This is more of a curiosity question then anything actually important to me right now, but is there any way to actually confirm a horse is a warmblood?
Some registries brand of course, which is a pretty good way to know. But in a world full of 16.2 h bay WBs, is there any way to actually ‘know’ what you are getting? Papers/pedigree are nice, but not a reliable way of confirming that horse is the horse in that pedigree. It seems like it’s even more of a crapshoot with WBs who have ‘lost’ the papers or were unregistered in the first place for whatever reason. Perusing Facebook sale posts, I come across a lot of WBs who look suspiciously like TBs or TB/QH crosses. So is there really any way to know for sure? Or do buyers just need to make sure they buy from reputable sellers who aren’t as likely to lie as a individual selling one horse?
Here horses have passports. Scan the chip in the horse and see if it matches the passport. Done.
If no chip, passport, registration, or whatever, then you cannot be so sure. There are DNA testing options available but the accuracy and validity is questionable.
Warmbloods come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, so they’re not quite as distinctive as some breeds in my opinion.
Meanwhile… I see (papered) warmbloods all the time that could double as grade horses - or at the very least, look assembled by committee. Quality not being synonymous with WBs - and vice versa for pretty much any breed… The “WB breed” (I say breed because it’s really a summation of registries) is not homogeneous or a closed stud-book like TBs or Arabians - so the variation within the “breed” is astronomical.
Consider also that most WB registries are breeding for performance, which tends to overtime, change the phenotype of those within the registry - break it down further in that each discipline requires a specific subset of anatomy, and you get a lot of horses within the same registry with very different structural proportions. Not the same as TBs, which are solely bred for racing, or for example STBs, which are solely bred for harness racing…
The only way, I think, would be to confirm with DNA testing + microchip; most WB registries require a DNA sample when you register… and others require or encourage microchips… so if they matched…
I think in general, when you’re not shopping low-end prospects, that if a seller provides paperwork and registration, that chances are the horse in front of you is that horse on the papers. In high-end deals, sellers have way too much to lose to misrepresent the pedigree, both from a reputation and a quality standpoint – it is not the MO of breeders/sellers of true FEI prospects to misrepresent the pedigree of the horse and in my experience it is practically unheard of.
Although, one WB breeder comes to mind and has given breeders worldwide a bad name, supplying her stallions’ son’s semen instead of the actual stallion’s… but really, that is such a rare and, in my honest opinion, fruitbat scenario. A shame because the stallion is/was a very nice representative of the registry and his son is not bad either, but IIRC is not registered with that registry and really screwed over several mare owners…
You’re more likely to run into a misrepresented horse in lower end dealings; AKA the “thiftstore WB”. Those could be any breed, and it’s truly anyone’s guess especially when “papers are lost”.
Although not to get into a tangent but honestly the WB has such a variable “type” - even the registries don’t all have the same archetype as their “ideal conformation” – and with the amount of intercrossing of registries that we have today (IE a HAN mare bred to a HOL TB stallion producing a HOL offspring…etc etc) the end product can be very, very variable - there are WBs out there that are phenotypically identical to TBs, (and TBs out there phenotypically identical to WBs which is a whole 'nother thing…), ISHs that trickle into WB registries, trotter blood, AA influence, you get the picture – and then there is the in-between because not every WB comes out looking like a five-star horse like Negro… some look like cart horses and others look like overgrown ponies…
I’d say that if it’s important to you (general you) whether the horse is actually a warmblood, you need to look for one with a chip/passport, papers, and verifiable history. I agree there are a lot of “warmbloods” and “warmblood crosses” advertised on Facebook etc and I tend to assume without further info that they are of unknown parentage or are draft crosses. Which doesn’t make them bad horses, but does make me a little suspect of the seller for trying to pass them off as something they probably are not. Recently I asked for photos of a “Canadian warmblood cross” advertised online, and based on his photos I’d bet money that he was actually a draft cross, probably Clyde-TB.
Unbranded, unregistered WBs are head scratchers for me for sure, because I’ve seen some interesting things in horse shopping with a friend recently. Go to see “warmblood”, where owner proudly tells us horse is 1/4 Paint, 1/4 Perch, 1/2 TB. Basically an expensive PMU baby.
If it’s beefy enough to get away with it, they’ll try it. In my mind if it isn’t registered or has breeding that can be verified, take it for what it is. Doesn’t make it any less lovely of a horse, which highlights the issue with needing to call it a WB just to get sold for some disciplines, but that’s OT.
It’s all rhetoric in the end!
Well, the “draft x tb” has colloquially and historically been referred to as a “Warmblood”. In the US especially it wasn’t uncommon to hear the term “American Warmblood” which was meant to infer the horse was an F1 draft / TB cross bred for hunting.
