COTTAGEVILLE, W.Va. — The current most famous visitors to West Virginia just got back from Game 7 of the World Series, weigh about 2,000 pounds and support your right to a sudsy brew.
They are, of course, Budweiser’s famed Clydesdales — and they’re hanging out in Jackson County. The public may see the Clydesdales until 5 p.m. today at the Jackson County Farm just outside Ripley.
The Clydesdales will also be participants Friday morning in the Veterans Day Parade in Ripley. And they’ll hang out Saturday at Marshall University’s football game against Middle Tennessee State in Huntington, where, like fans, they’ll be rooting for the Thundering Herd to stop a three-game losing streak.
The Clydesdales work as hitches of eight, but they travel as a group of 10 because there are two alternates to make sure their team members get a rest.
They’re the talk of the town in Ripley, where there’s a constant flow of community members into the fairgrounds to catch a glimpse of the Clydesdales’ star power, even though they mostly snooze and munch on hay.
“It’s all over town,” said Kay Smith, who was visiting the stables Wednesday with her daughter Gabby. “I work in town and I’ve always heard about the Budweiser Clydesdales and I was excited to see them. They’re beautiful. They’re gorgeous.”
Getting the Clydesdales to your town takes time, patience and the stalls to be able to handle them, said Lewie Hagerty, vice president of sales for Proud Eagle, a Budweiser wholesaler.
“It’s way in advance with the brewery, and you have to set up multiple things,” Hagerty said. “You have to have stables in an appropriate location. There has to be an actual event going on, a parade, a special event. It is a very lengthy process.”
The Clydesdales — with their history, size and popular culture buzz — resonate with people, Hagerty said.
“I think it’s the heritage of it,” he said. “They are majestic animals. Not everyone has a Clydesdale in their backyard.”
The Clydesdales, originally bred more than 300 years ago for farm work in the region of Clydesdale, Scotland, first became associated with Budweiser in 1933 when August A. Busch, Jr. and Adolphus Busch gave two six-horse hitches to their father, August Anheuser Busch Sr. to celebrate the repeal of Prohibition.
The Clydesdales began to be used for marketing almost immediately. The hitch presented by the Busch brothers carried the first case of post-Prohibition beer from the St. Louis brewery in a special journey down Pestalozzi Street in St. Louis. Not long after, Busch, Sr. had the team sent by rail to New York City, where it picked up two cases of Budweiser beer at New Jersey’s Newark Airport, and presented it to Al Smith, former governor of New York and an instrumental force in the repeal of Prohibition.
Modern television viewers likely recognize the Clydesdales and their substantial feather — the long hairs of the lower leg that cover the hooves — from commercials, including some pretty popular ones from Super Bowls.
In person, the Clydesdales are pretty chill. They really do munch on their hay and nap.
“They generally eat most of the day,” said Nick Green, a Clydesdale ambassador from Logan, Ohio.
But the horses are raring to go by the time of events like the Veterans Day Parade or the Marshall game.
“So we do travel most of the year,” Green said, “and these guys do enjoy being out and pulling.”