I've always loved these horses, so naturally I started a Brabant line here on HP. Then I noticed the Ardennes was also in the breed list, and I got curious about the differences, and which is which. Turns out it's harder to find than expected. In the local studbooks I even found some info about several studs being registered for both, and the only true destinction I managed to find was that it appears to be acceptable for the Brabant to be a touch taller than the Ardennes. They seem similar enough for sure that I'm now tempted to breed both on here. Anybody have any insights on the differences between them?

From a quick google search, I saw that the Brabant is also known as the Belgian draft, and the Ardennes is a draft from the region with the same name. So at first it seems they're separate, but the Ardennes region is in Belgium and France... so maybe it is just a difference of studbooks. Like with warmbloods? Recently one of them allowed a Lusitano into their book and there are lots of TBs in warmblood studbooks, too. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

That said, why not breed both anyway?

Edit: "There is much interchange of blood lines between the French, Belgium and Luxembourg stud books, although the modern Ardennes is very much the end product of crossing the old, lighter type with the heavier Brabant horses from northern Belgium."

Well as a breeder of Ardennes here I’m all for more breeder to join in on the fun the only issue is lake of stock I think lol.

but I believe Ardennes got there name from the region they were first breed in but as time move on and the breed gets rare it’s only natural that they let variants and very similar horses share the same stud book.

if I remember correctly ards are some of the oldest horse breeds in France but I’m not sure about brabants 

Yup, sounds like maybe they used to be more different, but crossbreeding them brought both closer together in recent time. Time to open a second account it seems, slippery slope to breed hoarding engaged!

Feel you on the stock as well. All the different names and breeds and such don't help looking for some either. I did find a couple through a free trial on a commercial stock site though.

According to the Second Opinion Doctor, they state that the Ardennes is also known as the French Ardennais or the Belgian Ardennes and there is actually another type of Ardennes that the Swedish developed in the 1800's, known as the Swedish Ardennes; the Swedish Ardennes has now been considered a separate breed from the original bloodstock developed in Belgium and France (similiar to Warmbloods like Tana stated above). These three breeds are the foundation horses for many other draft horses such as the Trait Du Nord, Russian Heavy Draft, and - of course - the Belgian/Brabant Draft. Also like tana stated, many studbooks refer Belgian/Brabant Drafts and Ardennes the very same breed except for the International Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds (Bonnie Hendricks, 1995) which states them as separate breeds {the Belgian Ardennais and the Belgian Brabant/Draft}.

They also state, "To make things even more confusing, the Brabant is considered a breed separate from the Belgians in Storey's Illustrated Guide to 96 Horse Breeds of North America (Judith Dutson, 2005), although they are registered with the American Belgian Draft Corporation. The American Brabant Association calls Brabants European Belgians in order to differentiate from the American Belgians, although American Belgians are not considered a separate breed from Belgians."

I had also seen on a few websites that eventually the two were crossbred together to make the modern horses we see today and that there is a small difference between the two horses; saying the Ardennes typically stands at 16HH and Brabants can range between 15 - 17HH. Minus their uses, coat colors and breed origins, they are pretty much the same with tweakings to successfully accomplish the task needed for the time. They are both basically the Draft version of many Warmblood breeds.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, this is just what I managed to dig up about them.

I didn't know anything on either, but this was a great post to read and learn from! 

Paints since 6-8-14

I agree, very informative to hear all the different views there are on this. Thanks everyone for the input!

I just gotta say, sometimes ewu makes me so jealou sof her posts xD YOU ARE SO INFORMATIVE WOMAN!