Horses on the farm

Until the arrival of the European the Maori people used the waters of New Zealand as highways: the denseness of the bush meant that making walking tracks was an arduous business. Because of this the advent of the horse was very welcome, and the Maoris eagerly adopted the animal. The European, likewise, was very dependent on his steed and his packhorses for getting around the country.

As well as being the chief means of transport, the horse helped the farmer in the breaking in of the virgin ground, often ploughing through clumped soil matted with fernroots and dangerous with hidden stumps. Horses, with bullocks, drove the first small threshing mills.

The steam traction engine began to take over the role of the horse in 1878, with the advent of the first traction-engine-powered threshing mill. Although horses were seen doing draught work on farms until the 1930s, it was the beginning of the end of an era. The steel-wheeled tractor replaced the horse in heavy farm work in the 1920s, and then, in the 1930s, the gradual introduction of the small three-point-linkage tractor meant that the horse was finally divorced from the New Zealand farm. It was the first machine to have the versatility of the horse. Clydesdales, which had been worth about £65 in the 1920s, became devalued to about £15 in the next ten years.

An era was over. The horse, a farm necessity when John Deans imported some for ploughing in 1843, became a plaything only, the hobby of children and equestrians.