By Brian Mosely

Special to the Tribune

Percheron horses are known as "gentle giants," and a Chapel Hill girl has recently been crowned as their queen.

Brooke Daly, 17, has been showing horses since she was three years old and plans a career in equine veterinary medicine.

But over the past few years, she's been competing with Percherons -- an enormous draft horse breed from northern France first used as a war horse -- and has now been crowned 2013 National Percheron Queen.

Brooke and her family show and raise Tennessee walking horses and Spotted Saddle horses and barrel race quarter horses. But she was introduced to the massive Percheron breed by Lamar and Crystal Mitchell of Southern View Farms in Shelbyville six years ago.

"We all fell in love with them," Brooke said.

She started showing Percherons in halter, showmanship and youth cart classes, adding the youth team class and draft under saddle to the list last year. As a result, she won the youth under saddle class at the North American Livestock Show in Louisville, Ky., riding Simpson's Shelly (aka the Dragon).

Brooke also sometime joins up with Lamar while showing four of the horses pulling a cart during competitions.

Last year, Brooke joined the Georgia Draft Horse youth group to share the passion for the breed with competitors her age, but this led to other things.

Brooke said she had "no idea" she was going to be crowned queen. Her mother, Charla Brannon, entered her in the contest after she was chosen Georgia Draft Horse Member of the Month.

After an article appeared about Brooke's selection, Charla and Crystal put together a package "and just sent it in." As a result, Brooke was crowned last month in Indiana.

The Forrest High junior rolled her eyes once the comparison to the Clydesdale breed was made, but she's used to it, since it's the most common question she gets about Percherons when she shows them.

But despite the animal's intimidating size, they really are gentle giants, and Crystal says that the horses "don't know how big they really are."

Charla explained that the breed is rarely shown in Middle Tennessee, with Brooke mainly showing them in Louisville, Ky. and Perry, Ga., as well as local county fairs.

Brooke does all her training at Southern View Farms with the Mitchells, who use a tractor-trailer to transport the Percherons since they are too massive to fit in a regular horse trailer.

She will be returning to Perry in October for the Georgia National Fair, showing in a wide variety of classes and a youth challenge, and going to Louisville in November for the North American International Livestock Exposition, the world's largest all-breed, purebred livestock exposition.