Marsh tacky breeder, savior hopes for ‘closure’ at auction

It’d been weighing on him for a year or more.

And when it woke him up at 3:30 a.m. about six weeks ago, he knew it was time.

D.P. Lowther put on his clothes and got in his truck. He drove into the pastures at Double-L Farm in Ridgeland — on the coastal grass he’d planted himself, past the feeding troughs he’d designed and built — to be with the herd.

Marsh tacky horses, about 100 of them, the world’s largest collection — until somebody challenges him, he’ll say — of the sturdy little animals native to South Carolina’s sea islands. The breed folks credit him with saving.

His herd, the bulk of which he’d finally decided to part with.

“In my lifetime I’ve known these horses over 70 years — you know I’m 83 years old,” Lowther said Wednesday as he sat in his truck. He’d parked the vehicle in one of Double-L Farm’s muddy pastures. A dozen or so marsh tackies congregated nearby, including a couple of mares, their bellies swollen with soon-to-be-delivered colts.

“I’m getting on the sunset side,” he said.

Lowther, who “always wanted the (horse) nobody else could ride,” says he’s getting old. He can’t care for the herd like he used to, he said. So he’ll auction “75 or 80, give or take,” of his horses beginning at 12:30 p.m. July 2 at Folly Moon Farm in Ridgeland. It’s for their own good, he said. He hopes someone with deep pockets will buy the whole lot of them, end the sale quickly.

“I think everyone coined D.P. as ‘the grandfather of the marsh tacky,’ ” said Erica Marie Veit, executive director of the Daufuskie Marsh Tacky Society. “He’s certainly a champion of preserving the breed.”

In the 1960s, Veit said, Lowther would collect horses from the sea islands and transport them back by barge to the mainland. It was a $5 barge fare to get to Hilton Head Island back then, he said. He’d travel to Lady’s Island, too, buy three or four horses at a time. His father also grew the herd, by trading mules to farmers in exchange for marsh tackies.

“I’ve known two types of marsh tackies in my lifetime,” Lowther said as he parked his truck near a watering trough. Moments earlier, one of horses had climbed atop the trough, and Lowther had slapped it on the backside. It jumped down. He’d had to build the troughs himself, he said, because the horses like to climb them. Smart animals, he said.

He pointed at one of his horses and noted the slants of the front shoulder and the hip. If you drew two straight lines along those slants, he said, drawing the lines in the air with his finger, they’d meet over the middle of the horse’s back in a 45-degree angle.

That’s one type of marsh tacky — his marsh tacky. Horses with strong chests and healthy physiques, properly wormed.

Not the inbred horses — the second type of tacky he’s known — that initially came off the islands with narrow chests and worms, looking like they were “starved to death.”

“I’ve never let them inbreed,” Lowther said.

In the cab of his truck, along with a box of shotgun shells on the floorboard and a sheathed pocket knife that dangles from the gear shifter, Lowther keeps a small notepad he uses to keep track of his herd. Behind the seat is a signed copy of the 2010 bill that then-governor Mark Sanford approved, proclaiming the marsh tacky South Carolina’s state heritage horse. There’s also a little flip-book with pictures of Lowther’s horses.

And a copy of a stud book — compiled by Jeannette Beranger — that traces the lineages of marsh tackys in the United States. Lowther’s name takes up several pages.

Beranger, who works for the Livestock Conservancy in Pittsboro, N.C., credits Lowther with saving “a bulk of the breed.” And it’s equally important, she said, that he’s maintained the breed’s diversity.

“D.P. made it his life’s mission to find horses that weren’t related and bring them into his herd,” she said. “He’s got a lot of bloodlines. ... He had a broad vision for what the horses could be, and he was looking more at type than color.”

If not for Lowther’s stance against inbreeding, she said, popular colors — roan and grullo — might have snuffed out less desirable coats — true black and sorrel.

“I think the overall health of the marsh tacky population can really be attributed to him saving everything,” she said, “not just the pretty horses.”

That’s why July’s auction is so important, she said. It’s a marsh tacky event, not just “any old horse auction” — where Lowther’s bloodlines might be lost. Beranger will be at Folly Moon Farms, she said, with her stud book.

On Wednesday, Lowther drove his truck out of the pasture. He passed a barn — 300 feet long, he said — that some time ago had been full of hay. Three-quarters of it was for the horses, he said.

“I could sell these horses one at a time, over a period of time, but I’d rather have the shock of it — maybe that’s not the word — over in one shot, you know?” he’d said earlier in the day. “I don’t want it to be lingering on. If you knew me well enough, ... you know that I like to bring closure to stuff. Right away. I haven’t been in the construction business for 56 years for nothing.”

Lowther still has a couple of construction projects he’s working. And he still hunts. Deer sometimes, from the back of a marsh tacky.

As he drove past the barn, he recalled that morning six weeks ago, when he’d awoken in the dark to be with his herd.

He’d visited with the horses, he said, talked to them.

He didn’t go back to bed.

He went about his day.

Doing things, he said, he should’ve done the day before.

This story was originally published June 10, 2016 at 11:39 AM with the headline "Marsh tacky breeder, savior hopes for ‘closure’ at auction."