Height: 1.60m-1.79m. Color: Mainly bay, roan, sometimes chestnut, chestnut roan, iron gray, or black. The Trait du Nord is taller and stouterthan the Ardennais. It is a muscular, well-built horse that weighs from 800kg to a ton. It has a small head with an often concave profile, small eyes, short ears, a powerful neck, short back, and broad chest. The mane and tail are fine, but thick. Distribution: France, in the Oise, Aisne, Somme,North, and Pas-de-Calais regions. Very powerful and energetic, it is very attentive to humans. It is a particularly docile horse. It excels in harness and is used for clearing forests, marshes, and other areas. Today its numbers are among thelowest of all French horse breeds. The numbers have stabilized, but births are very slowly decreasing. In 2011, 180 mares were impregnated; 37 stallions were active.

Although the breed's ancestors existed long ago, the Trait du Nord is a relatively recent breed, created around 1 880 from an Ardennais and a Belgian draft. It also received some Boulonnais blood. A first breed association was established in 1903, but World War I wiped out the first efforts at selection. A genealogical chart was opened in 1919 to jump-start the breed, and it was hugely successful until the 1960s. The Trait du Nord was then commonly exported abroad, as far as the United States. It was a farm horse par excellence, laboring in the farmlands of northern France. With motorization, the breed's numbers declined and it was directed toward the meat industry, but this did not help to preserve it.

德国, 法国