Missouri Draft Horse Breeders' Association. 527 



until in the west powerful tractors are in common use. There 

 the climate and soil and extent of ground to be covered point 

 to the use of such massive machinery, but in the corn belt, 

 upon the majority of farms and in the general run of seasons, 

 the draft horse will prove the most economical source of power 

 in producing our crops for some time to come. 



In the corn belt we do not breed draft horses to cultivate 

 fruit nor to raise cotton, but wheat, corn, oats, clover, alfalfa — 

 the very best feed to develop the draft horse to his best estate. 

 It is a weakness of human nature to feed more liberally when 

 you raise the feed than when it is brought in over the railroad. 

 Draft horses .for their proper development require generous 

 feeding. So nowhere else in all the country are the natural 

 conditions for developing the draft horse so favorable as in 

 the corn belt. 



The custom and training of the corn belt farmer is to 

 handle stock in bunches. The kindly disposition of the drafter, 

 his quiet, friendly manner, his peaceable ways with those of 

 his kind, as well as other kind and mankind, enables him to fit 

 in most acceptably with the prevailing methods and equip- 

 ment on a corn belt stock farm. As with cattle, you can double 

 the average bunch of draft horses, and practically the only 

 expense you have doubled is the expense of feed. Here is an 

 economic feature which has considerable bearing on the suc- 

 cessful contraction or expansion of such an enterprise. At 

 home we have a two-cent parrot in a $20 cage, but a bunch 

 of somewhat valuable draft mares went all winter and never 

 saw the inside of a barn. An hour's. chill would do up the parrot, 

 but whoever heard of a draft horse that had plenty to eat 

 freezing to death in the corn belt — if, on a day like this, one 

 can imagine anything ever freezing? A woodland blue grass 

 pasture and grain twice a day, and today we have twenty-one 

 colts saved out of twenty-two foaled, a result due in no small 

 measure to abundant out-of-door life and plenty of feed. 



We overlook our hand when we fail to remember that the 

 horse is an out-of-doors animal, that the corn belt furnishes a 

 well-nigh perennial and salubrious out-of-doors for the drafter 

 at a minimum expense per head for equipment. There has 

 been and is much argument as to whether there exists such an 

 animal as a "dual purpose" animal. Permit me to lead for- 

 ward a corn belt draft mare and mark her "Exhibit A." She 

 produces the crop which sells for cash, and a colt which from 



