[quote=“Kryxx, post:23, topic:10371”]interesting idea, but since this strives for some realistic things to base it on, let me provide some actual insight, as I’ve owned horses for the last 15 years. My wife convined me somehow, to get one. That snowballed and we now have 5. Anyways, let me state some things and then you can read the last sentence that will put this into perspective.
Horses need 15+ pounds of roughage (mixed grass/hay and/or grain) a day to survive and a good amount of fresh water, 5-10 gallons. Fresh water, if the water is foul, they won’t drink it. That amount is on days where they don’t work, and it’s not hot. On hot days they can drink 15+ of water. In the winter they would need more hay/grass because they need to generate more heat to stay warm. Again this is without figuring in that they are ‘working’.
Working would be defined as riding or drawing/pulling objects for 1+ hours a day. You would need to up their intact of that food some by probably 1/3rd or more or they would loose weight. Which because most horses don’t carry much fat, the weight loss would be muscle. If you do some research, Thoroughbred horses usually drop weight by a fair amount after their runs. Some you can even tell from pictures before and after. They burn so much energy to run in that 1-2minutes that it has to draw it from somewhere, which is the muscles.
Also a horse has a sensitive stomach compared to cattle/goats. If you mixed/changed foods often or they ate too much grass/hay without enough water they would colic, and probably die without good outside assistance.
I’ve now owned horses for 15 years, and they are not cheap to maintain decently. Also you would probably need someone to maintain their hooves, either clip them or add shoes (this is done also to protect the hoof or help re-shape it) if your going to ride them a lot. Their ankles are not much bigger than human’s and how they stand on the hooves matters or they can have issues.
I’ve been told you can keep a single horse on 1 acre of land. It’s more like 2 if you don’t want them to completely destroy it and you get enough rain and they don’t trample the grass down.
Also would the horse be trained? On average, working the horse each day, it would take an experienced trainer a few months to ‘break’ a horse so it’s green. Then it’s continually riding it so your working on the various commands so it get’s better. A friend of mind does this for a living, including training Mustangs rescued from the wildlife preservation areas in the western U.S. She’s done a few of the 100 day training contests for the Mustangs also. She’s gotten a few to do a fair amount of mid level dressage in that time frame, but it’s a lot of work in that short of time. Many horses get ‘bad’ habits easily, and unless you correct that out of them with enough repetition, they won’t behave as you want. That type of ‘training’ isn’t something you read and immediately know how to do. It’s a learned thing. Each horse can also have some quirks and you have to figure out how to get around them, like training them not to spook at a hose or rope, or to walk over them. Most horses won’t, it’s a flight reaction because it looks like a snake, and they react badly to it. It’s like this with many things, they are ‘flight’ animals. Training so you can actually swing a ‘weapon’ and have them not freak or buck? Fire a gun from the back of one? First time you did that, you’d be on ground. Because you cannot hang onto a bucking horse with 1 hand very well. My lawnmower freaks out the horses, and they hear it every week.
So in short, by the time you figured out how to train one, you’d be riding a zombie horse.
so TL:DR
Think about how ‘zombies’ happen in game. Similar to a moose, if you didn’t give it 10+ gallons of ‘clean’ water each day, and stopped it from drinking other sources, it would get infected, that much water would push the concentration pretty high. Parasites take over. I guess you could feed it a lot of the drugs… but at what concentration?
Good idea. I’d go with Robots pulling a Chariot.[/quote]
…Sooooooo, Ride a zombie horse… that’s an idea then 
