426 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



knowledge of it they possess — and even then are wrong as often 

 as they are right. There is no sense in your trying, personally, to 

 market horses. I can tell you, however, what any market needs, 

 in huge quantities and at extraordinary prices, and that is tight- 

 made drafters of as much bulk as possible, fair bone, energy, 

 activity, two good ends, (especially the head and neck which sell 

 most horses) ; horses that are gentle to handle, pull truly and back 

 what they can pull, single or double; any age over three years, 

 sound, or practically so, and as fat as you can make them ! 



Flesh is two-thirds of everything in horse selling. A very fat, 

 coarse horse will outsell quite a high-class thin animal. Haymow 

 and grain bin are almost the best ingredients in the make-up of 

 any horse, and for selling purposes they have pedigree or breed 

 beaten forty ways. No fat horse is a bad horse in the markets, 

 and "soap grease on the hoof" brings fabulous prices. Feed, feed, 

 winter and summer; have them fat when weaned, and never let 

 them lose the "colt flesh" if you would sell the kind that top the 

 loads and the market returns. The man who keeps any kind of 

 stock and doesn't feed it to the limit is a fool, and is fooling no one 

 but himself, aside from the fact that if he does not wholly and 

 steadily nourish a helpless animal, he is a brute and the cheapest 

 sort of a swindler, inasmuch as he is cheating a defenseless creature 

 of its dues — of the only return for its services which it can or does 

 expect. 



Really, if you will always have fat, good looking horses in your 

 stables and no other kind, you need never consider breed at all. 

 Any kind of a handsome fat horse will always sell well. You must, 

 however, for your own purposes have a certain amount of weight 

 before your loads, and that nowadays means thoroughbred (or 

 high-grade) draft horses; bred for hard, heavy work. Whatever 

 sort you breed, you should always strive to have your mares as 

 much alike as possible, and use the same stallion as regularly as 

 may be in order to enhance the probability that your young stock 

 will "pair up" well. Valuable as is one first-rate high-class horse, 

 a similar pair is more than twice as valuable, and you will go far 

 on the road to such results if the parents are of the same type and 

 general characteristics to begin with. How common it is to look 

 over a farmer's bunch of colts and find no two resembling each 

 other in any fashion. Whatever you breed or buy, strive always 

 to estimate them with the cold consideration and the icily critical 

 eye of the man who does not own them. The moment your colts 



