Wild horses were native to Eurasia, and were domesticated on the great plains of southern Russia over 6,000 years ago. The major problem with horses is feeding them, as they must either spend most of their waking hours grazing on grass, or be fed up to 20 pounds a day of grain and cut hay. In areas with severe Winter weather, you had to provide feed for your horses when there none available naturally, or leave them to their own devices during the Winter and lose some of them. In Germany, England, and France, the cost of feeding horses limited the ownership of horses to the rich. To buy a horse cost anywhere from 500 ducats (for a nag) to 50,000 ducats (for a large warhorse of good breeding). Depending on how much you cared for your steeds, it cost from a thousand to several thousand ducats a year to maintain the horse. On the low end, much of this went for feed (grain) or fodder (hay) during the Winter months.