Florida Cracker

The Florida Cracker Horse is the mount Florida was worked from. It descends from the Spanish horses brought to the peninsula in the fifteen hundreds, and from colonial times until the early nineteen hundreds it was what a cowhand rode across the palmetto flats and pine woods.

The name comes from the sound of the drovers' whips. The horses were bred for the job those drovers did: gathering scattered cattle in bad footing, over long days, on whatever grazing the woods offered.

They nearly went out with a change in the cattle business. When screwworm eradication in the mid nineteen hundreds ended the constant gathering and inspection of herds, ranchers moved to larger Brahman-cross cattle that needed a larger horse, and the Quarter Horse took the work. A handful of Florida families kept their lines going, and every registered Cracker traces to them.

They are small, gaited, easy keepers, and known for stamina rather than speed.

The trade is size and gait. A fourteen-hand horse is not a mount for a heavy rider, and a naturally gaited horse is the wrong starting point if you are training for a trotting discipline.