686 IOWA DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE 



THE DRAFT HORSE ON THE CORNBELT FARM. 



BY WILLIAM H. ADE. 



(In The Breeders' Gazette.) 



In the spring of 1877, when a lad of seventeen, I started farming for 

 myself on a rented farm in Newton county, Indiana. This is part of the 

 grand prairie that covers central Illinois and extends over a few counties 

 in Indiana, and is one of the favored regions of the cornbelt. 



The first team I owned that year was a pair of gray mares, weighing 

 less than 2,000 pounds, well mated and very useful for riding, driving, 

 or hauling our crops to market. That was before the day of disc har- 

 rows, self-binders, or gang plows, and we used light walking plows and 

 cultivators. I have owned many horses since but do not think I ever 

 owned a better team for farm work than this pair. Our roads were so 

 bad we could not haul a heavy load except when they were dry or 

 frozen solid. 



Our farm horses were a sorry lot — a bunch of nondescripts. That 

 was in the day of horse-cars in Chicago. As soon as the street-car horses 

 were out of commission on the pavements they were shipped out to the 

 cornbelt and sold to farmers, who were more than pleased to get them, as 

 they soon recuperated and made useful animals on farms. In the early 

 '80's the great northwest was opened up for settlement and the demand 

 for good cheap work horses was so great that trainloads of our poorest 

 horses found a good market at very high prices. When the farmer 

 started out to replace these horses he wanted something better. This 

 was the beginning of improvement in our draft horses in the cornbelt. 



The same spirit of wanting something better has been growing ever 

 since, and is responsible for what we often see in our horse market quo- 

 tations, "The farmers are the best buyers." We have been putting forth 

 our efforts here in this county to raise the best draft horses, and I have 

 sold to farmers yearly from fifty to one hundred high-grade draft two- 

 year-old colts to be worked and finished out by the buyers. Many other 

 farmers are doing the same thing on a smaller scale, and it would seem 

 as if we would over-supply the market. A buyer will come in here and 

 in one week's time gather up and ship to the eastern market more good 

 draft horses than I can replace with coming three-year-olds in a year. 

 It only takes one day to ship a load of good horses away, but it takes 

 three years to grow colts to take their places on the farm. Here is where 

 our trouble comes in. For every good marketable draft gelding we raise 

 we have two common ones and buyers run after us to get the good geld- 

 ings and refuse to buy the common ones. Before the buyer leaves the 

 farm he has persuaded us to not only keep the common ones but has 

 talked us into pricing a good mare, and it is the same old story — "I 

 priced her so high I did not think he would buy her." 



We need more than anything else just now a market for this horse 

 that fails to come up to the different standards demanded by our horse 

 markets. I am willing to go on record as predicting that it will not be 

 many years before we will have a market for this class of horses for 

 slaughtering, and the horse raiser will be rid of a great handicap and 



