Talk:Flemish Horse

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Disputed content

Seems like this is actually an extinct breed of horse. Then some afficionados decided to recreate it. Those fanciers considered the American Belgian Draft to look close enough to the extinct breed so they imported some to recreate the Flemish horse breed.

According to Porter,^[1]^: 443 the American Belgian Draft descended from the Belgian Draught but "is distinct through isolation and divergent selection". Porter goes on to then describe the old Flemish, stating it contributed to "an American draught horse, the Conestoga horse", but Porter does not describe the American Belgian as a descendant from the Flemish.

Some of the claims in this article are sourced by breeder websites. They allege that the American Amish kept the horse breed "pure" (for 150 years? that's a laugh). The most offending sentence is this fantastical statement: "Most of the horses known as American Belgian Drafts in North-America are actually the original Flemish Horses that continued to survive in the isolated Amish community and in Canada." First off, there are numerous Amish communities across the USA and Canada, and they freely buy and sell their draft horses within and without their communities without registration papers or pedigrees (about which they don't care). Secondly, there are more Belgian horses owned in the USA by non-Amish, than by Amish. It seems this mythological ancestry analysis was no more than the imagination of one person who sought out breeding stock for his Flemish horse recreation project (no doubt helped along by some slick-talking Amish horse traders).

It seems what they have done is to import the American Draft to Belgium... and then rename it the "Flemish". Merging such claims into this article has resulted in the addition of photographs of actual American Belgians in the US and Canada (which I removed) and the current horse images (not the historic artwork) all look like American Belgians (no surprise).

I'm not sure what the best solution is (split the article into Flemish and New Flemish horse? or remove the new Flemish?), but there is no independent secondary reliable source that would agree that an extinct horse breed can be recreated in this way, and would not consider the new breed is the same breed. If the old and new stay in this single article, then the new should have its own clear section, and photographs of horses should be in the new section and not be mixed with the extinct horse breed content. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 07:54, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Valerie Porter, Lawrence Alderson, Stephen J.G. Hall, D. Phillip Sponenberg (2016). Mason's World Encyclopedia of Livestock Breeds and Breeding (sixth edition). Wallingford: CABI. ISBN 9781780647944.

Wow, is this entire article a mess! See WP:TNT. My suggestion is to make it mostly about the ancient extinct breed, with solid reliable sources (as opposed to fantasy and romance) then at the tail end, put a little bit in about how the people who are trying to recreate the phenotype from the American Belgian, but don’t get into the weeds describing it. I would keep a little on the new breed here, though, both to preserve redirects and to prevent creating yet another new cruft article. Montanabw^(talk) 06:46, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[cabi-1] Valerie Porter, Lawrence Alderson, Stephen J.G. Hall, D. Phillip Sponenberg (2016). Mason's World Encyclopedia of Livestock Breeds and Breeding (sixth edition). Wallingford: CABI. ISBN 9781780647944.

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