04/13/2026
Honoring Our Heritage: Champagne: the Sire of Broomfield
Adolph Zang was the owner of Elmwood Stock Farm in what is now Broomfield, Colorado. Eventually, it would comprise over 4,000 acres and be known simply as the Zang Ranch. The largest and grandest of the sections of the farm were dedicated to his greatest love and passion, the development and breeding of Percheron Horses. Zang started his stud operation in 1893 by purchasing seven good mares and an unusually high-class stallion from France. The horses he bred were soon receiving acclaim from some of the best judges in the United States. The stallion Champagne 51743 (65402), which he reportedly purchased for some $5,000 (an exorbitant price for that time), would by 1910 be considered by many to be the most valuable stud horse in the world. His colts were characterized by uniformity in type and color. Zang purchased Champagne as a 2-year-old after he had been given a remarkable score of 96 points out of a possible 100 by Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. The highest score they had ever awarded up to that point had been an 85.
By the time Zang had owned him for five years, he had sired over 300 colts for the farm, as well as a number of colts out of many good mares in the neighborhood who were not owned by Mr. Zang. His generosity was said to have greatly benefited the surrounding country through the improved quality of the area horses. In 1905, the average horse here sold for $100 to $125 a head, but by 1910, that average had jumped to $500 to $600 a head. By 1910, the Zang farm had grown to include 50 mares of the best pure bread stock.
Champagne, Zang’s principal stud, was nearly the perfect Percheron: not fat, weighed 2,150 pounds, had a 100-inch girth, and stood 18 hands high. One remarkable trait of this valuable stallion is that every one of his sons and daughters was black and said to be a replica of their father, regardless of the color of the mare. At the 1911 State Fair in Pueblo, the Zang stables showed only Champagne’s colts, and competing against imported animals from the best breeders from around the world, they won every premium award in the Percheron division. (American-bred horses had never before won every major award against international competition.) Champagne himself had been shown all over the United States and France and had won nearly every major award at some point. According to the classic work, "A History of the Percheron Horse", compiled by Dr. Alvin Howard Sanders and Wayne Dinsmore in 1917, Champagne “aided in large measure all Percheron-breeding interests in Colorado.”
They go on to write, “The greatest progress in this state, however, has been made in grading up the native range horses, in which (Zang’s) Percherons have been the leading part. The free use of Percheron stallions on the native horses in Colorado has increased the size, improved the symmetry and conformation, and brought about such improvement in the general type and quality of the horses that they are worth from two to three times as much as the native stock from which they sprang… Hundreds of thousands of these good western-bred horses have been purchased and shipped abroad for artillery and cavalry uses.”
