HARD WORK

It was mainly the power of the horse that led man to use them. Already in ancient Rome, horses were used to power the grist mill. In the Middle Ages, they also found their use wherever water or wind power could not be harnessed.

During the Middle Ages and the early modern period, horses were mainly used for transport. In agriculture, their importance was secondary, and cattle, which were not as demanding to breed, were mainly used for agricultural work. Horse power became more prominent only in the first half of the 19th century. This was also connected with the appearance of more powerful cold-blooded horses, which, thanks to the building of new provincial stud farms and better breeding, began to appear more frequently in Bohemia. The abolition of labour in 1848, the transition to intensive forms of farming and the development of mechanisation at the end of the 18th and mainly in the 19th century also resulted in an increase in the number of horses bred on peasant farms for agricultural work. Ever larger and more sophisticated machines were invented and put into practice for the cultivation of new crops, and horses were more frequently harnessed to them. Their high purchase price and the demanding way in which they were housed, cared for and fed were what increased the prestige of each farmer. Among the animals, the horse was the first to be cared for, fed or watered by the farmer. In return, the horses bore the brunt of the farm work. Until the middle of the 20th century, horses were responsible for most of the heavy ploughing and other heavy post-ploughing work, e.g. in autumn, bringing in the crops from the fields, delivering manure and slurry before ploughing, and they were also used to bring hay from the meadows. The work of the powerful breeds of cold-blooded horses was important, especially in the hard-to-reach forest terrain, from where they hauled harvested timber. Incidentally, they are still indispensable in this activity today. They could be used even more in national parks and protected areas.

Horses also played an important role in quarrying and mining. We have reports of their mining profession from the mid-18th century (in our country a little later). Because their journey down and then up above ground was very demanding and quite stressful for the horses, they worked in the mines for several years at a time. The care of the horses was taken care of by the horse driver. He took care of feeding, stabling, washing and disinfecting their limbs, cleaning the bedding and many other activities. The veterinarian only rarely went underground. With the feeding, unexpected visitors such as rats, mice, flies or cockroaches often came underground. Therefore, cats were also put in the mines to stop the multiplication of these uninvited visitors. There were many legends about mine horses, for example that they suffered from blindness. However, it was common to have lights in the mines. If a horse reached the surface, it took 24 to 48 hours for its eyes to adapt to normal daylight. Smaller breeds of horses or ponies were suitable for working in the mines. The horses were smaller in stature with heavy muscular bodies, usually geldings or stallions. In Bohemia, mining horses worked, for example, in Kladno or Ostrava. In the 1940s, horses were still indispensable in Czech mines.