10T2 New York State Beeedees' Association 



you can get a good one ; but do no buy anything that is not good, 

 because it does not pay to feed high-priced feed to a poor colt. 



in regard to feed. First 1 want to say there is no aniuuil on 

 our farms that will pay us as well, for the feed consumed, as the 

 little colt. It was a matter of surprise to me, some 

 ten years ago, to tind how much growth a colt will make on a 

 certain amount of food during a period of four months, regularly 

 every week. These were draft-bred animals, they were running 

 with their mothers on grass, and the mothers were given four 

 quarts of oats each day. These colts made an average of thirty- 

 five pounds of growth each week, and two weeks in succession, 

 when the weather was perfect, they made forty pounds each. I 

 should not have believed it; simply tried it. There is no feed 

 to be fed with so much profit as the grain w^e feed this little colt. 

 The first winter it must be well fed. If we do not give him grain 

 rations we give him rough feed, and the consequences are when 

 the spring comes we have not a colt we ought to have; it will 

 simply look as though it swallowed a feather tick; it will, all its 

 life, be a horse with a big stomach. It will also be a horse that 

 is very apt to take colic, and a horse that is very apt to get the 

 heaves. Avoid this ; you can by feeding a better ration. That is 

 the trouble with our western horses we get from the plains ; 

 we find that one-half that we get from the plains in the West, 

 where it is a feast or a famine with them, where they have to eat 

 about two hundred pounds a day in order to keep up life — we 

 find one-half of them come down with the heaves. ISTow we can- 

 not afford this. 



Let me make this statement : I should rather, so far as the cost 

 is concerned, keep a horse through the winter than a weaning 

 colt, and it would not pay to feed it in any other way. One 

 other thought that I should like to bring out is this, that in our 

 selection of the sire and of the dam, we want to take into con- 

 sideration the action. To-day that is considered fully as much 

 as the size and conformation of the animal. People have ceased 

 years ago wanting that plodding, slow horse ; they want the 

 snappy animal. That is the kind of horse that the public is de- 

 manding, and we on our farms want to grow what the public 

 flemands. Years ago I tired of educating the public as to what 

 they wanted to buy. That is the kind of horse wo want on the 



