've been meaning to discuss this in more detail here but I wanted to do a bit of research first. I agree it's clear that this is not a commonly used term and that we should indicate this somehow, but the term definitely does exist, and we shouldn't omit it just because modern equine scientists don't use it.

Anyway, here's my TLDR treatise of the history of the term:

First of all, it's mentioned throughout lists of collective animal nouns, like 1 and 2 (most of these are not reliable sources, of course). Incidentally, it's also mentioned at List of collective nouns by subject A-H.

It also appears in several published, reliable sources from various years, such as:

• Encyclopedia of the Biological Sciences, 1970
• Aspects of Language, 1975
• A Writer's Voice, 2006, where it's part of a list of terms described as "dwindling in their modern day application".
• Animal Behavior Desk Reference, 2001

A more useful source is: Animal Lore of Shakespeare's Time, from 2004. Here, a "rag of colts" is part of a list pulled from an 1812 book that quotes a "list of nouns of multitude" from an older text, the Book of St Albans. The Book of St. Albans turns out to be a 15th century text, and the Wikipedia article states that there is a "tradition, traceable at least back to this book, of acquiring many such collective nouns", although sadly this claim isn't cited. It took me a while, but I finally found a copy of the original 1486 text (huge PDF file), and indeed it contains the terms "rag" and "rake" on page 115 of the PDF.

So we now know that the origin of the term is possibly Early Modern English, and while it does not appear to have much current usage, the term has hung around for a good 500 years (being mentioned in print as recently as that 2001 CRC desk reference). Now I'm wondering how the sentence should be worded: maybe something like "The term "rag" or a "rake" has been historically used to refer to a group of colts." (I'm hesitant to say that the term "originated" with the Book of St Albans, since the term must have existed before the book was written for the author to have included it.)

Sorry to appear obsessive about this, but verifiability is one of the most important tenets of Wikipedia: to me, articles are worthless if they're not cited. SheepNotGoats (Talk) 16:24, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

The problem is, while it may be used by word folks, it doesn't appear to be used by horsemen at all. I'll do a bit more digging, but anything we say should point out that it's not much in use by the people you'd most expect to use it, horsepeople. I've got a few more things I can check before we can go definitely on that, but there are a number of horsewords books that I will have to hit a library to check. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:29, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Searching in Lyon's Press Horseman's Dictionary returns nothing for either Rag or Rake. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:32, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree it's clear that the term doesn't have modern usage among "horsepeople". How about something like "The term "rag" or a "rake" has been historically used to refer to a group of colts, but it has fallen out of modern usage"? SheepNotGoats (Talk) 16:37, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and added the sentence above to the article, since it's better than what we had before, even if it's not perfect. I'd also like to add the OED as a reference, since that's our source for the world being obsolete. Can someone who has the OED add the full citation for it? SheepNotGoats (Talk) 16:51, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Looks to me as if the Book of St Albans used it or made it up, but no-one since... The ref for the OED is: <ref>''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' 1933: Rag</ref>. Not 1931 as I said above.

Thanks, I've added it. SheepNotGoats (Talk) 17:45, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Still gives the term too much credit. We need to emphasize the archaic and obscure nature of the term per Richard's OED analysis. SheepNotGoats, if you can further tweak accordingly, go for it, or I'll tweak at it tomorrow. Montanabw^(talk) 23:51, 7 July 2009 (UTC)