The Finnhorse might be the perfect cross with the beloved Gypsy Vanner to produce size and athletic ability without sacrificing temperament. Since the Finnhorse is a larger coldblood I believe the Gypsy Vanner Finnhorse cross would be considered a Drumhorse. The Finnhorse might also be the perfect cross to produce the Georgian Grande when crossed with the American Saddlebred. The Finnhorse Georgian Grande should prove a better mover and more athletic than the Saddlebred Draft horse cross. The real market here for Finnhorses might be fresh cooled semen or frozen semen. If we could get one Finnhorse stallion here who is large and a good mover, we could prove this theory. For the American market he must have a beautiful head. Flaxen mane would be great, Palomino would be great, Silver Dapple would be very marketable also, and black. However, size and a good mover is the most important. (Susan’s Comment to poll “Would you consider a finnhorse, if you were buying a horse right now?”)
Thank you for your comment, Susan!
Those crosses sure do sound interesting, I believe no one has ever tried them!
Crossing finnhorses with other breeds is somewhat a tabu subject for the Finns. It’s understandable, we can’t bring any new blood from anywhere. All in all Finnish horse breeders are often quite strict with the pure breeding issues unless the cross is officially accepted somewhere, whatever horse or pony breed in question, and especially in case of our beloved finnhorse.
Every now and then there has been discussion about the northern trotter, which would be result of crossbreeding Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian coldblood trotters. I don’t know if there have been any experiments with this theory. Nowadays with all frozen semen exporting technology, personally I wouldn’t see these kind of experiments as a problem, but in larger scale it might eventually affect the purebred population, and we don’t want that to happen.
But, just to play with this hypothetical thought: what would the results look like IF we crossbred finnhorses with some other breeds?
I have been told there were a few official crossbreeding experiments with both lighter (trakehner, arabian) and heavier (ardenner) horses in the early 20th century, but those ended up as disappointments and were given up at early stages. It is said that the gray color came to finnhorses as a result of crossbreeding with Russian orlov trotters, though this might have been before the finnhorse studbook was founded, so there’s no further record about it.
I searched for finnhorse crosses and found a few:
- Ein Ethel, Ein Finn Gream, Ein Lisetter and Ein Valtter are all finnhorse & arabian crosses.
- Full brothers Ojanrinteen Paddington and Ojanrinteen Pokemon, Irish Cob & finnhorse crosses.
- Finnhorse & thoroughbred cross Pinewood Peikko.
- Tähden Piirto is quite a mix: finnhorse dam and standardbred & new forest pony-cross sire.
- Nicolina Sandas is a new forest pony & finnhorse mix
- Sunrises Hobero warmblood & finnhorse
- Wild Sunday Night standardbred & finnhorse
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