5 Fascinating Facts About The Special Knabstrupper Horses

Most of us know the Knabstrupper horse solely because of the awesome fully spotted leopard coat many of them possess–and that’s usually where the knowledge ends. Check out some of these other interesting facts about this horse with a coat of many colors. Check it out!

1 – The breed started with a mare
Most of the breeds have striking stallions as the foundation of the breed but the Knabstrupper is traced back to a chestnut blanketed mare that a Danish butcher named Flaeb bought from a Spanish officer. The mare is recognized as “Flaebehoppen” which means “Flaeb’s mare.

2 – The breed almost died out in the early 20th century

Due to a limited number of horses, the breed almost died out due to problems with inbreeding. It was saved when in 1971, a breeder brought Appaloosa stallions to Denmark to add to new “blood” into the breed’s lines.

3 – The Knabstupper have the same color genes as the Appaloosa
One of the reasons bringing in Appies worked so well is because the Appaloosa and the Knabstrupper share the same color gene, which is termed the Leopard complex, which causes the spotted coat patterns. This is impressive since both breeds were developed separately from each other.

4 – The horse came to America in 2002

It seems incredible, but Americans were not able to enjoy this beautiful breed until 2002. This was done by breeding Appaloosa mares being bred to Knabstrupper stallions in Europe. The mares had to be inspected and approved by the German Rheinland-Pfalz-Saar registry. Others used Warmbloods.

5 – A horse of 20 colors

It is said that a colt out of the Flaebe mare and a yellow Frederiksborg stallion has more than 20 different colors in his coat and is also the foundation stallion for the breed.Unfortunately, no images of the “Flaebestalltion” could be found.