Breeders in S.C. try to save tacky horses

YONGES ISLAND, S.C. -- During centuries of isolation on the Carolina sea islands, the short-legged, sway-backed marsh tacky horses became perfectly suited for toiling long hours in the swamps and oppressive humidity.

But their wild looks and workhorse reputation -- their name comes from the old English word meaning "common" -- didn't exactly make them prized among horse lovers. Today, only about 150 of them remain.

Now, breeders are coming together to save the tacky, whose ancestors were left by colonial Spanish explorers.

"You have to acquire a taste for these horses," said David Grant, who has almost two dozen tackies on his Darlington County farm. "They are not as attractive as an Arabian, a quarterhorse or a thoroughbred, but now that I breed them and use them, beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

Those who know the tackies say there's plenty to love about them.

They can take hunters into woods and marshes that can't be reached by foot or four-wheelers. They don't flinch when a rider fires a gun from the saddle. Their deep, narrow chests give them more stamina than quarterhorses over long distances, and their hind ends slope downward, allowing tight turns in cane breaks and woods where other horses might have to back out.

"The South, and this entire country, they helped make it," said Ed Ravenel, who raises tackies on his Yonges Island farm outside Charleston.

"You can work 'em, you can ride 'em. When you put them in swamps and mud like we have around here in the Deep South ... instead of panicking and floundering around, they can just plow right on through it."

Intelligent and superbly adapted to the Southern humidity and coastal marshes, tackies can survive on marsh grass and forage other horses won't eat -- farmers and owners simply kept them tied up in their yards over the years.

"We haven't found anything they are not good at," said Jeanette Beranger, a program manager with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. "They jump like rabbits, have a lot of endurance and can thrive on nothing."

The conservancy, a not-for-profit group working to preserve 150 threatened breeds of livestock and poultry, has helped put together a breeders association to preserve the tackies.

Beranger estimates the population will have to increase to about 1,000 to ensure permanent survival. The more immediate goal is to get people in the Carolinas and elsewhere interested in owning and riding them.

"I don't think they are ever going to overtake the quarterhorse in popularity," she said. But they are ideal "if somebody is looking for an easy keeper that is safe with children."

Ravenel said today's tackies are a bit bigger than their ancestors because they are better cared for. He said breaking one of the horses is usually as simple as putting a saddle on it.

"If a man told me he would like a horse he can depend on to ride, to work, to put into several different disciplines, to haul and not worry about the horse breaking down or faltering or running off, the closest I could come to a guarantee would be one of these tacky horses."