Used to be that when you crossed a draft with a hotblood, that is what the result was called - a “warmblood”. As it was a dilution of the two bloods, hot and cold. But then registries started breeding for sport rather than the plow, and HOL, HAN, KWPN, GOV were born and started refining these “warmbloods” to what we think of today - the modern, good moving sport horse capable of a wide variety of disciplines.
I think that the branding of a horse as an “American Warmblood” is not meant to be disingenuous and is meant to imply that the horse is an F1 Draft/TB X. Very common in event and hunt-world to see these crosses, and they are not WBs but are “American WBs”.
It shares the name “warmblood” but I believe the general understanding is that the two are completely separate things. Most people know that but the problem happens when the “uneducated” get thrown into the mix, hear the ‘Warmblood’ portion of “American Warmblood” and assume that the two are interchangeable.
Mine is not papered or registered. He could have been registered Canadian WB I think, perhaps Canadian Hanoverian but either he wasn’t or I never got the papers. But I bought from the breeder and know exactly who his parents are (both are registered, one CWB and one Hanoverian in the main mare book), not to mention he looks extremely typical of his bloodlines, even though a few people thought he was a TB as a youngster (not anymore; now he’s a dinosaur). He’s a gelding so having a piece of paper is not that important to me. Same with a sport bred TB I had. I knew exactly his breeding and again he was very much the type. The lines were well known.
For crosses, if you can say well-known WB sire A crossed with TB mare of B breeding or something, then you have a good idea what you are getting. Depending on the mare in this scenario, the horse may or may not still be eligible for registration with the brand.
I think you really can’t make any assumptions if you can’t at least get some identification of the parents that you can verify. I was looking at a horse that was advertised as HOL but unbranded. To be fair, there were some similarities to the HOL type but when I showed up, he was not so WB like in person as on the video. At least the people knew however that the other side was paint, which made sense even though the horse was not colored.
There can be a drop in price tag just from not having a brand/chip/passport so it seems unlikely that a well bred WB is just going to have its identity lost these days unless someone is trying to cheat the system such as for green/age eligibility. Maybe back when I had my first WB before the passports. I still have his papers, so they obviously didn’t make it to any of the subsequent owners (oops). He did have a brand, though. There are plenty of American breeders that take things seriously, document everything, will tell you the bloodlines. If they don’t, then it does seem safe to interpret the “warmblood” term loosely.
I have a registered American Warmblood, also registered as a Performance Horse (PHR - which I believe is now defunct). It was made very clear to me at one barn I stabled at back in 2001 or so, that I could not call my horse a “Warmblood”. That in doing so, I was equating him with a true warmblood, which was clearly distasteful to many. It was implied my horse was a mutt, even after showing his papers, and TB lineage. Oh well… I loved him (and still do) regardless of what the “proper” terminology was/is.
For me, it was simply an issue of simplicity as spitting out “American Warmblood” every time someone asked what breed of horse he was - warmblood was simply faster to say. Then when asked what that was, I’d explain he was 3/4 Thoroughbred and 1/4 Clydesdale (it would never have occurred to me to try to pass him off as a Hanoverian or Oldenburg or whatever). Though I did get a good chuckle once when someone asked me if he was a Tennessee Walking Horse. :lol:
I don’t think there really is a way unless you have some kind of paperwork AND permanent ID of some kind (brand, chip, DNA fingerprint on file) to prove that the horse goes with the paperwork. You might be able to get confirmation of parentage if you are told what the breeding is supposed to be and run a DNA parentage test. I really doubt the more general DNA breed testing like the one offered by TAMU would work in the setting of the average “lost papers warmblood” (wink). Even on the off chance that the horse IS a warmblood that’s fallen on hard times and has a mystery past, the warmblood breeds have so much cross-pollination and common ancestry that kind of test is likely to be an iffy mix of whichever markers happened to come out on top with that particular meeting of sperm and egg.
You guys are pretty much confirming what I thought 
didn’t think about the microchip though!
I swear, every other ad on FB these days is 8-13 YO warmblood breed (I see a lot of Oldenburgs/Hanoverians) who either has only local show miles or has only rated show experience from years ago owned by a college student/new mom/person getting out of horses who wants 6-12k. These aren’t top tier horses, and it’s not the end of the world for most buyers if their WB turns out to be some sort of TB cross, but it does seem like there should be a better way of tracking this. Seems like there could be a lot of fraud going around, mainly effecting those of the horse community who wouldn’t know any better (parents buying the move up horse for their kid, Ammys on a budget, etc)
Short answer: no. When I shop, I have the pedigree in hand with the microchip number printed on it. Vet scans the neck and confirms that the microchip number matches. For older horses, you match the hopefully clearly drawn markings and whirls diagram to the horse, and check the brand.
Another possibility is a full TB or Appendix QH somebody is trying to pass as a WB.
