Horse Breeds by Country
There are approximately 58,372,106 horses in the world, as of 2006.Horses are bred for many activities, including racing, trail riding, working, rodeos, and showing. Size may also be a factor in determining the breed.
The United States has approximately 9.5 million horses, according to the 2006 Global Horse Population report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Nine other countries have horse populations of more than a million.
The United States, China, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Mongolia, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation are the top 10 horse producing countries in the world.
Horses are not as old as other domesticated species such as sheep, goats, pigs, cattle and dogs, but they are the species most differentiated into breeds throughout the world (Hall & Raune, 1993). The contribution of horse breeds to the total number of mammalian breeds in the world is an astonishing 10.33 %.
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Afghanistan has developed twelve horse breeds. They are best known for the Qatgani Horse. The Uzbek mounted raiders of the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, who in early 2001 harried the Taliban forces in the Darya Suf valley of north-east Afghanistan, rode Qatgani horses.
Two horse breeds originated in Albania, the mountain horses and horses of the plains (Myzequea). However, a lack of proper breeding programs has allowed interbreeding between them to blur the lines of distinction.
Two horse breeds originated in Algeria. The majority of African horse breeds are derivatives of a domestication event that was centred in Asia Minor and the Mediterranean fringes. This is the region supposedly inhabited in the past by wild horses regarded by some experts as belonging to the subspecies Equus caballus pumpelli, the Afro-Turkic or Oriental horse.