The Sudanese Country-Bred is a Sudanese
breed of light
riding horse. It was bred in the twentieth century by cross-breeding local mares of
Barb type with imported
Arab or
Thoroughbred stallions.[4]: 8
The Sudanese Country-Bred was created in the early twentieth century, when a government programme of "improvement" was instituted, under which local mares of
Barb type – of the traditional
Dongola and
Gharbaui (Western Sudan Pony) populations – were
put to stallions of
Arab and
Thoroughbred stock.[4]: 8 [5]: 505 Some of this breeding was done at the
stud farm of
Nyala in
South Darfur.[6]: 254 While the
cross-bred animals were larger, they had lost some of the qualities of the local animals, such as hardiness and the ability to go for long periods without water.[6]: 254 By the 1950s or 1960s few local horses remained unaffected by this process.[7]: 408 [2]
In 1994 the total number of the horses was reported to be 65000.[2] The
conservation status of the breed was listed as "not at risk" by the
FAO in 2007, and also by the
DAD-IS database in 2023.[1]: 111 [2]
The
Tawleed, a
sport horse breed of
Khartoum, was developed from the Country-Bred through further cross-breeding with imported stock, principally Thoroughbred.[5]: 505
Characteristics
The coat colour most commonly seen is
bay, followed by (in descending order) brown,
chestnut,
roan,
grey and
black.[3]: 221