Anecdote:
Horses were initially domesticated to benefit from their meat. The reason for the need for horse meat while ruminants existed is that in the region between the Caucasus and Ukraine where the horse was first domesticated, cows and sheep could not feed themselves in winter conditions when it snowed. Cows do not have the instinct to find the grass under the snow when enough snow falls to cover the meadow grasses. Sheep, on the other hand, can reach the grass by scraping the snow with their noses, but when there is icing, they both cannot reach the grass and injure their noses. The horse, however, has the instinct to break the ice with its hooves, so it does not need supplemental feeding in winter. Horses, whose behavior was noticed in their wild nature, were domesticated. Until horses began to be harnessed to chariots, the people in the region consumed an increasingly larger amount of horse meat compared to cow or sheep-goat meat. Later, with them beginning to be harnessed to chariots, using them in this way became more valuable than their meat, and horse meat consumption gradually decreased.
Source: The Horse The Wheel and Language - How Bronze Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped The Modern World (David W. Anthony)
