[Travis Graven] The Budweiser Clydesdales turn heads wherever they go, and that’s certainly true at this year’s fair, where they tour the fairgrounds every day at 5:00 p.m. But these Clydesdales embody perfection, and the preparation to get them ready for public viewing starts hours before. (Music) [Brady Janssen] That all starts at 7:00 in the morning. All the horses will get fed their hay and grain and watered, and then they go out for some exercise. About an hour walk every morning. And then they’ll start the grooming process. They’ll get
all their white feathers. The hair on their feet is called feathers. And so they’ll get that wash every day that they see people. And then we’ll groom them. We’ll cuff off the dust and actually vacuum dust off of them and get them nice and presentable. About an hour and a half before we start our parade, we’ll start braiding their manes, putting a braid into their manes, putting roses in, and really kind of classing them up a bit. And then they come to the truck here. This is what we call our harness truck. So the
wagon rides in here and the harness for the 8 horses. And it’s all leather and brass. So every day that brass needs to be polished. And that’ll take 2 people about 4 hours. We’ve been traveling the country since 1933 just promoting the beer and the beauty and how majestic the Clydesdale is. We are actually the West Coast Pitch. We have 3 traveling teams, and we all travel about 300 plus days a year. So we’ve been everywhere this year, from LA to Phoenix to North Dakota. And right here at the Iowa State Fair. It’s probably one of the most rewarding things — is seeing
the reaction from children or all the way up to people that have been watching our famous Super Bowl ads since the 80s. All these guys are at least 18 hands or shoulders, which is 6 foot. They average about 2000 pounds apiece. They eat about 30 to 40 pounds of hay, 10 quarts of grain, and about 30 gallons of water per day. And you can’t describe how big they actually are. But with that, you also can’t describe how gentle they are. The Clydesdale as a whole is a very docile breed. And so they’re very well natured in that way. I grew up in Iowa, so I grew up coming to the state fair.
