536 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



should help to get such items and figures into print and into 

 talk. 



This desired generation of a draft horse atmosphere where 

 it is most needed is so much a home affair with every one of us 

 who is interested that for the balance of this talk I wish to 

 mention just some of those particular, things which (to change 

 my simile and come down to earth) will inoculate the field of our 

 endeavor with the bacteria most favorable to the spread and 

 better development of draft horses. 



In the first place, the horses themselves must be such as 

 to constitute their best advertisement. They must be sound, 

 healthy, well cared for, true drafters without bad faults of 

 quality or conformation, and be so trained and handled as to 

 make a good impression and meet all proper requirements. 

 Our home people will not be impressed with outside evidence 

 as to the merits of the class if a good case cannot be made at 

 any time by an exhibit of the specimens at home. 



The home breeders' methods of handling draft horses, of 

 buying and selling, must have a look of practicality. If you 

 are in the business your methods must be such that your neigh- 

 bor similarly situated can see where he can get into the business 

 on a similar footing. Many a man who has need of draft 

 horses on his farm has been deterred (and in many cases ab- 

 solutely scared out) by the idea gained at big draft horse shows 

 and sales that he would have to have a lot of box stalls, foreign 

 grooms, flannel rubbing cloths and tissue paper rosettes before 

 he could make a start. I do not wish to be quoted as advocating 

 just exactly the following method, but it might help a whole 

 lot if the suggestion were dropped now and then that draft 

 colts can be grown with success in very much the same way as 

 we would bring along a bunch of good beef calves: A bunch 

 of draft weanlings in a roadside pasture, showing a hundred 

 pounds each for every month of their age and raising themselves 

 — with the aid of a self-feeder, the blue grass, a rack full of bright 

 tame hay and plenty of fresh water — -constitutes a form of 

 publicity hard to beat. 



People will talk, and if the draft horse business of your 

 community is organized in such a way as to give them plenty 

 of things to see and say in its favor a mighty good start has been 

 made. Take a pleasure in telling those who will listen (and pass 

 the good word on) how much your colts weighed as yearlings 

 and how easy it was to make that weight. Show them that 