I also have a registered American Warmblood (AWS) and I don’t even tell people she is “American Warmblood.” Otherwise, everyone assumes she’s a walkaloosa draft cross. She’s by a Selle Francais stallion out of an arabian mare who was approved by multiple warmblood registries. I usually tell people she’s a “warmblood cross,” although I don’t feel particularly deceitful if I lazily leave the “cross” off for simplicity.
It’s a shame, because both “American Warmblood” registries (AWS & AWR) put a lot of effort into inspecting and approving quality horses. The problem is, since they did accept horses of non-warmblood lineage into books in the beginning, and issued COPs for sub-par horses (like any European WB registry also would do), they gained a reputation for being nothing but backyard-bred, non-warmblood crosses. Because they would accept a high quality non-traditional cross into a lower breeding book, the backyard breeders began to assume their crap (for lack of a better word) was also an “American Warmblood.” This type of ignorance pretty much ruined the reputation of the registries IMO.
Now, in regard to the OP… if I had a dollar for every big-boned horse of nondescript breeding who I saw passed around show barns as a “warmblood,” I’d be able to import myself something especially fancy. :lol: Especially back in the 1990s and early 00s, when WBs were rising to their current position of dominance in the show ring. Very few understood how WB registries worked, nor were there as many methods to confirm identity.
A “TB cross” can be an actual WB. As in, registered, papered, as HOL, HAN, GOV, KWPN… Both HOL and HAN have several TB stallions approved for stud and they also will inspect TB mares to be approved for breeding into the lower books of their respective registries. Meaning their offspring can be eligible to be approved into MB.
Back when I still dealt with horses professionally, we were going to do a bone scan on a horse that supposedly was the owner’s homebred, sired by some mucky-muck warmblood dressage stallion (I forget what breed he was supposed to have been), out of her Appendix QH mare. The tech and I went to make sure the horse was prepped, taken to isolation, and inject it for the scan. We probably passed the stall twice because we were looking for, you know, a tall horse. Our patient wasn’t just not very warmblood-looking, he wasn’t even Appendix QH looking. He was a cowboy-up, bulldog, old-school roper stock horse phenotype. The tech gave me a side-eye and whispered “I think somebody mixed up the straws.” I have no idea if the owners ever had parentage testing run. I sure would have.
Barring papers in hand and proof they match the horse (detailed descriptor of markings or chip), there’s no real sure way to know. DNA might be an option (I believe it’s a requirement for all registries at this point that DNA be done on all horses registered?), although it might be easier if you have the hair of suspected parents to test against, rather than soliciting a registry to see if DNA you provide can be matched to anything in their records (I’m not even certain this is a service they would provide). Standard DNA processing (horse is x% arab, y%tb, etc) would not work given how many other breeds have been introduced to warmblood breeding - many significant founding “line” sires are thoroughbred, anglo arab, or a direct descendant of one (Matcho, Prince Thatch, Pik As, Heraldik, Lauries Crusador, Ladykiller to name a few).
Which also ties into the fact that it’s pretty common for registered warmbloods to have high percentages of “blood” - in excess of 40% isn’t uncommon. I actually find it harder to find horses with that index lower than 30 (and under 20 is really uncommon). Example: One of Ingrid Klimke’s horses (Gold medal mount, Abraxxas) is listed at 99.8%. His sire was full TB (Heraldik, mentioned above - a prolific sire for event horses), and his dam is registered hanoverian (with dam’s dam also being registered hanoverian) but with plenty of TB breeding in the line. So a “tbxwb cross” can be a warmblood - if someone goes through proper procedure, inspection process, registration, etc. Otherwise it’s just a cross.
And then of course, the phenotype of warmbloods is hilariously diverse. Your standard Trakehner isn’t going to look like your Gelderlander, and your Selle Francais isn’t going to look like an old fashioned Hanoverian, who won’t look like a more modernly bred Hanoverian. Going off eye alone is dubious at best.
Just want to say that your “mutt” is very handsome!
Look at some of the Hanoverians bred by Friedrich Butt. Some are, for all intents and purposes (and pedigree!) thoroughbreds (Butts Leon is 99.2% TB). Or my own Hann. mare is out of an approved TB. The thing about warmblood registries is that they are semi open registries. No, they don’t allow just anything in, but because they are breeding for type instead of pure lineage there is wiggle room.
I only know the Hanoverians, but an approved TB mare is placed into the Studbook, and if she has a sufficient performance record or passes a performance test she is placed in the main studbook. They are stricter in their requirements of TBs, but my previous event mare was main studbook due to performance. And TBs must be bred to a horse with either a Hanoverian foal brand or at least 50% Hanoverian bloodlines for the foal to be eligible for registration (regardless of parents’ approval status).
First, start by checking for a tattoo under the lip :lol: I kid you not, I looked at a horse years ago being marketed as a “warmblood” and she was a tattooed TB. 
OMG that’s what I fear most of these horses are :lol:
I knew that horses could be a big % TB and still be a WB, but I didn’t realize it could be 99%, that’s a little crazy!
