Please help me - I need to ship some horses.

[Scholar]

in my present campaign design, i have stumbled upon a very specific problem: how do i transport horses across the sea?
to clarify a bit:
landmass A and landmass B are divided by water, there is no landbridge or anything. at the halfway mark from A to B is island M(idway) and at the three quarters mark is island S(tepstone). Both have freshwater and vegetation.
the inhabitants of landmass A want to conquer something on B, but their warfare relies on heavy cavalry. Landmass B has horses or horse-analogues, but none suitably bred for this kind of warfare, so the conquerors have to bring their own mounts or fight on foot. ocean-going ships are propeeled by sail or a combination of sails and oars for warships. the problem is, i have no idea about horse care. :(
here are the questions:
- what is the greatest possible distance between A and B after which the horses are, after a short rest (no more than a day), still fit for battle? (stops at M and S are possible)
- how much fodder must a ship carry to sustain the horses?
- how much time does it take to train a horse for battle?
- how much tme does it take to breed horses?

thanks in advance. :)

[Llum]

I know little in the ways of Horses, but I do know a little about transporting animals by sea. Horses need to eat roughly 25lb of hay/forage a day, twice that for a heavy war horse that's about 2000lb in weight. So they would need that much food per horse per day. Another consideration is that on a ship (especially a non-modern ship) the horses won't get any exercise, thus needing more time to recover. I couldn't give you a number but even with stops at S and M I don't think any meaningful distance is possible with only a single days rest (to fight at top shape, same goes for humans).

Click here for info on Horse Breeding

[SDragon]

Gestation for horses is roughly 11 months, and mating season is typically in the fall. If you're intending to breed at B, then I would strongly suggest bringing some mares of the warhorse breed; you might be able to breed with the mares of B, but you'll probably get less then ideal results if the horses on B aren't designed for battle.

Make sure to take the absolute minimum of horses: one stallion per mounted soldier, and one mare for every ten stallions. This will decrease the taxation of transporting them, and if the warfare lasts long enough for all the shipped horses to go out, the soldiers can use the native B horses.

[Stargate525]

Agreed. If they plan on conquering, they can afford a beachhead.

[Elemental_Elf]

I'm not an expert on pretty much anything you are asking so i won't presume to answer. I would say, however, that your best bet would be to shoot for quantity over quality. By my rekoning horses will probably be lost on the voyage to Land B, so the more you horses you bring, the better your chances to have a stable population of horses for conquest.

I'm not sure how long it takes to train a horse for combat but I've heard it takes a horse 8 to 10 years to learn how to become a high level show horse, so definitely below the 8 years mark for combat. According to Wikipedia, a horse isn't considered an adult until the age of 4, so if Nation A is planning on breeding, this conquest better be for the long haul :)

[Porklet]

I was watching a piece on the Crusades recently and it mentioned transporting horses across the Mediterranean Sea.  The fleet was forced to stop at an island just a few miles off shore, because the horses had all become sea sick (which is apparently a common occurence).  I know you are leaning towards landing and cultivating a usable population of horses, but horses cannot vomit.  Any horse that becomes sea sick for an extended period of time is going to die (that was also mentioned on the show I was watching).  This is going to mean transporting a lot of horses if a sizeable portion of them are going to perish during the trip.  At least you won't run out of food.

[SDragon]

I was watching a piece on the Crusades recently and it mentioned transporting horses across the Mediterranean Sea.  The fleet was forced to stop at an island just a few miles off shore, because the horses had all become sea sick (which is apparently a common occurence).  I know you are leaning towards landing and cultivating a usable population of horses, but horses cannot vomit.  Any horse that becomes sea sick for an extended period of time is going to die (that was also mentioned on the show I was watching).  This is going to mean transporting a lot of horses if a sizeable portion of them are going to perish during the trip.  At least you won't run out of food.

Or finding a cure for the seasickness: blinders and peppermint. Diet is crucial for horses; their digestive tract is strictly one-way, which means burping is just as fatal to them as vomiting. I'm not sure about the vomiting, but I know backward moving gas (burps), in and of itself, only cause discomfort to the animal, but the discomfort doesn't go away until the gas changes direction, which might take awhile, To relieve this, the horse will roll around, rubbing it's belly on the ground, and ultimately twisting it's intestines.