SHEFFIELD — He doesn’t yet know what they’re called, but he sure knows what they are.

“Neigh, neigh,” shouted 18-month-old Timmy DeArment as the mammoth Budweiser Clydesdale horses galloped around the Quaker Steak & Lube restaurant parking lot.

The promotional event brought hundreds of people out to witness the horses, each weighing nearly 2,300 pounds and standing 6 feet tall at the shoulders. Whole families came out and snapped pictures on their cell phones or cameras.

“My mom’s a huge Clydesdale fan, and the kids love it so we just wanted to come out and see them,” said Timmy’s mom, Robin, who came from Bedford Heights with her son, mother, stepson, sister and three nephews to watch the horses.

The Clydesdales pulled up at 4 p.m. Thursday in three 50-foot tractor-trailers and stayed until about 7 p.m., posing for pictures and circling the restaurant and the Spitzer Autoworld parking lot next door. Fans were able to get within a few feet of the horses.

“It makes it so much more personal when you can see them this close,” said MaryAnn Krawczynski of Lorain. “When you see them at a county fair or events like that there are always barriers up.”

She asked one of the representatives from Maple City Ice, a Budweiser distributor out of Norwalk that was helping manage the local Clydesdale appearances this week, for a contact number so she could thank the company for the experience.

“This is a special treat. I guess I’m just a kid at heart,” said Krawczynski, who is 62.

The horses were at the Erie County Fairgrounds Wednesday and will be at Cedar Point today before leading a stretch of the Ohio Bike Week parade in Sandusky Saturday as part of a promotional tour for Budweiser.

Jenae Pavlich of Amherst said the Budweiser Clydesdales have become part of American popular culture so she jumped at the opportunity to see them in person with her 11-year-old son, Blake.

“It’s something cool to see — I mean, everyone knows Budweiser,” she said. “Plus, he’s off school, so I thought this would be neat.”

Blake said he couldn’t get over how large the horses were. Each horse consumes about 20 to 25 quarts of grain, 50 to 60 pounds of hay and 30 gallons of water per day.

“They’re pretty cool,” he said.

The Clydesdales got their start as Budweiser mascots in 1933 when the company commemorated the end of Prohibition by sending a cart pulled by the horses carrying the first case of post-Prohibition beer from the St. Louis brewery.

Contact Adam Wright at 329-7129 or awright@chroniclet.com.

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